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1954 the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched.
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1976 Concorde made its inaugural commercial flight, from London to Bahrain in 3hr 37min.
1440 Ivan III, the Great, whose conquests created a consolidated Russian state, was born.
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1666 Shah Jahan, Mughal emperor of India, died.
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1788 George Gordon Byron (6th Baron Byron), poet, was born.
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1901 Queen Victoria, Britain’s monarch since 1837, died.
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1905 Russian troops fired on marching workers in St Petersburg, killing more than 500 in the first Bloody Sunday.
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1924 Ramsay MacDonald became Britain’s first Labour prime minister.
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1944 the Allied landings began in Anzio, Italy.
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1946 President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group, from which, two years later, the CIA was created.
1790 Fletcher Christian and the Bounty’s other mutineers landed on Pitcairn Island.
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1806 William Pitt the Younger, prime minister 1783–1801 and 1804–06, died aged 46.
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1837 John Field, Irish composer who created the piano nocturne, died in Moscow.
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1883 Gustave Doré, graphic artist who illustrated such works as Dante’s Divine Comedy, died.
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1943 Tripoli was captured by British forces under Field Marshal Montgomery.
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1985 the proceedings of the House of Lords were televised for the first time.
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1989 surrealist painter Salvador Dalí died in Figueres, Spain, aged 84.
41 Gaius Caesar (Caligula), Roman Emperor from 37, was murdered.
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1664 Sir John Vanbrugh, soldier, playwright and architect of Blenheim Palace, died.
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1712 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia 1740–86, born in Berlin.
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1895 Lord Randolph Churchill, statesman and father of Sir Winston, died aged 45.
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1965 Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister 1940–45 and 1951–55, died aged 90.
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1972 a Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was discovered on Guam, 28 years after the Japanese surrender, believing that the Second World War was still in progress.
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1984 the Apple Macintosh personal computer went on sale.
1533 King Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in secret.
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1640 Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, died.
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1759 Robert Burns, Scottish poet whose popularity is reaffirmed in the Burns Night celebrations, was born in Alloway, Ayr.
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1919 the League of Nations was founded to resolve international disputes.
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1924 the first Winter Olympics began in Chamonix, France.
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1947 gangster Al Capone died at home of a heart attack.
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1971 Idi Amin deposed the Ugandan president Milton Obote.
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1990 Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan, became the first head of government to give birth.
1790 Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was first performed in Vienna.
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1824 Théodore Géricault, painter who used corpses in the morgue as models for The Raft of the Medusa, died.
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1855 Gérard de Nerval, French Romantic poet who kept a lobster as a pet, died.
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1885 General Charles Gordon was killed at Khartoum during the rising led by the Mahdi.
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1905 the largest diamond in the world, the Cullinan, was mined at Pretoria, South Africa.
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1950 India became a republic within the Commonwealth.
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1998 President Bill Clinton denied having had sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky.
1302 Dante Alighieri was expelled from Florence for his political activities,
