12 July 1543

Katherine Parr became the sixth consort of Henry VIII when she married the ageing king in the queen’s closet at Hampton Court Palace with 18 people in attendance.

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12 July 1561

In Moscow, Ivan the Terrible presides over the consecration of a new church just outside the Kremlin, known today as St Basil’s.


12 July 1642

As tensions between Charles I and his opponents in parliament escalated, parliament voted to raise an army “for the Safety of the King’s Person, the Defence of both Houses of Parliament, and of those who have obeyed their Orders and Commands…”


12 July 1691

The forces of King William III defeated an army loyal to James II and VII at Aughrim, County Galway. Limerick held until the autumn, but the battle marked the effective suppression of Jacobite military resistance to William.


12 July 1910

A month after becoming the first man to fly non-stop from England to France and back, aviation and automobile pioneer Charles Stewart Rolls became Britain’s first aviation fatality when the Wright biplane he was flying crashed near Bournemouth.

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12 July 1962

At the Marquee Club in Oxford Street, London, a group of young men play their first concert as a rhythm and blues band, calling themselves the ‘Rollin’ Stones’.

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