National day of Poland

1298: The English used longbows for the first time, when they defeated the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk.

1376: The mass abduction of children from the town of Hamelin by the Pied Piper took place.

1478: Philip the Handsome of Spain was born. After his death his wife kept his corpse and continued to sleep with it beside her bed for three years. Her name was Joan the Mad.

1812: The Battle of Salamanca took place in west Spain in which the Duke of Wellington was victorious over the French in the Peninsula War.

1844: The Rev William Spooner was born in London. He was an albino and suffered defective eyesight and it is thought that this caused some of his verbal confusions which were later dubbed "spoonerisms". These included "you hissed my mystery lecture".

1932: Florenz Ziegfeld, the US impresario famed for his girls and staircases in his Follies shows, died.

1933: Wiley Post, one-eyed pioneer aviator, became the first to fly solo round the world.

1934: Movie-loving gangster John Dillinger - Public Enemy Number One - was shot dead by federal agents outside the Biograph Cinema in Chicago.

1946: After a failed wheat harvest, bread was rationed in Britain.

1986: MPs voted to abolish the cane in state schools.

LAST YEAR: Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were killed by American soldiers in a gun battle at the luxury home of a cousin in the Iraqi city of Mosul.