1226: St Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, died.

1888: The first performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeoman Of The Guard took place at the Savoy Theatre, London.

1906: SOS was established as an international distress signal, replacing the call sign CDQ (sometimes explained as Come Damn Quick).

1929: The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was renamed Yugoslavia.

1941: The aerosol was patented by LD Goodhue and WN Sullivan.

1941: The premiere of The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston, took place in New York.

1952: Britain's first atomic weapon was exploded in the Monte Bello Islands, off Australia.

1956: The Bolshoi Ballet appeared at Covent Garden for the first time.

1959: The post code, required in the addressing of mail for mechanical sorting, was first used in Britain in Norwich.

1978: Warwick Castle, ancestral seat of the Earls of Warwick, was sold by Lord Brooke, to Madame Tussaud's, the London Waxworks exhibition, for £1.5 million.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: An inquest ruled Roger Sylvester, 30, who died after he was restrained by six police officers, was unlawfully killed.