NOW & THEN
1375: Northern Netherlands flooded after Westfriese sea wall broke.
1802: The Edinburgh Review was published. Its first editor was Sydney Smith and its aim was “to erect a higher standard of merit, and secure a bolder and a purer taste in literature, and to apply philosophical principles and the maxims of truth and humanity to politics”.
1839: The first Bradshaw’s Railway Timetable was issued. It continued publication until 10 March, 1961.
1842: Britain proclaimed victory as first Afghan War ended. 1865: John Hyatts patented the billiard ball.
1881: The Savoy Theatre, London, first public building to be lit by electricity, opened with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience.
1892: The entire Hong Kong national cricket team died in a shipwreck off Taiwan.
1903: Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women’s Social and Political Union to fight for female emancipation in Britain.
1913: Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were linked by the blowing up of the Gamboa Dam of Panama Canal.
1932: The world’s biggest dam – the Dniepr Dam in USSR – went into operation.
1935: The League of Nations denounced Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia.
1938: Nazi Germany completed occupation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.
1951: First party political broadcast put out, by Lord Samuel on behalf of the Liberal Party. 1961: A volcano erupted on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha and the whole population was brought to Britain. 1963: The second James Bond film, From Russia With Love, starring Sean Connery, premiered in London.
1964: The 18th modern Olympic Games opened in Tokyo, Japan. 1970: Fiji became an independent member of the Commonwealth, having been a British colony since 1874.
1974: Labour won the general election by an overall majority of three seats, and Harold Wilson became prime minister.
1981: An IRA bomb outside the Guards’ barracks, Chelsea, killed one and injured 40, including 25 Irish guardsmen.
1981: Former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s funeral
was held in Cairo.
1983: Israel’s Knesset voted 60- 53 to endorse Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister.
1988: Sandy Lyle won the World Matchplay Golf Championship at Wentworth.
1988: Suspected Tamil militants attacked village in northern Sri Lanka, killing at least 47 people as they slept.
1990: Left- wing guerrillas bolted door of a passenger train carriage in southern India and set it on fire, killing at least 47.
1997: An Austral Airlines DC- 932 crashed and exploded near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay, killing 74. 2006: The Greek city of Volos flooded in one of the prefecture’s worst recorded floods.
2009: After closed borders for nearly 200 years, Armenia and Turkey signed protocols in Zurich to open their borders.