On this day: Live Aid | Newco Rangers

The Live Aid concerts took place on this day in 1985. Picture: PA

1249: Alexander III crowned at Scone.

1837: Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace, the first monarch to live there.

1841: Major powers, by Convention of the Straits, guaranteed Ottoman independence, and the Dardanelles and Bosporus were closed to warships of all nations in peacetime.

1860: Last British naval execution at the yard-arm took place, aboard HMS Leven in the River Yangste. The victim was Marine Private John Dalliger.

1863: Rioting against American Civil War military conscription broke out in New York City, and about 1,000 people were killed in three days of disorder.

1868: Scotch Reform Act passed in the Commons.

1878: Russo-Turkish War ended.

1908: The fourth Olympic Games opened in London.

1919: The British dirigible R34 arrived in Norfolk after the first transatlantic round flight, having left East Fortune, in East Lothian, on 2 July.

1930: The first World Cup football tournament began in Uruguay. Thirteen countries took part and Uruguay beat Argentina 4-2 in the final.

1933: All political parties were banned in Germany, except the Nazis.

1962: Harold Macmillan’s so-called “Night of the Long Knives” as he sacked seven cabinet ministers, including chancellor Selwyn Lloyd.

1985: Live Aid pop concerts in Britain and America raised more than £50 million for famine victims in Africa.

1990: President Mikhail Gorbachev was given a standing ovation after a speech at the 28th Congress of the Communist Party in the Kremlin, when he forced through his reforms of the Central Committee against much opposition.

1990: Wallace Mercer, Hearts chairman, dropped his £6.1 million takeover bid for Hibernian.

2007: The BBC apologised to the Queen after admitting that a promotional trailer for a television programme appeared to show that she had stormed off in a huff from a shoot with American photographer Annie Leibovitz.

2012: Scottish Football League clubs voted in favour of a newco Rangers football club playing in Division Three.

BIRTHDAYS

Sir Patrick Stewart, actor, 73; Thierry Boutsen, Belgium racing driver, 56; Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim), DJ, 50; Cameron Crowe, American film director, 56; Harrison Ford, American actor, 71; Matthew Hart, dancer and choreographer, 41; Ian Hislop, editor, Private Eye, and broadcaster, 53; Roger McGuinn, American rock musician (The Byrds), 71; Bryan Murray, Irish actor, 64; Erno Rubik, Rubik’s Cube inventor, 69; Chris Serle, British broadcaster, 70; Michael Spinks, American boxer, 56; David Storey, British novelist

and dramatist, 80.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1779 William Hedley, locomotive engineer (inventor of ‘Puffing Billy’); 1859 Sidney J Webb, first Lord Passfield, social reformer; 1911 Eric Williams, prisoner-of-war escapee and author (The Wooden Horse).

Deaths: 1793 Jean Paul Marat, French revolutionary leader (murdered in his bath by Charlotte Corday); 1947 Walter Donaldson, composer; 1951 Arnold Schöenberg, composer; 1955 Ruth Ellis (last woman to be hanged in Britain); 1982 Kenneth More, actor; 2002 Yousuf Karsh, photographer