COPYRIGHT

Published by Times Books

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First edition 2018

© This compilation Times Newspapers Ltd 2018

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My thanks and acknowledgements go to Lily Cox and Robin Ashton at News Syndication and, in particular, at The Times, Ian Brunskill and, at HarperCollins, Gerry Breslin, Jethro Lennox, Karen Midgley, Kerry Ferguson, Sarah Woods and Evelyn Sword.

eBook Edition © October 2018

ISBN 9780008317416

Version: 2018-09-24

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

1 January

2 January

3 January

4 January

5 January

6 January

7 January

8 January

9 January

10 January

11 January

12 January

13 January

14 January

15 January

16 January

17 January

18 January

19 January

20 January

21 January

22 January

23 January

24 January

25 January

26 January

27 January

28 January

29 January

30 January

31 January

1 February

2 February

3 February

4 February

5 February

6 February

7 February

8 February

9 February

10 February

11 February

12 February

13 February

14 February

15 February

16 February

17 February

18 February

19 February

20 February

21 February

22 February

23 February

24 February

25 February

26 February

27 February

28 February

29 February

1 March

2 March

3 March

4 March

5 March

6 March

7 March

8 March

9 March

10 March

11 March

12 March

13 March

14 March

15 March

16 March

17 March

18 March

19 March

20 March

21 March

22 March

23 March

24 March

25 March

26 March

27 March

28 March

29 March

30 March

31 March

1 April

2 April

3 April

4 April

5 April

6 April

7 April

8 April

9 April

10 April

11 April

12 April

13 April

14 April

15 April

16 April

17 April

18 April

19 April

20 April

21 April

22 April

23 April

24 April

25 April

26 April

27 April

28 April

29 April

30 April

1 May

2 May

3 May

4 May

5 May

6 May

7 May

8 May

9 May

10 May

11 May

12 May

13 May

14 May

15 May

16 May

17 May

18 May

19 May

20 May

21 May

22 May

23 May

24 May

25 May

26 May

27 May

28 May

29 May

30 May

31 May

1 June

2 June

3 June

4 June

5 June

6 June

7 June

8 June

9 June

10 June

11 June

12 June

13 June

14 June

15 June

16 June

17 June

18 June

19 June

20 June

21 June

22 June

23 June

24 June

25 June

26 June

27 June

28 June

29 June

30 June

1 July

2 July

3 July

4 July

5 July

6 July

7 July

8 July

9 July

10 July

11 July

12 July

13 July

14 July

15 July

16 July

17 July

18 July

19 July

20 July

21 July

22 July

23 July

24 July

25 July

26 July

27 July

28 July

29 July

30 July

31 July

1 August

2 August

3 August

4 August

5 August

6 August

7 August

8 August

9 August

10 August

11 August

12 August

13 August

14 August

15 August

16 August

17 August

18 August

19 August

20 August

21 August

22 August

23 August

24 August

25 August

26 August

27 August

28 August

29 August

30 August

31 August

1 September

2 September

3 September

4 September

5 September

6 September

7 September

8 September

9 September

10 September

11 September

12 September

13 September

14 September

15 September

16 September

17 September

18 September

19 September

20 September

21 September

22 September

23 September

24 September

25 September

26 September

27 September

28 September

29 September

30 September

1 October

2 October

3 October

4 October

5 October

6 October

7 October

8 October

9 October

10 October

11 October

12 October

13 October

14 October

15 October

16 October

17 October

18 October

19 October

20 October

21 October

22 October

23 October

24 October

25 October

26 October

27 October

28 October

29 October

30 October

31 October

1 November

2 November

3 November

4 November

5 November

6 November

7 November

8 November

9 November

10 November

11 November

12 November

13 November

14 November

15 November

16 November

17 November

18 November

19 November

20 November

21 November

22 November

23 November

24 November

25 November

26 November

27 November

28 November

29 November

30 November

1 December

2 December

3 December

4 December

5 December

6 December

7 December

8 December

9 December

10 December

11 December

12 December

13 December

14 December

15 December

16 December

17 December

18 December

19 December

20 December

21 December

22 December

23 December

24 December

25 December

26 December

27 December

28 December

29 December

30 December

31 December

Date Index

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

In amongst the unchanging, comforting bric-a-brac of the Register section of each edition of The Times nestles the record of anniversaries of events which fall “On This Day”. The feature has the feel of having been there for ever, alongside the royal engagements and what the weather has in store. Yet in fact, in terms of the newspaper’s two centuries and more of history, it is a relatively recent innovation, with this selection compiled from those entries which have appeared during the last decade or so.

They are not meant to represent a complete history of the world. Rather, they are a random, often quirky, frequently diverting list of things you feel better for knowing. That said, the collective mind that put them together seems to have had some idiosyncratic interests, including notable firsts in astronomy, key moments in Britain’s withdrawal from empire, and opera premieres. The broad-minded reader of The Times naturally takes all these in his or her stride. What can the rest of us learn from this midden heap of the past?

Perhaps it is that the past is just that. Rooting about in it disinters things which were once prized but are now of little account. Events which made headlines – “40 skaters drowned in Regent’s Park” – are long forgotten. How quickly things change, one might think (maybe contemplating an entry whilst adding to one’s own midden heap), a thought soon followed by: “Did that happen 20 years ago already?”

