NOW & THEN
DECEMBER 16
1431: Henry VI of England was crowned king of France.
1497: Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama became the first European to sail along the east coast of Africa, and named it Natal.
1620: The Pilgrim Fathers arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
1613: Amid a continuous series of earthquakes, Mount Vesuvius in Italy erupted, the fast-flowing lava destroying six villages in its path. Around 6,000 people were killed.
1653: After the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell failed to get the parliament he wanted and became Lord Protector of England, turning himself into an uncrowned king for the next four years.
1659: George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, a prominent English soldier and politician, demanded free parliamentary elections in Scotland.
1692: The National Debt was introduced.
1707: The last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan.
1773: The Boston Tea Party, caused when angry rebels, dressed as Plains Indians, dumped 342 chests of tea, worth £18,000, from ships into Boston harbour as a protest against British taxation. The War of Independence had begun.
1809: Napoleon Bonaparte divorced Josephine after 13 years of marriage because she did not bear him a child.
1850: The first Canterbury Pilgrims – settlers who had sailed from Plymouth – arrived in Lyttleton, New Zealand, aboard the ships Charlotte-jane and Randolph.
1880: The Transvaal region declared itself as the Republic of South Africa.
1893: The Manchester Ship Canal was completed.
1913: Charlie Chaplin began his film career at Keystone for $150 per week.
1929: The first all-talking feature film made in Britain. Called The Clue of the New Pin it featured a young John Gielgud as the villain.
1929: The British airship R100, designed by Barnes Wallis, first flew on trials.
1944: The Battle of the Bulge began in the Ardennes region of Belgium.
1966: The United Nations Security Council voted 11-0 to invoke economic sanctions against the white minority government in Rhodesia.
1971: Bangladesh formally came into existence after East Pakistan surrendered in the war with India.
1977: The extension of the Piccadilly Underground line to Heathrow Airport, London, was officially opened by the Queen.
1988: Edwina Currie resigned as junior health minister as taxpayers faced bill of £40 million to help ailing poultry industry after she said that most eggs were infected with salmonella.
1991: Stella Rimington, 56, became the first female directorgeneral of MI5.
1997: An episode of the animated programme Pokemon aired in Japan induced seizures in 685 Japanese children.
2009: Scotland’s biggest airline, Flyglobespan, went into administration.