1763: After the Seven Years War, the Treaty of Paris was signed with France ceding Canada to Britain.

1824: Samuel Plimsoll, naval reformer, was born in Bristol. He devised the Plimsoll Line, a regulation for the weight ships might safely carry. Rope sandals for sailors were also named after him.

1840: Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.

1894: Harold Macmillan, Tory Prime Minister 1957-63 and later 1st Earl of Stockton, was born.

1898: Bertolt Brecht, dramatist and poet, was born in Augsburg, Bavaria.

1913: The bodies of Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Scott and his party were found 13 months after they disappeared on their South Pole mission.

1942: Bandleader Glenn Miller was presented with the first gold disc, for selling more than one mmillion copies of Chatanooga Choo Choo.

1944: Pay As You Earn income tax was introduced.

1947: Crowds gathered at shop windows in Paris to see Christian Dior's new-look fashions - longer skirts, nipped-in waists and padded shoulders.

1962: In Berlin, US spy-plane pilot Gary Powers, shot down by the Russians, was exchanged for KGB agent Rudolf Abel, captured in New York five years earlier.

On this day last year: The Department of Health was planning a publicity blitz to persuade parents of the safety of the controversial MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.