And then there are the secret harmonies one fancies hearing in time’s dance music. Can it be just coincidence that Sir Winston Churchill died on the same day of the year (January 24th) as not only his father but also Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of the Churchills’ family seat at Blenheim? That Rolls-Royce should commission its proud emblem Spirit of Ecstasy exactly 60 years to the day before declaring bankruptcy? What unseen force sent King Louis XVI to the guillotine on the anniversary of its inventor having proposed it as a humane method of execution?

Another newspaper – now itself passed into history – once claimed of its contents that “All human life is here”. That may not be precisely true of this selection, but it is good to be reminded of the breadth and diversity of mankind’s achievements. Sometimes one can even be surprised by them: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 21; Sid Vicious rose to fame with the Sex Pistols when a year younger; the first public flushing lavatory for women opened in London as early as 1852.

So, read on and find your own path through the past, be it by lucky dip, joining the dots, using the date index at the back of the book or through dates that mean something to you. Discover something that prompts you to learn more, or to think “I never knew that!”, a fact to share with a friend and make you muse upon all that has gone before us down the ages: a glorious gallimaufry of happenings.

And then turn the page and read the Obituaries.

James Owen

1 JANUARY

1785 The Daily Universal Register was founded. It was renamed The Times on January 1, 1788.

•

1801 the Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland came into force.

•

1901 the Commonwealth of Australia was established, allowing the nation to govern itself.

•

1962 the Beatles were not signed by Decca Records because guitar groups were “on the way out”.

•

1973 Britain entered the Common Market, later named the European Union.

•

1999 the euro was introduced, giving 11 countries a shared currency — the first time since the Roman Empire that much of Europe had had one.

2 JANUARY

17 Roman poet Ovid died, a decade after mysteriously being banished to modern-day Romania by Emperor Augustus.

•

1769 the Royal Academy met for the first time, with Sir Joshua Reynolds as president.

•

1896 Leander Starr Jameson surrendered after his raid failed to provoke an uprising by British workers against the Boers in the Transvaal.

•

1959 the Russians launched the rocket Luna 1 on the first close fly-by mission to the moon.

•

1971 66 football fans were killed in a crush at Ibrox Park, Glasgow.

•

1981 police arrested serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.

3 JANUARY

1521 the Pope excommunicated Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism.

•

1892 JRR Tolkein, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was born.

•

1924 Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.

•

1946 William Joyce (better known as Lord Haw-Haw), broadcaster of Nazi propaganda, hanged.

•

1980 Joy Adamson, wildlife conservationist and author of Born Free, was murdered.

•

1981 Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, the last survivor of Queen Victoria’s 37 grandchildren, died aged 97.

•

1990 Panama’s leader Manuel Noriega surrendered to US forces after ten days under siege in the Vatican Embassy.

4 JANUARY

1642 King Charles I entered Parliament with soldiers in a bid to arrest five MPs, sparking the English Civil War.

•

1643 Sir Isaac Newton, physicist and mathematician, was born.

•

1877 Cornelius Vanderbilt, financier and transport magnate whose steamship service flourished with the 1849 Gold Rush, died.

•

1948 after more than 100 years of British rule, Burma became an independent republic.

•

1951 Chinese Communist and North Korean troops captured Seoul during the Korean War.

•

1967 world speed record breaker Donald Campbell was killed in Bluebird on Coniston Water, Cumbria, during a record attempt.

5 JANUARY

1066 Edward the Confessor, King of England since 1042, died.

•

1592 Shah Jahan, Mogul emperor of India, who ordered the building of the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife, was born.

•

1855 King Camp Gillette, inventor of his eponymous safety razor, was born in Wisconsin.

•

1941 Amy Johnson, record-breaking aviator, died after her aircraft crashed in the Thames estuary.

•

1968 Alexander Dubcek became First Secretary of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party, ushering in the Prague Spring.

•

1971 international one-day cricket was born when England played Australia in Melbourne, the Test match having been abandoned due to rain.

6 JANUARY

1066 Harold Godwinson was crowned King of England in succession to Edward the Confessor, prompting the Normans to invade.

•

1412 St Joan of Arc, French heroine, was born into a peasant family at Domrémy, (later called Domrémy-la-Pucelle) in the Vosges.

•

1681 the first recorded boxing match in the UK was arranged by the Duke of Albemarle between his butler and his butcher.

•

1838 in New Jersey, Samuel Morse gave the first public demonstration of his electric telegraph system.

•

1852 Louis Braille, who invented a reading and writing system for blind people, died in Paris.

7 JANUARY

1714 a patent was granted to the English engineer Henry Mill for his typewriter design.

•

1785 Blanchard and Jeffries made the first hot-air balloon crossing of the Channel.

•

1789 the first nationwide election was held in America, with George Washington elected as president.

•

1827 Sandford Fleming, Scottish engineer who divided the world into time zones, was born.

•

1955 Marian Anderson was placed under contract by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the first African-American to be so engaged.

•

1999 the impeachment trial of President Clinton began in Washington.

8 JANUARY

1337 Giotto, painter and architect, died in Florence.

•

1642 Galileo Galilei, mathematician and astronomer, died in Arcetri, Tuscany.

•

1742 Philip Astley, founder of Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre, a forerunner of the modern circus, was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

•

1824 Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White, was born.

•

1897 Dennis Wheatley, historical novelist and thriller writer (The Devil Rides Out), was born.

•

1935 Elvis Presley, singer, was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.

•

1940 wartime rationing of butter, bacon and sugar began in the UK.

