1485: Henry VII established the Yeoman of the Guard.

1580: Sir Francis Drake (pictured) completed his circumnavigation of the world when he arrived at Plymouth in the Golden Hind.

1650: Quakers, the more common name for the religious Society of Friends, came into being during a court case at which George Fox, the founder, told the magistrate "to quake and tremble at the word of the Lord". The magistrate, Gervasse Bennet, mocked Fox, saying that made all his followers "Quakers".

1925: In his workshop in London, John Logie Baird achieved the first television pictures using a dummy's head. He then persuaded a 15-year-old office boy, William Taynton, to sit in front of the camera to become the first live person captured on TV.

1937: The end of the world was almost nigh when the 500,000-ton asteroid Hermes shot past the Earth - closer than one had ever been before. It missed by 485,000 miles, but in astronomical terms it was a close shave.

1938: Orson Welles's radio adaptation of HG Wells's War Of The Worlds caused panic in the US by convincing many listeners that Martians had really landed.

1975: The Forestry Commission said more than six million trees had been destroyed in Britain because of Dutch Elm Disease.

1990: Crews at work on the Channel Tunnel met for the first time when French workers drilled a pilot hole through to the British side of a service tunnel.

1991: The Queen opened the Queen Elizabeth Bridge over the Thames at Dartford.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Farmer Tony Martin, the eccentric loner who shot dead a teenage burglar, was cleared of murder - but was told he must spent at least another year in jail because there was "no excuse" for what he did.

1751: Playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The Rivals, The School For Scandal) was born in Dublin.