NOW & THEN
4 SEPTEMBER
1774: New Caledonia was sighted for the first time by Europeans during the second voyage of Captain James Cook.
1860: The first weather forecast appeared in the Times newspaper.
1870: Emperor Napoleon III was deposed and the third French republic was declared.
1882: Thomas Edison switched on the world’s first commercial electrical power plant, lighting up one square mile of Lower Manhattan.
1884: Britain ended its policy of penal transportation to New South Wales, Australia.
1888: George Eastman registered Kodak as a trademark and patented the first roll-film camera.
1909: The first Boy Scout rally took place in Crystal Palace, London.
1939: The British liner Athenia sank after being torpedoed by a German U-boat the previous day off Ireland. Ninety-three lives were lost.
1939: A Bristol Blenheim was the first British aircraft to cross the German coast following the outbreak of the Second World War, and German ships were bombed.
1948: Wilhelmina abdicated as Queen of the Netherlands in favour of her daughter Juliana.
1955: Richard Baker presented the late-night summary on BBC to become the first television newscaster to be seen on screen.
1961: The Initial Teaching Alphabet system was introduced in 19 schools.
1961: Trades Union Congress expelled Electrical Trades Union for ballot-rigging.
1962: The last tram car in Glasgow ran from Dalmuir to Auchenshuggle.
1964: The Forth Road Bridge, 6,156ft long and with a centre span of 3,300ft, was opened by the Queen.
1970: Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova defected to the West during a visit to London by the Kirov Ballet.
1972: US swimmer Mark Spitz became the first competitor to win seven gold medals at a single Olympics during the Games in Munich.
1976: Dancing Queen by Abba reached No 1 in the UK singles chart.
1984: Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party won the largest landslide victory
(by number of seats won) in Canadian history, ending the long-time political dominance of the country’s Liberal Party.
1987: United Nations secretarygeneral Javier Pérez de Cuéllar said Iran had agreed to negotiate implementation of UN peace plan to end its war with Iraq.
1992: The government borrowed £7.25 billion in foreign currencies to prop up the pound.
1998: Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University.
2009: Hundreds of homes were evacuated after some of the worst flooding in living memory caused devastation from the Lothians to Moray.
2017: The Queen opened the Queensferry Crossing over the Firth of Forth.
2018: Scotland Women football team defeated Albania 2-1 to qualify for the World Cup finals.