1876: The first recognisable words were transmitted by telephone over 100ft of wire. Speaking to his assistant, inventor Alexander Graham Bell said: "Mrs Watson, come here, I want you."
1886: Cruft's Dog Show came to London, organised by Charles Cruft, general manager of a dog biscuit firm.
1906: The Bakerloo Line on the London Underground was opened.
1910: The first film made in Hollywood was released: DW Griffith's In Old California.
1914: The Rokeby Venus by Velasquez, in London's National Gallery, was slashed by a suffragette.
1961: Bradshaws Monthly Railway Guide was published for the last time. It had been in existence since 1839.
1969: James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to murdering American civil rights leader Martin Luther King and was sentenced to 99 years in jail.
1981: Death of Sir Maurice Oldfield, British intelligence chief considered to be the model for Ian Fleming's
M' in the Bond novels.
1988: The Prince of Wales narrowly escaped death in an avalanche at Klosters in the Swiss Alps.
1990: Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft was sentenced to death by an Iraqi military court for espionage. Daphne Parish, a British nurse accused of helping him, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
1994: Fred West was charged with the murder of eight women after they were dug up in the garden of his Gloucester home.
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