A look back at events through history on September 3 with Mike Badham

1189: Richard the Lionheart was crowned in Westminster Abbey. During the ceremony, a Jewish moneylender entered the building with a gift for the king, his best customer. He was immediately felled by henchmen for daring to defile a Christian church, although some might have claimed that the place was being defiled enough by Richard and his boyfriends. The incident started a riot in the streets which resulted in hundreds of Jews being killed.

1658: Oliver Cromwell, the English dictator, died. He was embalmed and buried in Westminster Abbey, only to be dug up two years later when Parliament invited Charles II to return. The body was beheaded and the head stuck on a spike. Later it was blown down and a sentry picked it up. Not until 1960 was the head reburied in secret.

1783: Britain signed a treaty in Paris, recognising United States independence. 1900: The children's book Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum was published. He went on to write 13 other Oz books.

1913: Actor Alan Ladd was born in Arkansas. Only 5ft 6in tall, he had to stand on a box during love scenes. He killed himself in 1964 when they started offering him non-starring roles.

1916: The first Zeppelin was shot down over Britain, in Hertfordshire. Coincidentally, the US Navy airship Shenandoah broke up in flight this day in 1925.

1935: Sir Malcolm Campbell smashed the world land speed record at 301mph in Bluebird on Bonneville salt flats, Utah.

1939: Britain declared war on Germany at 11am. After premier Chamberlain betrayed the Czechs at the 1938 Munich meeting, Hitler thought it unlikely he would go to war over Poland, which Britain was in no position to help. He was wrong.

1976: Spacecraft Viking landed on Mars and started to send pictures back to Earth.

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