SWINDON...

1947: Hundreds of workers in the motor retail trade in Swindon were to benefit from a 44-hour week which was set to come into operation, replacing the 47-hour week.

1957: Four vehicles were involved in a collision at Toothill corner about a mile out of Swindon on the Wootton Bassett Road.

1977: All seven of Swindon’s townswomen’s guilds took part in A Tapestry Of Queens, a choral celebration of the Silver Jubilee at Drove School.

2013: Swindon daredevil Jake the Juggler spent time in a hammock 400ft above the Moab Valley in Utah.

THE WORLD...

1381: The Peasants’ Revolt in England began.

1431: During the Hundred Years’ War in Rouen, France, the 19-year-old Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by an English-dominated tribunal. The Roman Catholic Church remembers this day as the celebration of Saint Joan of Arc.

1536: King Henry VIII of England married Jane Seymour, a lady-in-waiting to his first two wives.

1631: The first French newspaper, the Gazette de France was published.

1842: John Francis attempted to murder Queen Victoria as she drove down Constitution Hill in London with Prince Albert.

1942: A total of 1,000 British bombers launched a 90-minute attack on Cologne, Germany.

1967: The Nigerian Eastern Region declared independence as the Republic of Biafra, sparking a civil war.

1989: In the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The 33-foot high Goddess Of Democracy statue was unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.

2012: Former Liberian president Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison for his role in atrocities committed during the Sierra Leone Civil War.

2013: Nigeria passed a law banning same-sex marriage.

BORN...

1939: Tim Waterstone – British bookseller.

1944: Lenny Davidson – English guitarist with The Dave Clark Five.

1961: Harry Enfield – English actor, screenwriter, and director.

1964: Wynonna Judd – American singer-songwriter and guitarist with The Judds.

DIED...

1593: Christopher Marlowe – English poet and playwright.

1640: Peter Paul Rubens – Flemish painter. 1778: Voltaire – French philosopher and author.

1960: Boris Pasternak – Russian poet and author, Nobel Prize laureate.

1967: Claude Rains – English-American actor.

1967: Georg Wilhelm Pabst – Austrian director, producer, and screenwriter.

1971: Marcel Dupré – French organist and composer.

1994: Ezra Taft Benson – American religious leader, 13th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

2003: Mickie Most – English singer and producer, founded Rak Records.