On this day - October 24 (From The Bolton News)

On this day - October 24

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.

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.

1948: Franz Lehar, Hungarian composer of operettas including The Merry Widow, died in Vienna aged 78.

1964: Northern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia.

1969: Richard Burton bought his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, a 69.42 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 dollars for swindling his followers of millions of dollars.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: The Foreign Office today said it believed at least three Britons were among the audience when an armed Chechen group took hundreds of people hostage in a Moscow theatre.