On this day

In 1944 representatives from the UK, the US and the Soviet Union took the first step, with the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, that led to the establishment of the United Nations; in 1953 an 83,235ft-altitude record was set in a Douglas Skyrocket research aircraft by the US Marine Corps pilot Major Marion E Carl. The Second World War fighter ace died in 1998, aged 82, when he was murdered by an armed home intruder; in 1959 Hawaii became the 50th US state, having become a US territory in 1898; in 1961 Francisco Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery, London — the first theft from the gallery. Four years later, Kempton Bunton, a retired bus driver, claimed he had taken the painting as a protest against the BBC licence fee, but in 1969 his son confessed to the theft. In the 1962 film Dr No, James Bond pauses to admire the “painting” in the villain’s lair, and the actor Jim Broadbent played the role of Benton in The Duke (2022); in 1972 Don Cameron and Mark Yarry were the first to cross the Alps by hot-air balloon. Among Bristol-based Cameron Balloons products are extreme balloons and special-shaped balloons.