NOW & THEN
18 SEPTEMBER
1759: Battle of Quebec ended with French surrender to the British.
1809: The Royal Opera House in London opened. 1812: The Geat Fire of Moscow burned out. It had blazed for five days, destroying 75 per cent of the city, and 12,000 lives were lost.
1818: The Theatre Royal, Glasgow, became the first theatre in Britain to be lit by gas.
1838: The Anti-corn Law League was established by Richard Cobde.
1863: Willie Park Snr won his second Open golf title at Prestwick Golf Club, beating his rival Tom Morris Snr by two strokes. 1879: Blackpool held the first of its annual illuminations.
1885: Riots broke out in Montreal during protests against compulsory smallpox vaccinations.
1914: The Irish Home Rule Bill received Royal Assent. 1922: Hungary was admitted to the League of Nations.
1951: The Al Read Show started on BBC radio, with Jimmy Edwards and Pat Kirkwood, introducing the catchphrases “Right monkey” and “You’ll be lucky!” 1959: Forty-seven miners at Auchengeich Colliery, Chryston, Lanarkshire, were trapped and died when the bogies carrying them to work ran into smoke 1,000ft below ground.
1961: Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish secretary-general of United Nations, was killed in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia when flying from Leopoldville. 1972: First planeload of Ugandan Asians expelled by dictator Idi Amin arrived in Britain. 1976: Eight-hundred million Chinese paid tribute to their leader Mao Tse Tung at his memorial service. For three minutes, one fifth of the world’s population stood in silence.
1981: France abolished capital punishment.
1982: Christian Falangist forces massacred 800 Palestinians in Chatilla and Bourj el Barajneh refugee camps in Beirut.
1990: Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Terry, governor of Gibraltar when SAS killed three IRA terrorists on the Rock in March, 1988, was shot six times at close range by the IRA at his home in Stafford.
1994: Four people, including two children, died when a double-decker bus carrying Girl Guides on an outing smashed into a bridge in Glasgow. 1995: Inquiry was ordered after it was discovered that Brian Mackinnon, 32, a carpet fitter, posed as a 17-year-old and returned to