•

1959 Charles de Gaulle was proclaimed president of the French Republic.

9 JANUARY

1799 income tax was introduced by prime minister William Pitt the Younger to raise funds for the Napoleonic Wars.

•

1806 Horatio Nelson was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral.

•

1816 Sir Humphry Davy’s safety lamp was first used in a mine.

•

1873 Napoleon III, French Emperor, died in exile in England.

•

1913 Richard Nixon, president of the United States 1969–74, was born in Yorba Linda, California.

•

1960 work began on the Aswan High Dam in Egypt and would take ten years to complete.

•

1972 the liner Queen Elizabeth was destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbour.

10 JANUARY

1840 the Penny Post was introduced.

•

1862 Samuel Colt, firearms manufacturer, died as one of America’s wealthiest men.

•

1863 the Metropolitan Railway — ancestor of the London Underground — opened between Paddington and Farringdon Street.

•

1870 the Standard Oil Company, which was to be vastly enriched by the advent of the motor car, founded by William and John D Rockefeller.

•

1917 William Cody (Buffalo Bill), US army scout, and later showman who killed 4,280 buffalo in eight months to feed railroad workers, died.

•

1946 the inaugural session of the UN general assembly opened in London.

•

1985 Clive Sinclair launched the C5 electric car at £399.

11 JANUARY

1753 Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection was the foundation of the British Museum, died at Chelsea.

•

1891 Georges Haussmann, architect who planned much of modern Paris, died.

•

1922 insulin first used successfully in the treatment of diabetes.

•

1928 Thomas Hardy, author of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, died at Dorchester, Dorset.

•

1946 King Zog of Albania was dethroned.

•

1969 Richmal Crompton, author of Just William, died.

•

1973 the Open University awarded its first degrees.

•

1981 a three-man British team, led by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, completed the longest and fastest crossing of Antarctica after 75 days and 2,500 miles.

12 JANUARY

1628 Charles Perrault, author of fairytales (Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty), was born in Paris.

•

1856 John Singer Sargent, portrait painter, was born in Florence.

•

1879 the British declared war on the Zulu leader Cetewayo.

•

1948 the London Co-op opened the first supermarket in the capital at Manor Park.

•

1950 64 submariners and dockyard workers were killed when the tanker Divina struck Truculent on the Thames.

•

1970 a Boeing 747 landed at Heathrow after its first flight from New York.

•

1976 Agatha Christie, crime novelist, died aged 85.

•

2010 316,000 people died in an earthquake in Haiti.

13 JANUARY

1893 the Independent Labour Party formed by Keir Hardie to promote working-class representation.

•

1906 Aleksandr Popov, who used radio waves to transmit a message in 1896, independently of Guglielmo Marconi, died in St Petersburg.

•

1929 Wyatt Earp, gambler and law officer involved in the gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881, died.

•

1941 James Joyce, novelist, died in Zurich aged 58.

•

1978 Nasa selected its first women astronauts.

•

1989 the Friday the 13th virus struck at IBM-compatible computers.

•

2004 Harold Shipman, who killed more than 250 people, hanged himself in prison.

14 JANUARY

1874 Johann Philipp Reis, whose telephone was not a commercial success, died.

•

1878 the first demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell’s newly invented telephone given to Queen Victoria on the Isle of Wight.

•

1898 Rev Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, died.

•

1957 Humphrey Bogart, actor (Casablanca), died of cancer aged 57.

•

1977 Anthony Eden, prime minister 1955–57, died.

•

1983 Metropolitan Police officers shot and gravely injured film editor Stephen Waldorf, mistakenly believing him to be an escaped convict.

•

1989 Muslims in Bradford ritually burnt a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

15 JANUARY

1559 Elizabeth I crowned Queen of England.

•

1759 the British Museum opened at Montague House, London.

•

1815 Emma, Lady Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson, died in poverty at Calais.

•

1867 40 skaters drowned when the ice broke on Regent’s Park lake, London.

•

1970 the Nigeria-Biafra war concluded with Biafra’s surrender after the deaths of more than one million people.

•

1973 President Nixon halted US bombing in North Vietnam after peace talks in Paris.

•

2001 the Wikipedia website went online.

•

2009 US Airways Flight 1549 safely crash-landed in the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.

16 JANUARY

1604 the Hampton Court Conference ended, in which King James I authorised a new translation of the Bible.

•

1920 prohibition of the sale of alcohol began in America.

•

1944 General Dwight D Eisenhower arrived in England as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe.

•

1969 21-year-old student Jan Palach set fire to himself in Prague in protest at the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

•

1970 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi became the leader of Libya, following a coup against King Idris.

•

1979 the Shah of Iran was forced into exile in Egypt.

17 JANUARY

1773 Captain Cook’s Resolution crossed the Antarctic Circle, the first ship to do so.

•

1874 conjoined Thai-American brothers Chang and Eng Bunker, regarded as the original Siamese twins, died within two hours of one another, aged 62, in North Carolina.

•

1912 Captain Robert Scott reached the South Pole, to discover his rival Roald Amundsen had reached it first.

•

1983 the BBC introduced breakfast television.

•

1991 allied forces launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraqi positions following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

•

1995 more than 6,400 people were killed when an earthquake struck Kobe, Japan.

