A look back at events in history on July 2 with Mike Badham

1556: French astrologer Nostradamus died today, as he had predicted.

1644: Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army won the battle of Marston Moor. The opposing Cavaliers lost with 4,000 dead.

1834: Harley Street quack John Long died at 37 from TB. He had made a fortune from his patent TB medicine, but refused to take it himself.

1921: Jack Dempsey beat Frenchman Georges Carpentier in the first-ever heavyweight fight broadcast on radio. The crowd of 93,000 included some of the top American celebrities and the fight was the first one to feature a million-dollar gate. 1931: Peter Kurten, 47, the monster of Dusseldorf was executed. Kurten, who resembled top Nazi Heinrich Himmler, had killed at least eight women and children. As a child he had tortured animals and drunk their blood. The German film M was based on his career. It made a star of Hungarian actor Peter Lorre.

1937: American aviator Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific on a round-the-world flight.

1940: German bombers carried out their first daylight raid on Britain.

1941: Noel Coward's comedy Blithe Spirit premiered in the West End.

1943: With so many men away in the forces, women's pay in Britain had increased 80 per cent since before the war.

1961: Ernest Hemingway shot himself. His writing career was in the doldrums and he had been in an asylum under treatment for depression. His father had also shot himself.

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