What happened this week in history
1327 - Edward II was deposed by his eldest son, Edward III.
1356 - Edward Balliol surrendered his claim to the Scottish throne to Edward III in exchange for an English pension.
1649 - Parliament tried King Charles I.
1841 - Hong Kong was occupied by the British.
1882 - Coxon & Company, a draper’s shop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, became the first shop in the world to be lit by incandescent electric light.
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Hide Ad1885 - The Mersey Tunnel was officially opened by the prince of wales.
1892 - Basketball was played for the first time, at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts.
1910 - Canberra became the capital of Australia.
1936 - Edward VIII became the first British monarch to fly in an aeroplane.
1936 - King George V died at Sandringham. His last words were reportedly ‘bugger Bogner’.
1944 - The RAF dropped 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.
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Hide Ad1952 - Patricia McCormick became Mexico’s first professional female bullfighter.
1958 - The first radar speed checks were introduced in Britain.
1961 - John F Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th American President; the first Catholic to hold the office.
1971 - Postal workers went on strike for the first time.
1974 - Millwall played Fulham in the first Football League match to be staged on a Sunday.
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Hide Ad1986 - Martin Luther King Day was celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time in the United States.
1987 - Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy in the Middle East, disappeared on a peace mission in Beirut.
1993 - Iconic actress Audrey Hepburn died of cancer, aged 63.
1999 - Paddy Ashdown resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrats.
2006 - Witnesses reported seeing a bottlenose whale in the River Thames, the first time the species had been seen in the Thames since records began in 1913.