Happened this day.

1666: The Great Fire of London started at Thomas Farynor's bakers shop in Pudding Lane.

1878: In Boston, Massachusetts, Emma Nutt became the world's first female telephone operator.

1886: The Severn Tunnel opened for goods traffic.

1920: The state of Lebanon was created by the French.

1928: Albania was declared a kingdom, with Zog I as king.

1945: Japan officially surrendered to the Allied Forces in World War II.

1951: Britain's first supermarket opened in Earl's Court, London. 1976: It was announced that 750,000 homes in Yorkshire were to have their mains water supply replaced by standpipes, as a result of the searing summer. 1995: French commandos seized two Greenpeace ships. They had entered the exclusion zone around the nuclear test site at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia.

1998: Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said that violence was a 'thing of the past' for his party.

1999: Two 17-year-olds became the first juveniles in Britain to have orders served against them under new 'neighbours from hell' legislation.

2003: A headmistress from south-east London who stole pounds 500,000 from her school was jailed for five years. Colleen McCabe spent the money on luxury holidays, jewellery and pounds 7,000 of it on shoes.

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