On This Day. Группа авторов

died aged 97.

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      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.

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

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

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

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

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      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.

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

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

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

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

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      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.

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

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

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

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      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.

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

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

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

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

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      1999 the impeachment trial of President Clinton began in Washington.

8 JANUARY

      1337 Giotto, painter and architect, died in Florence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 JANUARY

      1840 the Penny Post was introduced.

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

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

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      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.

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

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

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      1985