This Day in History - 13th January

1691 The death of George Fox, English founder of the religious group of the Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. He was interred in the Nonconformists' burying ground at Bunhill Fields in London, in the presence of thousands of mourners.

1832 The death of Thomas Lord, English professional cricketer and founder of Lord's Cricket Ground in 1787. He is buried in the churchyard of St. John's Church at West Meon in Hampshire.

1842 Dr. William Brydon, an assistant surgeon in the British East India Company Army during the First Anglo-Afghan War is famous for being the only member of an army of 4,500 men and 12,000 civilians to survive a massacre after the army's long retreat from Kabul. He safely reached the British sentry post at Jalalabad, Afghanistan 'On This Day'. The episode was made the subject of a famous painting by the Victorian artist Lady Butler, who portrayed an exhausted Dr. Brydon approaching the gates of the Jalalabad fort perched on his dying horse. The painting is titled Remnants of an Army.

1893 The birth of a new political party in Britain when James Keir Hardie and others formed the Independent Labour Party. It was an action that worried the Liberals, who were afraid that the new party might, at some point in the future, win the working-class votes that they traditionally received. The last Independent Labour Party MP joined the Labour Party itself in 1948.

1908 Henry Farman, born in Paris and the son of an English newspaper correspondent, won the Deutsch-Archdeacon prize for the first heavier than air aircraft flight to cover a circuit of at least 1 Km. On 29th March he became the first to take passenger into the air, and on 30th October, Farman went on to make the first cross-country flight in Europe, flying from Châlons to Rheims (a distance of 27 kilometres in 20 minutes).

1926 The birth of Michael Bond, English children’s writer and creator of ‘Paddington Bear’. Whilst working as a BBC television cameraman Bond had his first book published, 'A Bear Called Paddington'. It was the start of Bond's most famous series of books, telling the tales of a bear from 'Darkest Peru', whose Aunt Lucy sent him to England, carrying a jar of marmalade. He also wrote the children's books about the adventures of a guinea pig named Olga da Polga, as well as the animated BBC TV series The Herbs.

1958 In Scotland, the serial killer Peter Manuel was arrested after a series of attacks over a two year period that left nine people dead, although he is suspected of having killed as many as eighteen. Manuel was hanged in Barlinnie prison on 11th July 1958. He was one of the last prisoners to die on the Barlinnie gallows.

1964 Capital Records grudgingly released the first Beatles record, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’, in the US to, as they said 'see how it goes’. It became their fastest selling single ever. Within only three weeks, a million copies had been sold.

1993 American, British and French planes bombed a series of targets over southern Iraq. The action was taken in response to repeated Iraqi breaches of the 'no fly zone' implemented after the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

1995 In response to British animal rights protesters, the British Meat and Livestock Commission announced that calves exported from Britain to the Netherlands would be housed in spacious group pens rather than be confined in so called veal crates.

2004 Dr. Harold Shipman, who is believed to have killed more than 200 of his patients, was found hanged in his prison cell. To date Shipman is the only British doctor to have been proved guilty of murdering his patients, in addition to being one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history.

2017 The death (aged 86) of the photographer and film maker Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, commonly known as Lord Snowdon. He was married to Princess Margaret, the Queen's sister, from 1960 - 1978.