ON THIS DAY
1745:
The Jacobites, under the Young Pretender, occupied Edinburgh.
1787:
Some 39 delegates (out of 42), under the chairmanship of George Washington, approved the Constitution of the United States of America.
1827:
Wides in cricket were first scored in the Sussex v Kent game at Brighton.
1894:
A Gaiety Girl opened at Day’s Theatre, New York, the first British musical on Broadway.
1908:
Lt Thomas Selfridge of the US Army Signal Corps was killed in a plane crash in Fort Meyer, Virginia. Pilot Orville Wright was also seriously injured. Selfridge was the world’s first military aviation fatality.
1931:
Long-playing records (33rpm) were demonstrated in New York by RCA-Victor, but the venture failed because of the high price of the players, and the first real microgroove records did not appear until 1948.
1944:
The British airborne invasion of Arnhem and Eindhoven in the Netherlands began as part of Operation Market Garden. The objective was to secure a bridge over the Rhine as part of an Allied invasion of Germany, but after a battle which lasted until September 27, the attempt failed.
1944:
Blackout regulations were lifted to allow lights on buses, trains and at railway stations in Britain for the first time for five years.
1961:
One of London’s biggest “ban the bomb” demos ended with 830 arrested, including actress Vanessa Redgrave and playwright John Osborne.