NOW & THEN
14 DECEMBER
1287: The Zuiderzee sea wall collapsed, causing more than 50,000 deaths, during St Lucia’s Flood in Netherlands.
1542: Princess Mary Stuart ascended to the Scottish throne at only six days old, following the death of her father, James V, and became Mary I (Mary, Queen of Scots).
1656: Artificial pearls were first manufactured by M Jacquin in Paris. They were made from gypsum covered in fish scales.
1782: Charleston, South Carolina was evacuated by the British during the American Revolutionary War.
1896: The opening of Glasgow District Subway’s six-and-a-half mile system with 15 stations.
1901: The first table tennis tournament took place at the Royal Aquarium, London.
1911: Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer, became the first man to reach the South Pole – 35 days ahead of Captain Robert Falcon Scott. His party of five travelled by dog-sled, starting with 52 dogs and eating 36 of them en route.
1918: Women over 30 voted in a British general election for the first time; David Lloyd George’s coalition won a clear majority; Sinn Fein won in 73 of 105 Irish constituencies but refused to take up any of their seats in parliament, instead meeting at a Dail Eireann in Dublin.
1920: Jack Dempsey retained his world heavyweight boxing title by knocking out Bill Brennan in round 12 of their bout at Madison Square Garden, New York.
1920: The first accident involving a scheduled airliner occurred when an aircraft bound for Paris crashed into a house in Golders Green, London, just after takeoff from Cricklewood Airport, killing the crew of two and two of the six passengers.
1922: JCW Reith, 33, was appointed general manager of the BBC, eventually becoming its director general. He also became 1st Baron Reith of Stonehaven.
1926: A nationwide police hunt ended for Agatha Christie, whose abandoned car had been found in Surrey, when she was identified at a Harrogate hotel.
1939: The premiere of Gone With The Wind took place at Atlanta, Georgia.
1957: Nine miners died in explosion at Lindsay Colliery in Fife. The report on the disaster blamed “a match struck for the purposes of smoking”. 1967: University of Stirling was constituted by royal charter.
1969: The Jackson 5 made their TV debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.
1994: Axing of the London-fort William sleeper was announced. It led to The Scotsman’s Save Our Sleeper campaign, and the service was later guaranteed for at least seven years.
2009: Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was taken to hospital after an assault left his face covered in blood following a rally in Milan.
2011: US President Barack Obama marked the end of the Iraq war with a speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, telling troops: “Welcome home!”
2012: Twenty-year-old gunman Adam Lanza shot to death 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.