On this day: King Richard III's remains found in car park

Excavators at work in the Leicester car park where King Richard IIIs remains were found. Picture: PA

Events, birthdays and anniversaries on 12 September

1215: English king Henry II and French prince Louis signed a peace treaty.

1440: Eton College was founded by Henry VI for 25 poor and needy scholars. Prefects were warned to look out for “ill-kempt heads, unwashed faces, foul clothes”.

1624: Dutch innovator Cornelis Drebbel demonstrated an early version of a navigable submarine to King James I and several thousand onlookers on the Thames in London. The vessel could remain underwater for three hours and travelled from Westminster to Greenwich.

1848: Switzerland adopted new constitution as a federal union with strong central government.

1879: Cleopatra’s Needle, an ancient Egyptian obelisk, 68ft 6in high in red granite, was presented to Britain and erected on the Thames Embankment.

1890: British South Africa Company founded Salisbury in Mashonaland, Rhodesia.

1895: The first successful controlled glider flight in Britain was made by Percy Sinclair Pilcher at Wallacetown Farm, Cardross, when he rose 12ft in a 45lb monoplane he built himself.

1910: First policewoman was appointed – Alice Wells of the Los Angeles police department.

1935: The American multi-millionaire Howard Hughes achieved the first of several aviation records he established before going into self-enforced seclusion. He flew a plane of his own design at 352.46mph.

1940: Four teenage boys followed their dog down a tunnel hidden in woods near Lascaux in the Dordogne region of France, and discovered 17,000-year-old Paleolithic cave paintings. It is now a World Heritage Site.

1944: First US troops reached German soil in Second World War.

1953: Nikita Khrushchev became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

1959: The TV series Bonanza was first broadcast by NBC.

1960: MoT tests were introduced for cars in Britain.

1970: Concorde landed at Heathrow, London, for the first time, to a barrage of complaints about noise.

1974: Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by leaders of the armed forces.

1979: Indonesia was struck by an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale.

1989: Poland elected its first non-Communist government since the Second World War.

1995: Michael Hutchence of INXS pleaded guilty to punching a photographer.

2000: The Netherlands passed a law allowing same-gender marriages, divorce and adoption.

2003: In Fallujah, US forces mistakenly shot and killed eight Iraqi police officers.

2005: Hong Kong’s Disneyland opened.

2012: Excavators announced that they may have found the remains of King Richard III buried under a car park in Leicester.

2015: Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour Party leader