On this day: Nelson Mandela named ANC president

On this day in 1991 Nelson Mandela, pictured with Fidel Castro, was named as president of the African National Congress. Picture: AFP/Getty

1174: Canterbury Cathedral was destroyed by fire.

1666: The Great Fire of London ended, leaving 13,200 houses, 87 churches and St Paul’s Cathedral destroyed, and eight people dead.

1793: The “Reign of Terror” began in the French Revolution.

1889: Sixty-three miners died in an underground fire at Mauricewood Pit, Penicuik – the cause of which was never discovered. Most of them died from suffocation when smoke entered the ventilation system.

1922: James Doolittle made the first American coast-to-coast flight, in 21 hours and 19 minutes.

1960: Eighteen-year-old boxer Cassius Clay (later to become Muhammad Ali), won the gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the Olympic Games in Rome, defeating three-time European champion Zbigniew Pietrzykowski of Poland in the final.

1962: Atletico Madrid won their second European Cup Winners’ Cup when they defeated Fiorentina of Italy 3-0 in a replay of the final in Stuttgart, following a 1-1 draw at Hampden Park, Glasgow.

1963: Christine Keeler, one of the women at the centre of the Profumo scandal, was arrested and charged with perjury.

1969: ITV began broadcasting in colour.

1972: Arab terrorists, members of the Black September group, killed 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympic Games.

1975: US president Gerald Ford survived an assassination attempt in Sacramento, by Charles Manson “family” member Lynette Fromme, whose gun failed to fire when she pointed it at him at arm’s-length range. She served 34 years in prison.

1978: Egyptian president Anwar El Sadat, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and US president Jimmy Carter began 12 days of secret negotiations at Camp David, which led directly to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. As a result of the negotiations, Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

1986: A Pan Am 747 aircraft with 360 passengers on board was hijacked by four armed Palestinian members of the Abu Nidal organisation while it was on the ground in Karachi. Twenty-one people were killed when the gunmen opened fire, before Pakistani troops stormed the plane to end the incident.

1989: A Boeing 737, missing for three days, was found in the Amazon jungle with 48 survivors.

1989: Disgraced Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who had failed a drugs test at the 1988 Olympic Games, was stripped of the 100-metre world record he had set in 1987 by the International Amateur Athletics Federation.

1991: Nelson Mandela was named as president of the African National Congress.

1991: The trial of former Panama military dictator Manuel Noriega on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering began in Miami. Following a seven-month trial, he was convicted on eight of ten charges and sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment, later reduced to 30 years.

1995: Labour leader Tony Blair dismissed claims that he had tried to weaken his party’s stance on a devolved Scottish Parliament with tax-raising powers.

2014: The World Health Organisation estimated that, of 3,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone who had been infected with the Aids virus, 1,900 had died.

BIRTHDAYS

Paddy Considine, actor, 42; Johnny Briggs MBE, British actor, 80; Dick Clement OBE, director and scriptwriter, 78; Tracy Edwards MBE, round-the-world yachtswoman and author, 53; Werner Herzog, film director, producer, screenwriter and actor, 73; George Lazenby, actor, 76; Rose McGowan, actress, 42; Bob Newhart, satirist, 86; Mark Ramprakash MBE, cricketer, 46; Al Stewart, Scottish singer and songwriter, 70; Raquel Welch, actress, 75; Michael Keaton, actor, 64; Skandar Keynes, actor, 24; Kim Yu-Na, Olympic champion ice skater, 25; Loudon Wainwright III, folk singer and songwriter, 69; Adam Hollioake, England Test cricketer and martial artist, 44.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1750 Robert Fergusson, poet; 1826 John Wisden, English cricketer who launched Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack; 1847 Jesse James, outlaw and robber; 1850 Jack Daniel, American distiller, founder of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whisky distillery; 1912 John Cage, composer, writer, artist; 1946 Freddie Mercury, singer and songwriter.

Deaths: 1548 Catherine Parr, wife of Henry VIII; 1808 John Home, minister whose historical drama Douglas was denounced by Edinburgh Presbytery; 1877 Crazy Horse, Sioux war chief; 1931 John Thomson, Celtic goalkeeper who died following a collision in a match against Rangers; 1982 Gp-Captain Sir Douglas Bader, Battle of Britain fighter ace; 1997 Mother Teresa, missionary.