NOW & THEN
18 JUNE
1429: Joan of Arc defeated the English at the Battle of Patay.
1583: The first life insurance policy was sold (according to records in London). It was also the first to be disputed by the insurance company, which refused to pay out on the death of the insured, but the court ruled against and payment was eventually made.
1746: Flora Macdonald met Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and persuaded him to don women’s clothes as part of an escape plan.
1812: American Congress, by a small majority, voted a declaration of war against Great Britain.
1815: The Battle of Waterloo took place south of Brussels, with Napoleon defeated by the troops of Wellington and Blucher.
1817: Waterloo Bridge in London, built by John Rennie, was opened. It was originally called Strand Bridge but was renamed at the opening as it was the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
1822: London’s first nude statue was unveiled in Hyde Park. The bronze figure of Achilles was sculpted by Sir Richard Westmacott. The statue later acquired a bronze fig leaf.
1846: North British Railway was opened from Edinburgh to Berwick-on-tweed. The inaugural train had five locomotives and 28 carriages, displaying – according to the account in The Scotsman – “the flexibility of a silken cord, while rivalling the eagle’s flight in speed”.
1928: Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. She was passenger to pilot Wilmer Stulz, flying from Newfoundland to Wales.
1940: Winston Churchill spoke the words: “Let us brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and its Commonwealth lasts a thousand years, men will still say: ‘This was their finest hour.’” That was at the moment that France was collapsing before German forces.
1963: Henry Cooper floored Cassius Clay (later Muhammed Ali) in round four at Wembley. But by the sixth, with Cooper badly cut, the fight was stopped and Clay remained world heavyweight champion.
1967: China announced it had exploded its first hydrogen bomb.
1970: The Conservatives won the general election with an overall majority of 30. Edward Heath became prime minister the following day.
1971: United States and Japan signed agreement to restore island of Okinawa to Japan.
1972: BEA Trident jet crashed near Staines, Middlesex, after take-off for Brussels, killing all 118 passengers and crew.
1983: Doctor Sally Ride became America’s first woman in space when the shuttle Challenger blasted off from Cape Canaveral.
1991: Talks on the future of Northern Ireland began in earnest with the first roundtable meeting of the province’s four constitutional political parties since 1976.
1993: Irish president Mary Robinson, visiting Belfast, caused a storm of protest when she shook hands with the Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams.
2001: The bodies of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants were found in a sealed lorry container at Dover.
2009: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a Nasa robotic spacecraft, was launched.