A look back at events in history on October 22 with Mike Badham

2136BC: The first recorded solar eclipse happened, in China. The peasants thought a dragon was eating the sun, so they made as much noise as they could - and frightened it away.

1707: The British Admiral Shovell ordered one of his sailors to be hanged for being impertinent. The reason: the tar had warned him of the nearby Scilly Island rocks. As the man was strung up, he quoted the Bible, and moments later the ship struck the rocks. Shovell was washed up, but murdered by a local for his jewellery.

1797: Andre Garnerin made the first parachute jump, from a balloon 2,000ft above Paris. 1811: Handsome Hungarian composer Franz Liszt was born. Noted for long hair and love affairs, he was a brilliant pianist, and played all over Europe.

1773: Captain James Cook received the gift of a giant tortoise in the South Seas. The animal finally died nearly 200 years later in 1962.

1844: Actress Sarah Bernhardtwas born. Said to have had 1,000 lovers, she also found time to write and paint. She slept in a coffin and went on acting into old age, even though she had a wooden leg.

1934: Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd was shot in an Oihio field by the FBI. A former Oklahoma farm boy, he got tired of hard work and took to robbing banks, shooting anyone who got in the way.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.