MIke Badham's look at events in history on August 7...

480BC: A handful of Spartans smartened themselves up ready for death and gained immortal fame by holding up a Persian army at the Pass of Thermopylae.

1821: Queen Caroline died. Her husband George IV couldn't stand the sight of her, and even locked her out of his coronation ceremony. He much preferred Mrs Fitzherbert, and even went through a form of marriage with her. But she couldn't be queen because her blood wasn't blue. Or something like that.

1876: Famous spy Mata Hari was born. Although an exotic dancer said to be a Far Eastern princess, she was actually Dutch. Shot as a spy in 1916 by the French, she may have been guilty of nothing more than being the kept woman of an army officer. The 1932 film of her life is worth catching on TV, if only to see Greta Garbo trying to dance while concealing her big feet from the camera.

1888: Theo van Kannel patented the revolving door in Philadelphia.

1903: Anthropologist Louis Leakey was born. In 1960 he found the oldest human skeleton then discovered, in Kenya.

1927: The bridge across Niagara Falls, linked the USA with Canada was officially opened.

1954: Dr Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile.

1974: French tightrope walker Philippe Petit sneaked onto the roof of the twin-tower World Trade Center in New York. He fired a rope by crossbow and walked across the gap.

1982: A man's body was illegally exhumed by his relatives in San Salvador. He had won a $40,000 lottery prize but the ticket was missing. It was never found.

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