This Day in History - 7th September

1548 Catherine Parr, 6th wife of Henry VIII, died in childbirth.

1571 Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, was arrested for his role in the Ridolfi plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. He was executed for treason in 1572 and is buried within the walls of the Tower of London.

1665 The death of George Viccars, the first plague victim to die in the village of Eyam in Derbyshire. The plague raged for 14 months. Out of a population of 350 people, only 80 survived.

1735 The birth of Thomas Coutts, son of a wealthy Scottish merchant. He and his brother James founded a banking house in London.

1838 Grace Darling and her father rescued the crew of the Forfarshire, a steamer wrecked off the Northumberland coast, close to the Longstone Lighthouse. She became a national heroine.

1895 The first game of what would become known as rugby league football, was played in England, starting the 1895–96 Northern Rugby Football Union season.

1907 The Lusitania set sail from Liverpool for New York on her maiden voyage. She set a record, crossing the Atlantic in five days at an average speed of 23 knots.

1917 The birth of Group Captain (Geoffrey) Leonard Cheshire, British airman. He was awarded the Victoria Cross during the Second World War and he and his wife Sue Ryder founded the Cheshire Foundation Home for the Incurably Sick in 1948.

1929 Britain won the prestigious Schneider Trophy for air speed. The winner was Flying Officer Waghorn.

1931 King George V announced he would be taking a £50,000 a year pay cut while the economic crisis continued.

1940 Germany began regular bombing of London - commonly known as 'The Blitz'. The bombing continued nightly until 2nd November.

1943 World War II. Italy surrendered to the Allies.

1973 Jackie Stewart became world champion racing driver for the third consecutive year.

1978 Keith Moon, drummer with 'The Who', died of a drugs overdose.

1978 While walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a Bulgarian secret police agent using a ricin pellet fired from a specially-designed umbrella.

1984 Three more people died in the food poisoning epidemic at hospitals in Yorkshire, bringing the total number of deaths to 22.

2001 The Government suffered a shock legal defeat predicted to result in the release of hundreds of asylum seekers from an immigration centre.

2009 Sir Terry Wogan announced that he was to step down as presenter of BBC Radio 2's breakfast show. The veteran broadcaster first hosted the breakfast show in 1972, returning to the role in 1993. Wake Up to Wogan was the UK's most popular breakfast radio show with 7.93 million listeners each week.

2013 New Yorker Marin Alsop become the first woman to lead the Last Night of the Proms in its 118-year history.

2019 One of the British Army's oldest regiments (41st (Welch) Regiment of Foot) will celebrate its 300th anniversary with an event at Cardiff Castle. The regiment continued in service until 1881, when it was amalgamated into The Welsh Regiment. Raised in March 1719 by Edmund Fielding, it drew its troops from independent companies of invalids - those otherwise considered too ill, old or injured for active service. He also recruited Chelsea out-pensioners, men who received a pension from the Royal Hospital Chelsea, but lived in their own homes.