1845: Civil engineer Robert Thompson patented the first pneumatic tyres.

1851: Melvin Dewey, who devised the library cataloguing system which bears his name, was born in New York.

1868: London's first traffic lights were installed in Westminster, to help MPs get to the House of Commons.

1868: Whitaker's Almanac was first published for the first time.

1869: Wyoming became the first American territory to grant women the vote.

1895: Britain's first motoring organisation, The Self Propelled Traffic Association, met for the first time.

1896: Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Swedish chemist and industrialist who invented dynamite, died. On this day in 1901 the first Nobel Prizes were awarded.

1898: Cuba became independent of Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War.

1907: Rudyard Kipling, pictured, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first time it had been awarded to an English writer.

1917: The first postmark slogan was stamped on envelopes in Britain -- "Buy British War Bonds Now".

END OF GROUSE SHOOTING SEASON

On this day last year: Tony Blair backed Home Secretary David Blunkett over his controversial call for ethnic minority groups to make more effort to fit in with the British national identity.

BIRTHDAYS: Michael Wright, writer, 66; Sir John Birt, former BBC director-general, 58; Frank Beard, rock drummer (ZZ Top), 53; Susan Dey, actress, 50; Kenneth Branagh, actor/director, 42.