1595: Robert Southwell, English poet and Jesuit martyr, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

1613: Michael Romanov was elected Tsar of Russia, founding the house of Romanov which ruled until the revolution in March 1917.

1849: Britain annexed the Punjab at the end of the Second Sikh War.

1858: The first electric burglar alarm was installed by Edwin T Holmes of Boston, Massachusetts.

1910: Sir Douglas Bader, Second World War fighter pilot, was born. Although he had lost both legs, he flew in, and was a hero of, the Battle of Britain. He died in 1982.

1916: Germany launched an all-out attack on the French fortress of Verdun.

1947: A Woman To Remember, the first television soap opera, began in the US.

1952: Identity cards were abolished in Britain.

1965: American Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was shot dead while addressing a meeting in New York.

1988: The grave of Boadicea, the warrior queen who fought the Romans almost 2,000 years ago, was located by archaeologists under Platform 8 at King's Cross railway station.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: The CIA warned that Afghanistan could descend into violent chaos once again if its rival warlords and ethnic rivalries were not restrained.