On this day in conspiracies

Wallace's trial opens at the Liverpool Assizes before Mr Justice Wright. The evidence is entirely circumstantial: no weapon, no eyewitness, no blood found on Wallace, and a tight timetable that the defence argues leaves him no realistic window to kill, clean up, and depart. The judge's summing-up is widely read as favouring acquittal.

About two hours later, shortly after midnight, 15-year-old John Baxter is walking home along Miller Hill Road, roughly a mile away, when he sees a short figure approach, then retreat and stop in a wooded gully, its feet braced against a rock and its large head silhouetted against the trees. He too flees and later produces a drawing consistent with Bartlett's, though the two accounts are given separately.

Kanak militants linked to the pro-independence FLNKS attack the gendarmerie at Fayaoué on Ouvéa, killing four gendarmes and taking 27 hostages. Most captives are moved to a cave in dense bush near the northern village of Gossanah. The attack falls two days before the first round of the French presidential election.

A reconstituted National Security Committee, now under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, meets again and states that it found no evidence of any foreign conspiracy behind Khan's removal.

Gunmen kill 26 civilians in an attack at Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blames Pakistan-based militants; Pakistan denies involvement. The attack sets the stage for the sharpest India-Pakistan military crisis in years.