1517: Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenburg, inadvertently sparking the Reformation which split the Church.

1828: Edinburgh bodysnatchers Burke and Hare claimed their last victim -- a beggarwoman named Docherty.

1795: Lyric poet John Keats was born in London.

1888: Pneumatic bicycle tyres were patented by Scottish inventor John Boyd Dunlop.

1940: The Battle of Britain ended -- the RAF lost 915 aircraft, the Luftwaffe 1,733.

1955: Princess Margaret announced that she would not marry Captain Peter Townsend, a divorcee.

1971: A terrorist bomb exploded at the top of the Post Office Tower in London.

1984: Mrs Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, was shot dead by a Sikh member of her bodyguard in New Delhi.

1990: George Burns, aged 94, (pictured) and Bob Hope, aged 87, struck a £25,000 bet on who would live the longest, the winner to claim his prize from the dead loser's estate.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: The Prime Minister said there must be an end to terrorism "wherever it exists", as senior figures in the US-led coalition indicated it could take a full-scale ground invasion of Afghanistan.