1683: William Penn, the Englishman who founded Pennsylvania, signed a peace treaty with the American Indians on this day.

AD 79: Roman Emperor Vespasian died. The son of a tax collector, he distinguished himself as a commander when Claudius invaded Britain.

1868: The typewriter was patented. STRANGE BUT TRUE An Iranian farmer could adjust his body temperature and did not feel extremes of heat and cold. The 67-year-old slept naked in the snow, wore summer clothes in sub-zero temperatures and thought nothing of walking and praying in the blazing sun.

Three men were jailed for 30 months in Italy after they conned an elderly couple to hand over £220,000 to buy uranium to feed an "extra-terrestrial doctor" who, they claimed, would cure them of their ills.

Two South American medicine men were credited with breaking a five-month drought in Boa Vista with their half-hour ritual. Rain began less than two hours after they had finished and the following day the airport was forced to close because it was so wet.

They say it never strikes in the same place twice but Rolla Primarda was killed by lightning while standing on the same spot upon which his father, (20 years earlier) and his grandfather (50 years before that), had been killed in an identical fashion. QUOTE ME ON THAT "British ferries have stopped carrying live animals to the continent. This is making it very difficult for English fans to get to away matches." -- Comedienne Jo Brand.