NOW & THEN
7 SEPTEMBER
70AD: A Roman army, under General Titus, occupied and plundered Jerusalem.
1191: During the third Crusade, Richard I of England defeated Saladin at the Battle of Arsuf.
1838: Grace Darling, daughter of a lighthouse keeper, rescued the crew of the Forfarshire, shipwrecked near the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast.
1892: Gentleman James J Corbett beat John L Sullivan in 21 rounds in New Orleans, and became the first world heavyweight boxing champion under Queensberry rules – with gloves and three-minute rounds.
1901: The Boxer Protocol (or “Peace of Peking”) ended the Boxer Rebellion in China.
1904: British forces in Tibet forced the Dalai Lama to sign a treaty granting Britain trading posts in Tibet and guaranteeing that Tibet would not concede territory to foreign powers.
1923: Interpol was founded in Vienna.
1931: Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi attended second India Roundtable Conference in London which failed to reach agreement on representation of religious minorities.
1936: The last surviving member of the thylacine species (also known as the Tasmanian tiger or wolf ), died in Hobart Zoo.
1939: The German army overran Pomerania and Silesia in Poland.
1940: The London Blitz started when German aircraft bombed the docks.
1943: Italy surrendered in the Second World War.
1947: Battles took place between Muslims and Hindus in New Delhi, India.
1950: An area of sodden moss the size of a football pitch collapsed into the workings at Knockshinnoch Castle Colliery, Ayrshire, trapping 129 miners 720ft underground. In a huge rescue operation via old workings at Bank Colliery, 116 men were saved, but 13 miners and a rescue worker died.
1965: Hurricane Betsy struck Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, killing 74 people.
1980: Fifty-one of the 52 nominated performers boycotted the Emmy Awards due to a strike by members of the Screen Actors Guild.
1986: Desmond Tutu became Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa.
1986: Five bodyguards were killed and 11 other people wounded during a failed assassination attempt on Chilean dictator Augosto Pinochet, when a guerilla group attacked a presidential convoy using machine guns, rifles, bazookas and hand grenades.
1989: Three Bronze Age bracelets, found on a farm at Gulval, Cornwall, sold for £25,500 at a Penzance auction.
1994: The prime minister, John Major, attacked the idea of a two-tier Europe which would see France and Germany in the driving seat and Britain in the slow lane.
1999: A 5.9 magnitude earthquake rocked Athens, rupturing a previously unknown fault, killing 143, injuring more than 500, and leaving 50,000 people homeless.
2009: Sir Terry Wogan announced that he was stepping down as presenter of Radio 2’s breakfast show, to be replaced by Chris Evans.
2014: Asteroid 2014 RC made a close approach to Earth ( a distance of 24,800 miles).