18 JANUARY

1778 Captain Cook sighted the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

•

1813 Joseph Farwell Glidden, farmer who patented the first commercially viable barbed wire, born in New Hampshire.

•

1871 William of Prussia was proclaimed the first German Emperor.

•

1882 AA Milne, children’s writer, was born.

•

1884 Arthur Ransome, children’s writer, was born.

•

1911 piloted by Lt Eugene B Ely, the first aircraft to land on a ship touched down on the cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbour.

•

1919 the Versailles Peace Conference opened.

•

1989 Bruce Chatwin, travel writer (In Patagonia) and novelist, died in Nice aged 48.

19 JANUARY

1736 James Watt, designer of the steam engine that largely powered the Industrial Revolution, was born in Greenock, Renfrewshire.

•

1813 Sir Henry Bessemer, inventor of a steel production process that reduced the alloy’s price to a fifth of its former cost, was born in Charlton, Hertfordshire.

•

1915 in the first air raid on Britain, a German zeppelin crossed the Norfolk coast and bombed Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn.

•

1937 aviator Howard Hughes set a new record by flying from Los Angeles to New York in 7 hours and 28 minutes.

•

1966 Indira Gandhi became India’s first woman prime minister.

20 JANUARY

1841 Britain and China signed the Convention of Chuanbi, which ceded Hong Kong to the British.

•

1900 RD Blackmore, novelist (Lorna Doone), died.

•

1900 John Ruskin, art critic, died.

•

1942 Reinhard Heydrich chaired the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, which established the framework for the final solution to the Jewish question.

•

1972 unemployment in the UK rose above one million for the first time since the 1930s.

•

1987 Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy in Lebanon, was kidnapped in Beirut.

•

1993 Audrey Hepburn, actress (Roman Holiday, My Fair Lady), died aged 63.

21 JANUARY

1790 Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the guillotine to the newly formed National Assembly of Paris as a humane method of execution.

•

1793 King Louis XVI of France was executed (by guillotine).

•

1907 taxi cabs were officially recognised in Britain.

•

1911 the first Monte Carlo car rally began.

•

1924 Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), Russian revolutionary, died at Gorki, Moscow, aged 53.

•

1950 George Orwell (Eric Blair), essayist and novelist, died aged 46.

•

1954 the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched.

•

1976 Concorde made its inaugural commercial flight, from London to Bahrain in 3hr 37min.

22 JANUARY

1440 Ivan III, the Great, whose conquests created a consolidated Russian state, was born.

•

1666 Shah Jahan, Mughal emperor of India, died.

•

1788 George Gordon Byron (6th Baron Byron), poet, was born.

•

1901 Queen Victoria, Britain’s monarch since 1837, died.

•

1905 Russian troops fired on marching workers in St Petersburg, killing more than 500 in the first Bloody Sunday.

•

1924 Ramsay MacDonald became Britain’s first Labour prime minister.

•

1944 the Allied landings began in Anzio, Italy.

•

1946 President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group, from which, two years later, the CIA was created.

23 JANUARY

1790 Fletcher Christian and the Bounty’s other mutineers landed on Pitcairn Island.

•

1806 William Pitt the Younger, prime minister 1783–1801 and 1804–06, died aged 46.

•

1837 John Field, Irish composer who created the piano nocturne, died in Moscow.

•

1883 Gustave Doré, graphic artist who illustrated such works as Dante’s Divine Comedy, died.

•

1943 Tripoli was captured by British forces under Field Marshal Montgomery.

•

1985 the proceedings of the House of Lords were televised for the first time.

•

1989 surrealist painter Salvador Dalí died in Figueres, Spain, aged 84.

24 JANUARY

41 Gaius Caesar (Caligula), Roman Emperor from 37, was murdered.

•

1664 Sir John Vanbrugh, soldier, playwright and architect of Blenheim Palace, died.

•

1712 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia 1740–86, born in Berlin.

•

1895 Lord Randolph Churchill, statesman and father of Sir Winston, died aged 45.

•

1965 Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister 1940–45 and 1951–55, died aged 90.

•

1972 a Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was discovered on Guam, 28 years after the Japanese surrender, believing that the Second World War was still in progress.

•

1984 the Apple Macintosh personal computer went on sale.

25 JANUARY

1533 King Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in secret.

•

1640 Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, died.

•

1759 Robert Burns, Scottish poet whose popularity is reaffirmed in the Burns Night celebrations, was born in Alloway, Ayr.

•

1919 the League of Nations was founded to resolve international disputes.

•

1924 the first Winter Olympics began in Chamonix, France.

•

1947 gangster Al Capone died at home of a heart attack.

•

1971 Idi Amin deposed the Ugandan president Milton Obote.

•

1990 Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan, became the first head of government to give birth.

26 JANUARY

1790 Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was first performed in Vienna.

•

1824 Théodore Géricault, painter who used corpses in the morgue as models for The Raft of the Medusa, died.

•

1855 Gérard de Nerval, French Romantic poet who kept a lobster as a pet, died.

•

1885 General Charles Gordon was killed at Khartoum during the rising led by the Mahdi.

•

1905 the largest diamond in the world, the Cullinan, was mined at Pretoria, South Africa.

•

1950 India became a republic within the Commonwealth.

•

1998 President Bill Clinton denied having had sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky.

27 JANUARY

1302 Dante Alighieri was expelled from Florence for his political activities, and while in exile wrote his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy.

