This Day in History - 2nd October

1452 King Richard III was born. He was killed at the Battle of Bosworth (Leicestershire) where there is a memorial to him.

1900 Keir Hardy became the Labour Party's first Member of Parliament.

1901 The Royal Navy's first submarine, built by Vickers, was launched at Barrow. The company's shipbuilding division is now BAE Systems Submarine Solutions. 

1904 The birth of the author, playwright and literary critic Graham Greene. His most notable works were Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair.

1909 The first rugby football match was played at Twickenham, between Harlequins and Richmond.

1925 London's first red buses with roofed-in upper decks went into service, but they had been in use in Widnes, Cheshire, since 1909.

1925 John Logie Baird (Scottish born engineer born at Helensburgh) performed the first test of a working television system. Although Baird's electromechanical system was eventually displaced by purely electronic systems, his early successes earned him a prominent place in television's invention.

1942 The British cruiser Curacao sank with the loss of 338 lives, after colliding with the liner Queen Mary off the coast of Donegal.

1950 Legal Aid was introduced in Britain

1951 The birth of Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, known by his stage name Sting. Prior to starting his solo singing career, he was the principal songwriter, lead singer and bass player for the rock band The Police.

1953 A photograph of William Pettit, wanted for murder, was shown on BBC TV at the request of the police - the first time in Britain that television was used to help find a wanted man.

1968 A woman gave birth to six babies in what was hailed as the first recorded case of live sextuplets in Britain.

1983 Neil Kinnock was elected leader of Britain's Labour Party, with Roy Hattersley joining him as deputy.

1991 Ron Chassidy (who had been jailed for not paying his poll tax) was released after a 'whip-round' at his local pub so that he could play in a dominoes match!

1996 Mandy Allwood lost the last five of the octuplets she had been expecting after a 19 week pregnancy. She had refused 'selective reduction' and her case provoked a media storm in Britain.

2001 Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the Taliban that it would be the target of military action unless it gave up Osama bin Laden.

2012 The decision to award the West Coast Main Line rail franchise to FirstGroup was scrapped because of 'significant technical flaws' in the way the risks for each bid were calculated. FirstGroup, which beat current operator Virgin Trains to win the 13-year deal, said it had submitted its bid correctly and was disappointed at the news.