On this day: Stephen Hendry| Scottish Parliament| Roger Bannister

1954: Roger Bannister, a 25-year-old medical student, ran the worlds first four-minute mile at an athletics meeting at Oxford

6 may

1626: Manhattan Island, a borough of New York City, was bought from the local Indians by Peter Minuit for goods and trinkets to the equivalent of $24.

1839: House of Commons passed bill to suspend Jamaica’s Constitution after riots due to emancipation of slaves.

1840: The first adhesive British stamps, for general use – the penny black and twopenny blue – were issued by the Post Office.

1851: American mechanical engineer Linus Yale patented the lock which bears his name.

1882: Lord Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke were assassinated by Fenian “Invincibles” in Phoenix Park, Dublin.

1882: United States banned Chinese immigration for ten years.

1941: Joseph Stalin became Soviet premier.

1942: The song White Christmas, by Irving Berlin, was published. It became the greatest selling record of all time.

1954: Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile on the Iffley Road track in Oxford, in three minutes 59.4 seconds.

1959: The Cod War between Britain and Iceland over fishing rights intensified when Icelandic gunboats fired live ammunition at British trawlers.

1966: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were found guilty of the Moors murders.

1972: The first all-women race under Jockey Club rules, the Goya Stakes, was run over nine furlongs at Kempton Park.

1989: Chinese students sent new appeal to government and Communist Party for dialogue on their demands for democracy and an end to corruption.

1994: The Queen and President Mitterrand of France opened the Channel Tunnel.

1996: Stephen Hendry won the Embassy world professional snooker championship for the sixth time, beating Peter Ebdon 18-12 in Sheffield.

1999: The new Scottish Parliament was elected, with 56 Labour MSPs, 35 SNPs, 18 Conservatives, 16 Liberal Democrats, one Green, one Scottish Socialist and one Independent.

2010: The general election took place, but resulted in Britain’s first hung parliament since 1974 with the Conservatives ending up the leading party on 306 seats.

BIRTHDAYS

Tony Blair, prime minister 1997-2007, 60; George Clooney, American actor and director, 52; Richard Cox, American actor, 65; Alan Dale, New Zealand actor, 66; Joanna Dunham, British actress, 77; Neil Foster, English cricketer, 51; Lord (John) Hutton, former Labour Cabinet minister, 58; Bob Seger, American rock singer, 68; Graeme Souness, Scottish footballer, manager and pundit, 60.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1758 Maximilien Robespierre, French revolutionary leader; 1856 Sigmund Freud, Austrian pioneer of psychoanalysis; 1861 Sir Rabindranath Tagore, Hindu poet and Nobel prize-winner; 1895 Rudolph Valentino, silent screen actor; 1913 Stewart Granger, actor; 1915 Orson Welles, film actor, writer and director.

Deaths: 1862 Henry David Thoreau, writer and naturalist; 1870 Sir James Simpson, obstetrician and pioneer of chloroform; 1910 King Edward VII; 1952 Maria Montessori, physician and educationist; 1987 William Casey, CIA director; 1992 Marlene Dietrich, film actress; 1999 Johnny Morris, naturalist and broadcaster.