1648: The Treaty of Westphalia was signed, ending the Thirty Years War.

1857: The first football club was formed by a group of Cambridge University old boys meeting in Sheffield.

1882: Actress Dame Sybil Thorndike was born in Gainsborough, Lincs.

1924: A letter purporting to be from Grigori Zinoviev of the USSR, calling for socialists to start a revolution, was leaked to the British press on the eve of a general election. The letter, later denounced as a forgery, helped give the Tories a huge victory.

1931: Al Capone's gangster career ended when he was sentenced to 11 years for tax evasion and fined $80,000. He was released in 1939 and died in 1947.

1945: The United Nations Charter came into force.

1964: Northern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia.

1969: Richard Burton bought his wife, Elizabeth Taylor (left), a 69 carat diamond, costing more than a million dollars.

1989: US television preacher Jim Bakker was given a 45-year jail sentence and fined $500,000 for swindling his followers of millions of dollars.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: The companies involved in the devastating Paddington rail crash which claimed 31 lives would escape criminal charges, it was announced.