NOW & THEN
25 SEPTEMBER
1066: King Harold II of England defeated Norwegian invaders at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, Yorkshire. Three weeks later, he was killed fighting the Normans at the Battle of Hastings.
1340: England and France signed a disarmament treaty.
1493: Columbus set sail on his second expedition to the Americas with a fleet of 20 ships.
1777: British general William Howe conquered Philadelphia.
1857: The relief of Lucknow by Havelock and Outram began.
1878: Dr Charles Drysdale, in a letter to the Times, warned against the use of tobacco in one of the earliest public health announcements on the dangers of smoking.
1894: British annexed Pondoland, connecting Cape Colony and Natal, in Africa.
1897: The first experimental bus services began in various towns and cities around Britain, including one in Edinburgh.
1906: In the presence of the Spanish king and a large crowd, Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrated the invention of Telekino in the port of Bilbao, where he guided a boat from the shore – believed to be the birth of remote control.
1911: The French battleship Liberté exploded in Toulon harbour, killing 226.
1915: British forces used poisonous gas for the first time in the First World War.
1915: The Battle of Loos began, in which Piper Daniel Laidlaw, 7th King’s Own Scottish Borderers, won the Victoria Cross for mounting a parapet during heavy bombardment and playing his regiment “over the top”.
1923: Forty miners died when water broke through from old workings and on to the 66-man nightshift at Redding No23 pit, near Polmont, Stirlingshire.
1940: German High Commissioner in Norway set up a government headed by Vidkun Quisling.
1941: General de Gaulle announced over BBC World Service the creation of a French wartime government in exile.
1956: Inauguration of the first transatlantic telephone cable, running between Oban and Newfoundland.
1962: Sonny Liston won the world heavyweight boxing title, knocking out Floyd Paterson in the first round, in Chicago.
1970: Jordan’s King Hussein and Palestinian guerrilla leaders agreed on ceasefire to end fighting in Jordan.
1972: Norway voted to join European common market.
1973: Three-man crew of US space laboratory, Skylab 2, splashed down in Pacific after record 59 days in orbit.
1977: Freddie Laker ’s first Skytrain service began between Gatwick and New York.
1989: President George Bush said the United States would destroy 98 per cent of its chemical weapons if the Soviet Union would do the same.
1990: At least 54 people died in gas truck explosion in Bangkok.
1996: The last of the Magdalene Asylums closed in Ireland.
2010: Ed Miliband beat his brother David by a wafer-thin margin to be elected leader of the Labour Party.