•

1880 the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was granted a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

•

1944 Leningrad (now St Petersburg) was relieved after a 28-month siege.

•

1945 the Soviet army liberated 5,000 inmates of Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

•

1967 Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee, astronauts, died after an electrical fault ignited pure oxygen in their Apollo 1 spacecraft.

•

1972 Mahalia Jackson, the “Queen of Gospel”, died.

28 JANUARY

814 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor since 800, died aged 71.

•

1547 King Henry VIII, who had reigned since 1509, died aged 55.

•

1596 Sir Francis Drake, English admiral and circumnavigator of the globe, died aged 55 at Portobelo, Panama.

•

1807 London’s Pall Mall became the first street in the world illuminated by gaslight.

•

1896 the first speeding fine was imposed on a British motorist for exceeding 2mph in a built-up area.

•

1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift-off and its crew of five men and two women were killed.

29 JANUARY

1819 Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed in Singapore, with it becoming a British colony five years later.

•

1820 King George III, who had reigned since 1760, died aged 81.

•

1856 the Victoria Cross was established by royal warrant to honour acts of valour during the Crimean War.

•

1860 Anton Chekhov, playwright, was born in Taganrog, Russia.

•

1886 Karl Benz patented the first automobile.

•

1942 Desert Island Discs was first broadcast by the BBC.

•

1996 Venice’s opera house, fatefully named La Fenice (The Phoenix), was completely destroyed by fire, suspected to be arson.

30 JANUARY

1649 King Charles I, who had reigned since 1625, was executed in Whitehall.

•

1661 Oliver Cromwell was ritually executed, more than two years after his death.

•

1790 the first lifeboat was tested by Henry Greathead of South Shields.

•

1933 Hitler was sworn in as German chancellor.

•

1948 Mahatma Gandhi, Indian leader, was assassinated in Delhi.

•

1965 Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral took place in London.

•

1968 the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive against South Vietnam.

•

1972 British troops killed 13 people during a civil rights march in Londonderry on what is now known as Bloody Sunday.

31 JANUARY

1606 Guy Fawkes and his fellow Gunpowder Plot conspirators were executed.

•

1788 Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), leader of the Jacobite rebellion, died in Rome aged 68.

•

1858 the Great Eastern steamship, the largest vessel in the world, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was launched.

•

1929 Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union.

•

1983 the wearing of front seatbelts in cars was made compulsory in Britain.

•

1990 the first McDonald’s restaurant in Russia opened in Pushkin Square, Moscow.

•

2010 Avatar became the first film to gross more than $2 billion worldwide.

1 FEBRUARY

1851 Mary Shelley, who at 21 wrote Frankenstein, died aged 54.

•

1874 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, poet, dramatist and librettist (Der Rosenkavalier), was born in Vienna.

•

1884 publication of the first fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary.

•

1896 the world premiere of Puccini’s opera La Bohème took place in Turin, with Arturo Toscanini conducting.

•

1910 the first British labour exchange opened.

•

1915 Stanley Matthews, footballer, was born in Stoke-on-Trent.

•

1924 Britain formally recognised the Soviet Union.

•

1974 Ronald Biggs, one of the Great Train Robbers, was arrested by Brazilian police in Rio de Janeiro.

2 FEBRUARY

1650 Nell Gwyn, comic actress and mistress of King Charles II, was born.

•

1709 Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, was rescued after being marooned for four years on an island off Chile.

•

1901 the state funeral of Queen Victoria took place at Windsor.

•

1972 the British embassy in Dublin was burnt down by demonstrators protesting the killings on Bloody Sunday two days previously in Londonderry.

•

1977 the Pompidou Centre opened in Paris.

•

1979 Sid Vicious (Simon John Ritchie), bass guitarist of the Sex Pistols, died in New York aged 21.

3 FEBRUARY

1761 Richard (Beau) Nash, dandy who developed Bath into the most fashionable spa town in England, died.

•

1877 The Celebrated Chop Waltz, better known as Chopsticks, music for the piano by 16-year-old Euphemia Allen, was registered at the British Museum.

•

1919 President Woodrow Wilson attended the first meeting of the League of Nations in Paris.

•

1924 Woodrow Wilson, 28th American president 1913–21, died aged 67.

•

1960 Harold Macmillan made his Wind of Change speech to the South African parliament.

•

1969 Yassir Arafat was appointed chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

4 FEBRUARY

1911 Rolls-Royce commissioned its famous figurehead, The Spirit of Ecstasy, from the sculptor Charles Sykes.

•

1927 Malcolm Campbell set the land-speed record at 174.88mph in his 12-cylinder Napier-Campbell Blue Bird on Pendine Sands, Carmarthen Bay.

•

1945 the Yalta conference opened, at which Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin discussed strategy for the final months of the war.

•

1962 The Sunday Times issued the first colour supplement in Britain.

•

1968 the world’s largest hovercraft (165 tons and costing £1.75 million) was launched at Cowes, Isle of Wight.

•

1971 the British carmaker Rolls-Royce declared itself bankrupt.

5 FEBRUARY

1811 the Prince of Wales, later King George IV, was declared Prince Regent.

•

1887 Verdi’s Otello received its world premiere at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan.

•

1920 the RAF College at Cranwell, Lincolnshire, opened.

