8 giugno

The Chronicle says fiery dragons were seen flying in the air that year, and then heathen men destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne with looting and slaughter. Alcuin, writing from Charlemagne’s court, saw the church of St Cuthbert “spattered with the blood of the priests of God”. The Chronicle’s…

Philip II had come in April. With Richard’s men and siege engines the walls were battered day after day, and the garrison gave up five weeks later.

Edward of Woodstock died at Westminster at 45, after years of the illness he had brought home from Spain. His father followed him on 21 June 1377, and the crown passed to the prince’s son, Richard II, aged ten.

After weeks of trying to hand in his resignation, Wolfgang was thrown out of the antechamber by the Archbishop’s steward, Count Arco. He wrote to his father the next day that Arco had shown him the door and given him “a kick on the behind”.

Unpaid Konzertmeister at thirteen, paid from 1772 at 150 florins a year under the new Archbishop, Hieronymus Colloredo. He resigned in 1777 to look for a better post, came back in 1779 as court organist at 450 florins, and was thrown out in 1781. In between he wrote masses, serenades, symphonies…

It limited women and young people in textile mills to ten hours a day, the goal factory reformers had campaigned for since the 1830s. Since mills could not run without them, it shortened the day for many men too.

Virginia’s convention voted to leave on 17 April, then Arkansas (6 May), North Carolina (20 May) and Tennessee, whose voters confirmed it on 8 June. The border slave states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri stayed in the Union, some of them under federal guns.

Climbing up in support, Noel Odell saw the mist clear at 12.50: “M & I on ridge nearing base of final pyramide”. A black dot moved up a snow step, a second followed, and the cloud closed again. Odell first said they were at the Second Step, later that he could not be sure which. It is the last…

All four British nations qualified, the only time they have. France’s Just Fontaine scored 13 goals in six matches, a record for one tournament that still stands.

On a mid-Pacific atoll Nixon announced the first withdrawal: 25,000 men. American strength had just peaked at about 543,000 in April. South Vietnam’s army would be enlarged and re-armed to take over the war.

American troops came home in stages while South Vietnam’s forces grew past a million men and the bombing grew heavier. The war widened into Cambodia and Laos even as it was being handed over. More than 20,000 Americans died in these years.

The opening match. The holders lost to François Omam-Biyik’s header, and Cameroon won it with nine men. They went on to be the first African team in a quarter-final.

The meanest World Cup: 2.21 goals a match, the lowest ever. It led to the back-pass rule in 1992. Roger Milla, 38, scored four goals for Cameroon and danced at the corner flag after each.

Declared across the whole country four days before the tenth anniversary of Soweto, and renewed every year. Tens of thousands were held without trial, many of them children. In February 1988 the UDF and more than a dozen other organisations were barred from all political activity.