NOW & THEN

0 On this day in 1888, the first victim of Jack the Ripper, Mary Nichols, was found dead in Whitechapel, London 1983: Soviet plane shot down a South Korean airliner. All 269 aboard were killed.

1990: President FW de Klerk announced that membership of South Africa’s National Party was to be open to all races.

1990: East and West Germany signed a unification treaty.

1994: The IRA announced a “complete cessation of military operations”.

1994: World chess champion Gary Kasparov was defeated by a computer.

1997: Diana, Princess of Wales, 36, and boyfriend Dodi Fayed, died in a car crash in Paris.

2005: A stampede on Al-aaimmah bridge in Baghdad killed 1,199 people.

2006: Stolen on 22 August 2004, Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream was recovered by Norwegian police.