Swindon

1951: The 4th Swindon Boy Scouts took part in the Soap Box Derby. Quaint looking four-wheeled craft with bicycle pedals in place of engines, that looked like soap boxes on wheels, sped along the Filton Bypass.

1961: The Swindon Corporation heard plans for a scheme to make Coate Water into a showpiece with open air swimming pool, sports/dance hall, boating lake, tennis courts, bowling green and bird sanctuary.

1971: A woman who was left a picture in the £106,000 Will of Reginald Edwards, a retired company director of Grove Farm, Mildenhall, near Marlborough, had said she did not want it as it was too big. Mr Edwards had left the painting, called The Song, to Mrs Freeman because he bought the picture from her father Charles Twigs for £25.

The world

1837: London’s first railway station, Euston, opened.

1871: The English Football Association Challenge Cup Competition was formed, to become better known as the FA Cup. The first final saw the Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers 1-0.

1944: An assassination attempt on Hitler was made by a German staff officer, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, at Rastenberg, East Prussia. He was summarily executed, as were 1,000 other people implicated in the plot.

1968: Actress Jane Asher broke off her engagement with Paul McCartney in a BBC television interview.

1969: ‘’One small step for man, one giant step for mankind,’’ said Neil Armstrong when he emerged from the Eagle lunar module to take man’s first step on the Moon.

BIRTHDAYS Jacques Delors, politician, 92; Dame Diana Rigg, actress, 79; Charlie Magri, former boxer, 61; Anton du Beke, ballroom dancer, 51.