On this day

In 1305 the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace was executed by Edward I of England. He was hanged, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered; in 1617 the first one-way streets were established in London; in 1939 the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and his Nazi counterpart Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression pact; in 2017 Wayne Rooney announced his retirement from the England football team after 14 years in the side. Two years earlier, Rooney broke England’s goalscoring record, scoring his 50th goal. He went on to score 53 times in 119 internationals; in 2023 Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, was on the passenger list of an aircraft that crashed in central Russia, killing all aboard. Prigozhin, 62, known as “Putin’s chef”, led an armed rebellion against Moscow on June 23, 2023, the most serious challenge since President Putin took power in 2000.