1777: George Washington defeated the British at the Battle of Princeton.

1870: Work on the Brooklyn Bridge began.

1883: Clement Attlee, Labour Party leader and Prime Minister from 1945-51, was born.

1892: Author JRR Tolkein, creator of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, was born in South Africa. He died in Bournemouth in 1973.

1911: The Siege of Sidney Street took place when anarchists were besieged by police in a house in London's East End.

1924: English explorer Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in Egypt's Valley of Kings.

1946: Nazi propagandist William Joyce - the notorious Lord Haw-Haw - was hanged for treason.

1958: Sir Edmund Hillary, with a New Zealand party, reached the South Pole, the first man to do so overland since Captain Scott.

1959: Alaska became the 49th state of America.

1961: The millionth Morris Minor, the highly successful British car designed by Sir Alec Issigonis, came off the assembly line at Oxford.

1997: The death toll in Europe's big freeze hit 220 as temperatures plunged to -10C.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Snow was causing problems for motorists across parts of England while more home-owners were evacuated from flooded houses.