1606 Sir Everard Digby, Thomas Winter, John Grant and Thomas Bates were hung, drawn and quartered for their part in Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot.

1649 Charles I, convicted of treason, was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

1858 The Halle Orchestra was founded by Charles Halle in Manchester.

1889 Beautiful 17-year-old Baroness Marie Vetsera and her lover, Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf, were found dead at the royal hunting lodge of Mayerling, near Vienna. It remains a mystery whether it was a double suicide or murder.

1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

1948 Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic in New Delhi.

1951 Actress Elizabeth Taylor, 19, divorced her first husband, hotel chain heir Nicky Hilton.

1961 The contraceptive pill went on sale in Britain - but was not available on the NHS until December.

1965 Big Ben was silenced for the funeral procession of Sir Winston Churchill.

1982 Stanley Holloway, actor, comedian and singer, died aged 91.

1997 An underground anti-road protest came to an end after six days as the last demonstrator, known as Swampy, emerged from a tunnel underneath the proposed A30 extension route in Devon.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Detectives hunting the killer of Surrey schoolgirl Amanda "Milly" Dowler matched DNA from the inquiry with a sample found at the scene of a burglary in Sunderland, in the north east of England, Surrey Police said.