The state funeral was the first since that of Lyndon B Johnson in 1973. The decision came on the third anniversary of the execution of his co-defendant Timothy McVeigh in 2004 the former US president Ronald Reagan’s state funeral was held at the Washington National Cathedral. The 1995 bombing left 168 people dead and hundreds injured. In 1509 King Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, his brother Arthur’s widow in 1955 at least 80 people were killed after a collision at Le Mans 24-hour race in which flaming debris from one of the cars was thrown into a packed grandstand in 1963 Alabama’s state governor George C Wallace barred the path to James A Hood and Vivian J Malone, two black students who were attempting to enrol at the University of Alabama in 1975 the first oil was pumped ashore from British oilfields in the North Sea, at Sullom Voe in Shetland in 1979 the Oscar-winning actor John Wayne, star of Stagecoach, The Quiet Man and True Grit, died of cancer, aged 72 in 2004 the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols was spared the death penalty.
