NOW & THEN
9 DECEMBER
1747: Great Britain and Netherlands signed a military treaty.
1783: The first execution took place at Newgate Prison, London, having previously been held at Tyburn (now the site of Marble Arch).
1824: Spain’s army was defeated at Ayacucho, Peru, by Simon Bolivar’s forces.
1854: The poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was published.
1868: William Ewart Gladstone became prime minister for the first of his four terms of office.
1884: Roller skates were patented by L Richardson of Chicago. He advertised them as a health aid – to stimulate soles and heels and so maintain strong legs.
1905: Separation of church and state in France was decreed.
1905: Richard Strauss’s opera Salome premiered in Dresden.
1906: Theodore Roosevelt awarded Nobel Peace Prize. 1931: Spain became a republic. 1940: British 8th Army opened its assault on Benghazi, Libya. It was the first major Allied offensive in North Africa during the Second World War.
1941: China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
1941: Adolf Hitler ordered that US ships were to be torpedoed.
1949: The republic of Indonesia was established.
1960: The first episode of Coronation Street was televised, although it was not networked until 1961. A critic wrote: “The programme is doomed with its dreary signature tune and grim scenes of a row of terraced houses and smoking chimneys.”
1962: Tanganyika gained independence fro Britain, took the name Tanzania and became a republic within the Commonwealth.
1967: Nicolai Causescu became president of Romania.
1972: North Vietnam and Soviet Union concluded agreement for economic and military aid to Hanoi.
1975: Death toll was put at 160 in two days as Muslims and Christians fought in Beirut.
1987: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met US president Ronald Reagan in Washington one day after the Us-soviet nuclear arms treaty was signed.
1988: West Germans demanded curbs on Nato military flights over their densely populated country.
1990: Lech Walesa won a landslide victory in Poland’s presidential election.
1992: Prime minister John Major told the House of Commons that the Prince and Princess of Wales were to separate.
1994: Sinn Fein had its first formal contact with government officials for 22 years.
2003: A blast in the centre of Moscow killed six people and wounded several more.
2005: Brokeback Mountain, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, was released.
2008: Four people, including a 15-month-old girl, were killed when a US military F-18 fighter jet crashed into a house in San Diego. The pilot ejected.
2012: Six people were killed and 41 injured when a bus plunged into a gorge in Guatemala.
BIRTHDAYS
Donny Osmond, pop singer, 62; Joan Armatrading MBE, singersongwriter, 69; Beau Bridges, actor, 78; Susan Bullock CBE, soprano, 61; Dame Judi Dench DBE, actress, 85; David Harsent, poet, 77; John Malkovich, actor, 66; Joanna Trollope OBE, author, 76; Joshua Bell, violinist and conductor, 52
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1608 John Milton, poet; 1886 Clarencebirdseye, American inventor of the deep freezing process; 1897 Hermione Gingold, actress; 1899 Jean de Brunhoff, writer and illustrator who created Babar the elephant; 1902 Margaret Hamilton, actress (the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz); 1909 Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, actor; 1942 Billy Bremner, footballer and manager.
Deaths: 1165, Malcolm IV, king of Scotland; 1641 Sir Anthony van Dyck, Flemish painter; 1964 Dame Edith Sitwell, poet; 1992 Dan Maskell, tennis commentator; 1993 Danny Blanchflower, footballer and manager; 1995 Benny Lee, Glasgow-born comic actor and singer; 1996 Mary Leakey, British pa leo anthropologist; 2012 Sir Patrick Moore, British astronomer