1. 1841 - President William Henry Harrison dies from pneumonia, one month after his inauguration
2. 1916 - One of the most costly battles in modern wartime is fought near the Somme region in France
3. 1958 - 10,000 protesters arrive in Trafalgar Square, London, as part of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Over the next four days they march over 52 miles in rain and snow from London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston
4. 1964 - The Beatles hold an unprecedented record of twelve positions on Billboard Hot 100 singles chart,
5. 1968 - The American black civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King, is assassinated
6. 1973 - The ribbon is cut to open the World Trade Center in New York City
7. 1975 - Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft
8. 1979 - Pakistan's former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is hanged - in spite of international calls for clemency
9. 1981 - Bucks Fizz wins the Eurovision Song Contest with their first release Making Your Mind Up.
10. 1987 - Tennis player Maria Sharapova is born
11. 2006 - The Iraq tribunal announce criminal charges against Saddam Hussein and six others, accusing them of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds
Source: BBC, Wikipedia, historyorb.com, infoplease.com, history.co.uk, brainyhistory.com, on-this-day.com
image: © marianne bevis
The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire
Hubris: How HBOS Wrecked the Best Bank in Britain
