1776: The oldest of the classic horse races, the St Leger, was first run at Doncaster.

1842: Bramwell Bronte, brother of the Bronte sisters, died of drugs and drink. He was the model for the drunkard Hindley Earnshaw in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847).

1852: The first hydrogen-filled airship, powered by a 3hp steam engine built by Henri Giffard, made its maiden flight at Versailles.

1853: The Northern Daily Times in Liverpool became the first provincial newspaper in England.

1896: American writer F Scott Fitzgerald was born. For most of his life he suffered from an oversecretion of insulin, and became a heavy drinker. He wrote the definitive 1920s novel The Great Gatsby in 1925.

1930: The first performance of Private Lives by Noel Coward took place at the new Phoenix Theatre, London.

1947: A trainload of 1,200 Muslim refugees fleeing to Pakistan were massacred by Sikhs at Amritsah in the Punjab.

1953: The Robe, the first film made in CinemaScope, was premiered in Hollywood.

1960: The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Enterprise, was launched at Newport, Virginia.

1975: Everest was climbed by the south-west face for the first time by Douglas Haston and Doug Scott.

LAST YEAR: British teenager Matthew Scott, who was kidnapped by guerrillas in Colombia, escaped after 12 days in captivity.