•

1982 Laker Airways collapsed with debts of £270 million.

•

1983 the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was imprisoned in France.

•

1987 Liberace, pianist known for his flamboyant costumes, died.

•

1999 South African president Nelson Mandela made his last State of the Nation speech to parliament before retiring.

•

2008 tornados killed 57 people in the southern United States.

6 FEBRUARY

1685 King James II acceded to the throne.

•

1919 William Rossetti, writer and brother to Christina and Dante Gabriel, died.

•

1945 Bob Marley, singer-songwriter, was born in Nine Mile, Jamaica.

•

1952 Queen Elizabeth II acceded to the throne while visiting Kenya.

•

1958 seven members of the Manchester United football team were among those killed in an air crash in Munich.

•

1964 France and Britain agreed to build a Channel tunnel.

•

1971 astronaut Alan Shepard became the first person to hit a golf ball on the moon.

7 FEBRUARY

1812 Charles Dickens, novelist and social critic, was born in Portsmouth.

•

1863 HMS Orpheus was wrecked off New Zealand, killing 185 sailors.

•

1940 Disney’s film Pinocchio was given a gala premiere in New York.

•

1971 Swiss men voted to allow women to vote in federal elections and to stand for parliament.

•

1974 prime minister Edward Heath called a snap election.

•

1992 ministers from the 12 European Community countries signed the Maastricht treaty.

•

2005 Ellen MacArthur completed her single-handed round-the-world voyage in the record-breaking time of 71 days 14 hours and 18 minutes.

8 FEBRUARY

1587 Mary Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, aged 44.

•

1725 Peter the Great, tsar of Russia since 1682, died aged 52.

•

1872 Robert Southwell Bourke (6th Earl of Mayo), Viceroy of India, was assassinated in the Andaman Islands.

•

1924 the gas chamber was first used as a form of execution when Gee Jon was put to death in Nevada for murder.

•

1965 a ban was announced on cigarette advertising on British television.

•

1983 Shergar, the Aga Khan’s Derby winner, was kidnapped from stables in Co Kildare and, despite a ransom demand, was never seen again.

9 FEBRUARY

1540 the first recorded race meeting in England was held at Roodee Fields, Chester.

•

1567 Lord Darnley, consort of Mary Queen of Scots, was murdered in Edinburgh.

•

1933 ten days after Hitler had become German chancellor, members of the Oxford Union voted against fighting for “King and Country”.

•

1972 the British government declared a state of emergency after a month-long miners’ strike.

•

1979 Trevor Francis became the first British footballer to break the £1m transfer fee when he signed for Nottingham Forest.

•

1996 an IRA bomb exploded in London’s Docklands, killing two and injuring 100.

10 FEBRUARY

1355 the St Scholastica’s Day riot began in Oxford, with opposing forces of town and gown on the rampage for three days.

•

1837 Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer, died following a duel with his wife’s admirer.

•

1931 ceremonies began to inaugurate New Delhi as the capital of India (in place of Delhi).

•

1962 Gary Powers, the US pilot of a U2 spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was exchanged in Berlin for a KGB agent.

•

1964 the Great St Bernard Tunnel under the Alps between Switzerland and Italy was opened to traffic.

11 FEBRUARY

1852 the first flushing public lavatory for women opened in Bedford Street, London.

•

1858 a 14-year-old French girl, Bernadette Soubirous, claimed that a beautiful lady, later identified as the Virgin Mary, appeared to her near Lourdes.

•

1878 the first weekly weather report was issued by the Meteorological Office.

•

1975 Margaret Thatcher became the first woman leader of a British political party.

•

1977 the heaviest recorded crustacean, a lobster weighing 44lb 6oz, was caught off Nova Scotia in Canada.

•

1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa after 27 years in captivity.

12 FEBRUARY

1554 Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England for nine days, was executed aged 16.

•

1809 Charles Darwin, naturalist, was born in Shrewsbury.

•

1809 Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the US, was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky.

•

1818 Chile proclaimed its independence from Spain.

•

1912 Hsuan-t’ung (Pu-Yi), the last emperor of China, was forced to abdicate.

•

1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first US president to deliver a political speech on radio.

•

1986 the Channel Tunnel treaty was signed between United Kingdom and France.

•

2001 NEAR Shoemaker touched down on 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

13 FEBRUARY

1542 Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, was executed for adultery.

•

1601 John Lancaster led the first East India Company voyage from London.

•

1689 William III and Mary II acceded to the throne of England.

•

1692 the MacDonalds were massacred by the Campbells at Glencoe.

•

1917 the spy Mata Hari was arrested by the French.

•

1945 Dresden was devastated when RAF bombers attacked the city.

•

1959 the Barbie doll went on sale.

•

1960 France exploded its first atomic bomb.

14 FEBRUARY

1477 John Paston received the first recorded valentine letter in English, from Margery Brews.

•

1838 Margaret Knight, inventor of the square-bottom paper bag, was born in York, Maine.

•

1852 the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, fitted with ten beds, admitted its first patient, George Parr, who was suffering from catarrh and diarrhoea.

•

1895 Oscar Wilde’s final play, The Importance of Being Earnest, opened in London.

•

1922 Marconi began regular broadcasting transmissions from Writtle in Essex.

•

1939 the German battleship Bismarck was launched at Hamburg.

•

2005 three PayPal workers started a video-sharing website, calling it YouTube.

