1776: The oldest of the classic horse races, the St Leger, was first run at Doncaster.

1842: Bramwell Bronte, brother of the Bronte sisters, died of drugs and drink. He was the role model for the drunkard Hindley Earnshaw in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847).

1853: The Northern Daily Times in Liverpool became the first provincial newspaper in England.

1896: American writer F Scott Fitzgerald was born. For most of his life he suffered from an oversecretion of insulin, and became a heavy drinker. He wrote the definitive 1920s novel The Great Gatsby in 1925.

1930: The first performance of Private Lives by Noel Coward took place at the new Phoenix Theatre, London.

1947: A trainload of 1,200 Muslim refugees fleeing to Pakistan were massacred by Sikhs at Amritsah in the Punjab.

1953: The Robe, the first film made in CinemaScope, was premiered in Hollywood.

1960: The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Enterprise, was launched at Newport, Virginia.

1975: Everest was climbed by the south-west face for the first time by Douglas Haston and Doug Scott.

On this day last year: The leader of Afghanistan's hardline Taliban demanded the US withdraw forces from the Gulf and support the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel if it wants to remove the threat of terrorism.

BIRTHDAYS: Brian Glanville, author, 71; Robert Lang, actor, 68; Gerry Marsden, singer (The Pacemakers), 60; Jack Dee, comedian, 41; Helen Lederer, actress, 48; Ally McCoist, broadcaster and former footballer, 40; Jaye Griffiths, actress, 39; Sheryl Gascoigne, model, 37.