NOW & THEN
9 DECEMBER
1783: The first execution took place at Newgate Prison, London, having previously been held at Tyburn (now the site of Marble Arch).
1824: Spain’s army was defeated at Ayacucho, Peru, by Simon Bolivar’s forces and agreed to leave South America.
1854: The poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, written by Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was published.
1868: William Ewart Gladstone became prime minister for the first of his four terms of office.
1884: Roller skates were patented by L Richardson of Chicago. He advertised them as a health aid – to stimulate soles and heels and so maintain strong legs.
1905: Separation of church and state in France was decreed.
1905: Richard Strauss’s opera Salome premiered in Dresden.
1906: Theodore Roosevelt awarded Nobel Peace Prize.
1931: Spain became a republic.
1933: The London to Singapore airline service was inaugurated.
1940: British 8th Army opened its assault on Benghazi, Libya. It was the first major Allied offensive in North Africa during the Second World War.
1941: China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
1941: Adolf Hitler ordered that US ships were to be torpedoed.
1946: Indian Constituent Assembly was boycotted by Muslim League.
1949: The republic of Indonesia was established.
1960: The first episode of Coronation Street was televised, although it was not networked until the spring of 1961. A critic wrote: “The programme is doomed with its dreary signature tune and grim scenes of a row of terraced houses and smoking chimneys.”
1962: Tanganyika gained independence from Britain, took the name Tanzania and became a republic within the Commonwealth, with Julius Nyerere as its first president.
1967: Nicolai Causescu became president of Romania.
1972: North Vietnam and Soviet Union concluded agreement for economic and military aid to Hanoi.
1975: Death toll was put at 160 in two days as Muslims and Christians fought in Beirut.
1976: United Nations General Assembly called for Middle East peace conference at Geneva, Switzerland, with Palestine Lib
eration Organisation taking part.
1987: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met with United States president Ronald Reagan in Washington one day after the Us-soviet nuclear arms treaty was signed.
1988: West Germans demanded curbs on Nato military flights over their densely populated country.
1990: Lech Walesa won a landslide victory in Poland’s presidential election.judi dench
1992: Prime minister John Major told the House of Commons that the Prince and Princess of Wales were to separate.
1994: Sinn Fein had its first formal contact with government officials for 22 years.
2008: Four people, including a 15-month-old girl, were killed when a US fighter jet crashed into a house in San Diego.