On this day: Michael Johnson breaks 400m record

On this day in 1999 Michael Johnson broke the world record for the 400 metres with a time of 43.18 seconds. Picture: Getty

1768: Captain James Cook set sail from England on his first voyage, which took him across the Pacific to New Zealand and Australia.

1843: Charles Thurber patented the first practical typewriter.

1847: Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic.

1911: Heatwave in Britain was reported to have killed 2,600 children.

1920: The right to vote was given to women in the United States by the 19th amendment.

1922: The Japanese cruiser Niitaka was driven on to rocks in a storm at Kamchatka, with the loss of 284 lives.

1934: Adolf Hitler demanded that France turn over the Saar to Germany.

1936: Treaty ended British occupation of Egypt, except Suez Canal zone, and Britain and Egypt formed alliance for 20 years.

1942: Germans began round-up of Jews in occupied France.

1945: Japanese diplomats boarded USS Missouri to receive instructions on Japan’s surrender at the end of Second World War.

1951: In Paris, Professor Jan Jongbloed demonstrated a mechanical heart, which he had designed to temporarily replace a person’s actual heart while it was undergoing major surgery.

1952: The Soviet Union announced the first successful intercontinental ballistic missile tests had taken place.

1959: The Morris Mini-Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis, was introduced by the British Motor Corporation.

1964: Rhodesia banned nationalist movements People’s Caretaker Council and Zimbabwe African National Union.

1964: Student and Buddhist riots forced resignation of government of premier Nguyen Khanh in South Vietnam.

1967: The Beatles, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull met Maharishi Mehesh Yogi in Bangor, north Wales.

1972: The 20th modern Olympic Games opened in Munich.

1978: Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice was elected as Pope John Paul I. Within 33 days, he was dead.

1983: Flooding destroyed most of the old town of Bilbao, Spain.

1984: Tatyana Kazankina of USSR set a new world record of 8:22.62 for the women’s 3,000 metres in Leningrad.

1991: In Yugoslavia, fierce fighting between Serbs and Croats brought the country to the brink of civil war.

1994: A health authority revealed a “high level” of misdiagnoses among cancer patients at a bone-tumour service in Birmingham. Up to 42 patients had been given the wrong treatment and 2,000 cases were under review.

1999: Michael Johnson set a time of 43.18 seconds to break the world record for 400 metres.

2008: Russia unilaterally recognised the independence of the former Georgian breakaway republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

2009: Sir David Murray announced he was to step down as a board director and chairman of Rangers Football Club.

2012: Fifteen-year-old Lydia Ko of New Zealand became the youngest ever LPGA Tour event winner and the first amateur winner since 1969 when she won the Canadian Women’s Open.

2014: The Democratic Republic of Congo’s health ministry informed the World Health Organisation of an outbreak of the Ebola virus which was later confirmed as a different strain to the one affecting west Africa.

BIRTHDAYS

Shirley Manson, singer (Garbage), 49; Chris Boardman MBE, Olympic cycling gold medallist, 47; Howard Clark, golfer and commentator, 61; Michael Cockerell, television reporter, 75; Macaulay Culkin, actor, 35; Gaynor Faye, actress, 44; Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, 71; Jon Hensley, actor, 50; Branford Marsalis, jazz saxophonist, 55; Mark Snow, composer, 69; Alison Steadman OBE, actress, 69; Steve Wright, disc jockey, 61; Jet Black, drummer (The Stranglers,) 77; Chris Pine, actor, 35; Roger Kingdom, Olympic gold medal-winning hurdler, 53.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1676 Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, British prime minister 1721 to 1742; 1740 Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, co-inventor of hot-air balloon; 1819 Prince Albert, Consort to Queen Victoria; 1845 Mary Ann Nichols, first victim of Jack the Ripper; 1875 John Buchan, novelist and statesman, Governor General of Canada, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir; 1904 Christopher Isherwood, novelist; 1910 Mother Teresa, missionary.

Deaths: 1349 Thomas Bradwardine, archbishop of Canterbury; 1666 Frans Hals, painter; 1850 Louis-Philippe I, king of France; 1869 Henri Leys, painter; 1910 William James, psychologist and philosopher; 1930 Lon Chaney, silent-screen actor known as “the man of a thousand faces”; 1958 Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer; 1963 Larry Keating, actor; 1964 Naomi Jacob, novelist