Earliest date on which Easter can fall.

1687 Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer who made French opera popular, died from an abcess on his foot caused by striking it with the stick he used to conduct his Te Deum.

1859 In Melbourne, plasterer Ben Douglas became chairman of the Political Labour League of Victoria, the first Labour Party.

1888: The English Football League was formed by 12 clubs meeting at a Fleet Street hotel.

1895: The first celluloid film was presented publicly on a screen by Auguste and Louis Lumiere in Paris.

1896: Thomas Hughes, reformer and author, died. He founded working mens' clubs throughout the country -- and also wrote Tom Brown's Schooldays.

1907: The first cabs with taxi meters began operating in London.

1926: The first directional arrows and markings on British roads came into operation at Hyde Park Corner, London. It took drivers by surprise and there were seven accidents on the first day.

1933: Dachau concentration camp was opened on the site of an old munitions factory near Munich to detain Communists and other "political undesirables.

1945: The Arab League was founded by seven Middle East countries.

1958: Showman Michael Todd, husband of Elizabeth Taylor, died when his light aircraft iced up and crashed into mountains in New Mexico. The plane was called Lucky Liz.

1969: Soccer hooligans ran riot on the London Underground, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage.

1982: The space shuttled Columbia was launched on its third mission in the US.

1991: Millions of people were reported to be threatened by starvation and civil war in Ethiopia.

1996: The war crimes tribunal in The Hague made its first indictment of three Muslims and a Croat for the torture, rape and murder of Serb prisoners.

On this day last year: At the High Court, a woman paralysed from the neck down for more than a year won the right to die.

BIRTHDAYS: Marcel Marceau, mime artist, 80; Stephen Sondheim, songwriter, 73; William Shatner, actor, 72; Leslie Thomas, novelist, 73; M Emmet Walsh, actor, 68; Roger Whittaker, singer/songwriter, 67; George Benson, guitarist, 60; Lord (Andrew) Lloyd Webber, composer, 55; Matthew Modine, actor, 44; Reese Witherspoon, actress, 27.