On this day: Tiger Woods won US Amateur Championship

1647: The General Assembly approved the Westminster Confession of Faith.

1776: The British defeated the Americans at the Battle of Long Island (also known as the Battle of Brooklyn).

1813: Napoleon defeated the combined forces of Austrian, Russia and Prussia at the Battle of Dresden.

1859: The world’s first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin Drake.

1883: Krakatoa, a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, erupted with thousands killed by the resulting tidal waves.

1916: Italy declared war on Germany.

1922: Paavo Nurmi of Finland set a new world record time of 8:28.6 for the 3,000 metres.

1932: 200,000 English textile workers went on strike.

1939: The world’s first jet-propelled aeroplane, the Heinkel 178, made its first flight in Germany.

1945: American troops began landing in Japan at end of Second World War.

1944: 200 Halifax bombers attacked oil installations in Hamburg, Germany.

1953: The movie Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck was released.

1955: The first edition of the Guinness Book Of Records was published.

1958: USSR launched Sputnik 3 with two dogs aboard.

1960: Britain’s Anita Lonsbrough swam a new world record time of 2:49.5 for the 200 metres at the Olympic Games in Rome.

1962: Mariner 2, the first space probe to fly by Venus, was launched.

1966: Francis Chichester left Plymouth in Gipsy Moth IV on his single-handed voyage around the world.

1976: Trans-sexual tennis player Renee Richards was barred from competing at the US Open.

1784: James Tytler, from Forfar – editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica – became the first person in Britain to fly in a hot-air ballon when he rose 350 feet and travelled half a mile from Holyrood Park, Edinburgh.

1979: Earl Mountbatten was murdered by members of the IRA, in a fishing boat explosion off Mullaghmore, County Sligo.

1986: Twelve black people were shot dead by police in Soweto, and a town councillor was hacked to death in the worst South African riots in more than a year.

1990: BBC Radio Five, Britain’s first new national radio station for 23 years, began broadcasting.

1991: Moldova declared independence from USSR.

1995: The International Rugby Union Board, meeting in Paris, ended 125 years of amateur rugby and sanctioned payment to players and officials at all levels.

1995: Golfer Tiger Woods won the US Amateur Championship.

2001: Anjelina Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at their headquarters in Geneva.

2001: Mars made its closest approach to earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing as a distance of 34,646,418 miles.

2007: The skeletons of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Anastasia were found near Yekaterinburg, Russia.

2014: Medical charity Médecin Sans Frontières called the international response to the Ebola virus “irresponsible” and “slow and derisory”.

BIRTHDAYS

Siobhan Redmond, Glasgow-born actress, 56; John Lloyd, tennis player and broadcaster, 61; Peter Ebdon, snooker player, 45; Archibald Montgomerie, 18th Earl of Eglinton, 6th Earl of Winton, Hereditary Sheriff of Renfrewshire, 76; Lady Antonia Fraser DBE, writer, broadcaster, historian, 83; Herbie Hide, boxer, 44; Sir Michael Holroyd CBE, biographer, 80; Jeanette Winterson OBE, writer, 56; Aaron Paul, actor, 36; Tom Ford, fashion designer, film director, 54; Barbara Bach, actress, 68; Bernhard Langer, golfer, 58; Denise Lewis OBE, Olympic gold medal-winning athlete, 43; Carlos Moya, former world No 1 tennis player, 39; Glen Matlock, musician (Sex Pistols), 59.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 551BC Confucius, Chinese philosopher; 1877 Charles Rolls, motor manufacturer and aviation pioneer; 1882 Sam Goldwyn, film producer; 1890 Man Ray, photographer, painter and film-maker; 1899 CS Forester, novelist; 1908 Sir Donald Bradman, cricketer; 1908 Lyndon B Johnson, 36th US president; 1925 Viscount Rothermere, newspaper proprietor.

Deaths: 827 Pope Eugene II; 1576 Titian, painter; 1590 Pope Sixtus V; 1879 Rowland Hill, teacher and inventor who introduced the postage stamp; 1919 Louis Botha, South African Boer general and first prime minister of the Union; 1965 Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret), architect; 1967 Brian Epstein, Beatles manager; 1975 Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; 1995 Carl Giles, cartoonist.