This Day in History - 18th June

1583The first Life Insurance policy was sold in London, and when a claim was eventually made, it was disputed.

1633Charles I was crowned King of Scotland, at Holyrood, Edinburgh.

1767The navigator Samuel Wallis sighted Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.

1769The birth of Viscount Castlereagh, 2nd Marquis of Londonderry, a British statesman born in Ireland who, as foreign secretary to Lord Liverpool, organized the coalition against Napoleon.

1815The Battle of Waterloo:- Napoleon Bonaparte suffered defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington, bringing an end to the Napoleonic era of European history. 

1817Waterloo Bridge across the River Thames was opened. Originally it was called Strand Bridge but was re-named in honour of the British victory at Waterloo in 1815.

1822London unveiled its first nude statue - a bronze figure of Achilles in Hyde Park by sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott. The statue later acquired a discreet fig leaf.

1858Charles Darwin received a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that included almost identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin's own, prompting Darwin to publish his theory.

1928 Amelia Earhart, along with pilot Wilmer Stultz and copilot/mechanic Louis Gordon flew from Newfoundland (17th June) landing at Pwll near Burry Port, South Wales on 18th June, thus becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

1945William Joyce (known as Lord Haw-Haw) was charged with treason for his pro-German propaganda broadcasting during World War II, using the English language radio programme Germany Calling. He was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 3rd January 1946.

1963Henry Cooper knocked Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) to the floor in round four at Wembley Stadium, London, but by the sixth, with Cooper badly cut, the fight was stopped and Clay remained world heavyweight boxing champion.

1965The government announced it would introduce a blood alcohol limit for drivers, with penalties for those caught above it.

1972A flight from London Heathrow to Brussels crashed minutes after take-off killing all 118 people on board.

1975The first North Sea Oil was pumped ashore in Britain.

1984The 'Battle of Orgreave'. It was the most violent day of the year-long miners' strike and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history. The National Union of Mineworkers deployed 5,000 pickets from across the UK to stop lorry loads of coke leaving Orgreave coking plant for the British Steel Corporation's works in Scunthorpe. The number of police officers (6,000 from 18 different forces) was unprecedented in an industrial dispute, as was the use of dogs, horses and riot gear. 71 pickets were charged with riot and 24 with violent disorder. The trials collapsed when the evidence given by the police was deemed 'unreliable'. News footage of the confrontation was edited and broadcast out of chronological sequence, showing pickets throwing stones at the police and the police subsequently carrying out a mounted charge, when the reverse was true.

2000Jamie Andrew, aged 30 years, became the first quadruple amputee to scale Ben Nevis when he reached the snow-covered peak after a climb of 6½ hours. He had lost his hands and feet from severe frostbite after being stranded in the Alps in a fierce blizzard in 1999.

2012It was announced that 55 year old Mick Philpott and his wife Mairead (31) whose six children were killed in a house fire in Allenton, Derby on 11th May would go on trial for their murder.

2016 Tim Peake, the first English ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut and the seventh UK-born person in space, returned to earth after his 186 day Principia mission working on the International Space Station.