On This Day. Группа авторов

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