15 FEBRUARY

1882 the first cargo of frozen meat left New Zealand for Britain on the SS Dunedin.

•

1942 Singapore surrendered to Japanese forces.

•

1944 the Allies bombed Monte Cassino monastery in Italy to prevent the Germans fortifying it.

•

1965 Canada flew its newly adopted red maple leaf flag for the first time.

•

1965 Nat King Cole, singer and jazz pianist who sold more than 50 million records, died of cancer aged 45.

•

1971 Britain adopted decimal currency.

16 FEBRUARY

1659 the first known British cheque (for £400) was written by Nicholas Vanacker.

•

1824 the first meeting of the Athenaeum Club — for “Literary and Scientific men and followers of the Fine Arts” — took place in London.

•

1923 the archaeologist Howard Carter entered the sealed burial chamber of Tutankhamun in Thebes, Egypt. (The ruins of Thebes are found within the modern city of Luxor.)

•

1959 Fidel Castro became prime minister of Cuba, and would govern until 2008.

•

1960 the US nuclear submarine Triton set off on the first underwater round-the-world voyage.

•

1998 the Angel of the North, a sculpture by Antony Gormley, was unveiled in Gateshead.

17 FEBRUARY

1600 the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake in Rome for heresies including maintaining that Earth was not the only inhabited planet.

•

1818 German inventor Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun patented the draisine, forerunner of the bicycle.

•

1864 AB (Banjo) Paterson, poet (Waltzing Matilda), was born in Orange, New South Wales.

•

1880 Tsar Alexander II of Russia survived an assassination attempt when a bomb exploded at the Winter Palace, St Petersburg.

•

1909 Geronimo, Apache leader, died in captivity aged 79.

•

1972 the House of Commons voted to join the European Common Market.

18 FEBRUARY

1478 George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV and Richard III, was said to have been drowned in a butt of malmsey at the Tower of London.

•

1678 John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress was published, much of it having been composed while he was in prison for illegal preaching.

•

1929 the winners of the first Academy Awards (known as Oscars from 1931) were announced, with the presentation being held later that year. (See 16 May.)

•

1930 Pluto was discovered by the American astronomer Clyde W Tombaugh.

•

1979 snow fell in the Sahara Desert.

•

2005 a law banning hunting with dogs came into force in England and Wales.

19 FEBRUARY

1473 Nicolaus Copernicus, astronomer who proposed that the sun not the Earth was the centre of the Universe, was born in Poland.

•

1861 Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in Russia.

•

1878 the patent for Thomas Edison’s phonograph (the original gramophone) was issued.

•

1897 the Women’s Institute was founded by Adelaide Hoodless in Ontario, Canada, and came to Britain during the First World War.

•

1945 US marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima, whose capture created a forward air base in the war against Japan.

•

1985 the BBC televised the first episode of EastEnders.

20 FEBRUARY

1632 Thomas Osborne (1st Duke of Leeds), statesman and leader of the Tories who was imprisoned twice on charges of bribery, was born.

•

1811 Austria declared itself bankrupt because of the cost of fighting Napoleon.

•

1816 the opening night of Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville was a fiasco, with one performer singing an aria with a bleeding nose after tripping on a trapdoor, and a cat attacking another during the finale to the first act.

•

1947 Viscount Mountbatten of Burma was appointed last viceroy of India.

•

1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

21 FEBRUARY

1741 Jethro Tull, inventor of the more efficient horse-drawn seed-drill, died at Hungerford, Berks.

•

1862 Nathaniel Gordon became the only American to be executed for slave trading, their shipping being illegal under the 1820 Piracy Act.

•

1916 the ten-month-long Battle of Verdun began with nine hours of the heaviest artillery bombardment ever witnessed.

•

1964 24,000 rolls of Beatles wallpaper were flown to America.

•

1965 Malcolm X was assassinated in New York aged 39 by three members of the Nation of Islam.

•

1972 President Nixon began his historic visit of rapprochement to China.

22 FEBRUARY

1878 Frank Woolworth opened his first store in Utica, New York.

•

1897 Blondin (Jean-François Gravelet), acrobat and tightrope walker known for his crossing of Niagara Falls, died at Ealing, London, aged 72.

•

1907 taxi cabs with meters were introduced in London.

•

1928 Bert Hinkler completed the first solo flight from England to Australia, landing in Darwin having taken off from Croydon 15 days earlier.

•

1946 Dr Selman Abraham Waksman announced his discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin.

•

2006 £53 million was discovered to have been stolen from a Securitas depot in Kent, in Britain’s biggest robbery.

23 FEBRUARY

1633 Samuel Pepys, diarist, was born in London.

•

1820 the Cato Street Conspiracy, a plot to assassinate the entire British cabinet, was uncovered.

•

1821 John Keats, poet, died in Rome of tuberculosis aged 25.

•

1874 Major Walter Clopton Wingfield patented his new game of lawn tennis.

•

1889 Victor Fleming, director whose films included Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz (both 1939), was born in California.

•

1905 the world’s first Rotary Club was founded in Chicago.

•

1997 it was announced that Dolly, the world’s first cloned sheep, had been born.

24 FEBRUARY

1582 Pope Gregory XIII published a papal bull that established a new-style (Gregorian) calendar, but it took England almost 200 years to follow suit.

•

1848 the last king of France, Louis-Philippe, who had reigned since 1830, was forced to abdicate by revolutionaries who then proclaimed the Second Republic.

