This day in history: 6 Jul

1189: Richard I became King of England on the death of his father, Henry II.

1535: Sir Thomas More was executed for treason.

1553: King Edward VI of England died, to be succeeded - briefly - by his cousin Lady Jane Grey.

1885: Louis Pasteur successfully tested his rabies vaccine on Joseph Meister, a boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog.

1887: David Kalakaua, King of Hawai`i, was forced at gunpoint to sign the "Bayonet Constitution," giving Americans more power in Hawaii while stripping Hawaiian citizens of their rights.

1917: Arabian troops led by Lawrence of Arabia and Auda abu Tayi captured Aqaba from the Turks.

1918: At Villers-Bretonneux, France, Corporal Walter E Brown, 20th (New South Wales) Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, attacked a machine-gun post on his own and with the threat of a grenade, forced the surrender of its twelve defenders. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.

1942: Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the "Secret Annexe" above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.

1943: Lieutenant Commander Bruce A Van Voorhis, commanding Bombing Squadron 102 (VB-102), took off in total darkness to fly a Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberator patrol bomber 700 miles, without escort or support, to attack Japanese installations on Kapingamarangi Island in support of the battles in the Solomons. Despite enemy aircraft and fierce antiaircraft fire, he made six ground-level attacks to demolish the enemy radio station, other installations and antiaircraft guns, and to destroy one fighter plane in the air and three on the water. Caught in their own bomb blast, Van Voorhis and his crew were killed when the aircraft crashed into the lagoon. Van Voorhis was awarded the Medal of Honor; his co-pilot, Lieutenant (jg) H A Oehlert Jr, received the Navy Cross and the remaining members of the crew received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

1944: 168 people - many of them children - were killed and hundreds more injured when the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus big top burned during a performance in Hartford, Connecticut.

1967: Nigerian forces invaded Biafra, beginning a civil war that lasted until 1970.

1974: The radio programme A Prairie Home Companion made its first live broadcast from the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College, in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

In addition to Henry II (1133-1189), More (1478-1535) and Edward VI (1537-1553), Alexander II of Scotland (1198–1249), Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932), Vera Leigh (1903-1944), Diana Rowden MBE (1915-1944), Andrée Borrel (1919-1944), Sonya Olschanezky (1923-1944), Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), Otto Skorzeny (1908-1975), Leonard Franklin Slye (1911–1998) and Buddy Ebsen (1908–2003) died on this date.

And happy birthday to John Paul Jones (1747–1792), Sebastian Cabot (1918–1977), Janet Leigh (1927–2004), Pat Paulsen (1927–1997), Vladimir Ashkenazy (1937-TBD), Burt Ward (1945-TBD) and Sylvester Stallone (1946-TBD).