It happened on August 6
1623 – Anne Hathaway, wife of William Shakespeare, died, aged 67-68.
1914 – World War I: Serbia declares war on Germany; Austria declares war on Russia;
1962 – Jamaica becomes independent from the United Kingdom;
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Hide Ad1881 – Alexander Fleming, the pharmacologist who discovered penicillin, was born. He died in 1955, aged 73;
1911 – Actress Lucille Ball was born. She died in 1989, aged 77;
1945 – The US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killed 80,000 people. Another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the blast;
1965 – The Beatles released their fifth album, Help!, featuring tracks such as Ticket to Ride and Yesterday;
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Hide Ad1974 – ABBA scored their first US top 10 hit when Waterloo went to number six;
1978 – Pope Paul VI died, aged 80;
1991 – Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet;
1997 – Actor Robert Mitchum is born. He died in 1997, aged 79;
2005 – Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook died, aged 59;
2011 – A march in protest of the death of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, London, ends in a riot, sparking off a wave of rioting throughout the country over the following four nights;
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Hide Ad2012 – At the London 2012 Olympic Games, Britain’s Jason Kenny won gold in cycling’s men’s sprint, while Scott Brash, Peter Charles, Ben Maher and Nick Skelton won gold for Britain in the equestrian team jumping competition.
Happy birthday
EastEnders star Dame Barbara Windsor, 79 today;
Spice Girls star Geri Halliwell, 44 today;
Australian actress Melissa George, star of Home and Away and Mulholland Drive, 40 today;
Former Nottingham Forest defender Danny Collins, 36 today;
Football star Robin van Persie, 33 today.