1745: The Jacobites, under the Young Pretender, occupied Edinburgh.

1787: Some 39 delegates (out of 42), under the chairmanship of George Washington, approved the Constitution of the United States of America.

1827: Wides in cricket were first scored in the Sussex v Kent game at Brighton.

1894: A Gaiety Girl opened at Day's Theatre, New York, the first British musical on Broadway.

1908: Lt Thomas Selfridge of the US Army Signal Corps was killed in a crash with Orville Wright in Fort Meyer, Virginia, to become the first aeroplane fatality.

1931: Long-playing records (33rpm) were demonstrated in New York by RCA-Victor, but the venture failed because of the high price of the players, and the first real microgroove records did not appear until 1948.

1944: The British airborne invasion of Arnhem and Eindhoven in the Netherlands began as part of Operation Market Garden. The objective was to secure a bridge over the Rhine to as part of an Allied invasion of Germany, but after a battle which lasted until September 27, the attempt failed.

1944: Blackout regulations were lifted to allow lights on buses, trains and at railway stations in Britain for the first time for five years.

1961: One of London's biggest "ban the bomb" demos ended with 830 arrested, including actress Vanessa Redgrave and playwright John Osborne.

1977: Opera singer Maria Callas was found dead in her Paris flat, aged 53.

LAST YEAR: The BBC's Andrew Gilligan conceded at the Hutton inquiry that he made a series of errors in his disputed story on the Iraq dossier.