•

1920 US-born MP Nancy Astor became the first woman to speak in the House of Commons.

•

1923 the Flying Scotsman entered service with the London and North Eastern Railway.

•

2001 Claude Shannon, mathematician whose work on modern information theory laid the basis for the information age, died.

25 FEBRUARY

1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I.

•

1836 Samuel Colt was granted a patent for his revolver.

•

1862 a paper currency known as Greenbacks was introduced in the US by order of President Abraham Lincoln.

•

1868 Andrew Johnson, 17th American president, was impeached, to be acquitted the following May by a single vote.

•

1952 the Windscale plutonium plant at Sellafield began operation.

•

1964 floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee, Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) won the world heavyweight boxing championship when Sonny Liston failed to come out for the seventh round.

26 FEBRUARY

1797 the Bank of England issued £1 banknotes for the first time.

•

1815 Napoleon escaped from exile in Elba.

•

1848 The Communist Manifesto was published, having been printed in London.

•

1924 Adolf Hitler appeared in court, charged with treason for leading the failed coup d’état known as the beer-hall putsch.

•

1935 a Heyford bomber flying in the main beam of a BBC short-wave transmitter gave back reflected signals to the ground, winning Robert Watson-Watt government approval to develop radar technology.

•

1936 Hitler opened the first factory to manufacture the Volkswagen, the people’s car.

27 FEBRUARY

c. 272 Constantine the Great, Roman emperor 306–337, was born in modern Nis, Serbia.

•

1814 Beethoven’s 8th Symphony received its premiere in Vienna.

•

1879 at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, Constantin Fahlberg and Ira Remsen accidentally discovered saccharin.

•

1900 a meeting of trade unionists, Marxists and Fabians resulted in the foundation of the Labour Representation Committee, or British Labour Party.

•

1902 John Steinbeck, novelist, was born in Salinas, California.

•

1933 arson destroyed part of Germany’s Reichstag building, leading to the suspension of civil liberties.

•

1939 General Franco’s rebel Nationalist Government was recognised by Britain and France.

28 FEBRUARY

1533 Michel de Montaigne, philosopher who popularised the essay form, was born.

•

1900 after a four-month siege during the Boer War, the 20,000-strong British garrison in Ladysmith was relieved.

•

1922 Lord Allenby, high commissioner in Egypt, announced the termination of the British protectorate and the inception of Egyptian independence.

•

1956 Jay Forrester patented random-access coincident-current magnetic storage, which would become the standard memory device for computers.

•

1975 a London Underground train crashed at Moorgate station, killing 35 people.

•

1986 the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated while walking home in Stockholm, a crime that remains unsolved.

29 FEBRUARY

1868 Conservative Party leader Benjamin Disraeli formed his first government.

•

1880 the 9.3-mile St Gotthard railway tunnel, then the longest in the world, was completed, linking Switzerland and Italy.

•

1940 Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American actress to win an Oscar, for Gone With the Wind.

•

1956 Pakistan became an Islamic republic.

•

1960 thousands of people were killed in an earthquake in Agadir, Morocco.

•

1960 Hugh Hefner opened the first Playboy Club in Chicago.

•

1984 Pierre Trudeau resigned after 15 years as premier of Canada.

•

1996 the siege of Sarajevo ended after almost seven years.

1 MARCH

1360 during the siege of Rheims, King Edward III contributed £16 towards the ransom of Geoffrey Chaucer, then serving as a soldier.

•

1872 US president Ulysses S Grant established America’s first national park, Yellowstone.

•

1912 George Grossmith, co-author of The Diary of a Nobody and the comic lead in Gilbert and Sullivan’s early productions, died.

•

1932 Charles Augustus, the 20-month-old son of the American aviator Charles Lindbergh, was abducted from his nursery and later found dead.

•

1966 the unmanned Soviet probe Venera 3 impacted on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet.

2 MARCH

1882 Queen Victoria narrowly escaped assassination by Roderick Maclean as she sat in her railway carriage at Windsor station, this being the eighth attempt made on her life since the start of her reign.

•

1949 Captain James Gallagher and his US air force crew completed the first round-the-world non-stop flight (23,452 miles in 94 hours and 1 minute).

•

1956 Morocco declared its political independence from France.

•

1958 the British Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Dr Vivian Fuchs, completed the first surface crossing of Antarctica.

•

1970 Ian Smith, the Rhodesian prime minister, declared his country an independent republic.

3 MARCH

1875 the first performance of Carmen at Paris’s Opéra-Comique was so poorly received that it was thought to have hastened the death of its composer, Georges Bizet.

•

1894 six months after his second Home Rule Bill had been defeated by the House of Lords, William Gladstone resigned as prime minister.

•

1924 Turkish president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolished the caliphate (the Islamic leadership of the Ottoman sultans).

•

1931 the US Congress adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as the American national anthem.

•

1991 Rodney King was filmed being beaten by Los Angeles police officers, leading to widespread riots.

4 MARCH

1461 King Henry VI was deposed by his cousin Edward, Duke of York (who became King Edward IV).

•

1789 the Congress of the United States held its first meeting in New York.

•

1824 the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was founded (from 1854, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution).

•

1890 the last of eight million rivets holding together 55,000 tons of steel was driven home at the opening ceremony of the Forth Bridge.

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