What happened this week in history

1783 - The first public executions at Newgate Prison took place.

1854 - Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Charge of the Light Brigade was published.

1868 - William Gladstone became Prime Minister.

1886 - American pioneer of frozen food, Clarence Birdseye, was born in Brooklyn, New York City.

1922 - Gabriel Narutowicz was elected as the first president of Poland.

1936 - A cookery demonstration was televised for the first time by the BBC.

1946 - The Constituent Assembly of India met for the first time to write the Constitution of India.

1960 - The first episode of Coronation Street was screened on ITV.

1961 - The Beatles played their first gig in Southern England, to an audience of 18.

1965 - The Seekers’ The Carnival is Over was at number 1 in the charts.

1969 - US Secretary of State William P Rogers proposed his plan for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt and Jordan accepted it over the objections of the PLO, which led to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.

1971 - The United Arab Emirates joined the United Nations.

1973 - British and Irish authorities signed the Sunningdale Agreement in an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland.

1975 - Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody was at number 1 in the charts.

1990 - Lech Walesa, leader of the once-outlawed Solidarity Labour Movement, was elected President of Poland.

1993 - Footballer and manager Danny Blanchflower died of pneumonia in a Staines nursing home, at the age of 67. Having earned 56 caps, he was hailed as one of his generation’s finest sportsmen. A blue plaque is located at his childhood home in Belfast.

2003 - Britain’s first toll motorway, the M6 Toll Road, opened in the West Midlands.