NOW & THEN
DECEMBER 18
218BC: Hannibal’s Carthaginian army defeated the Romans at the Battle of the Trebia during the second Punic War.
1661: The ship Elizabeth, of Burntisland, was lost off the English coast with the Scottish state records aboard. They were being returned from London, to which they had been taken by Cromwell.
1780: The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was founded.
1813: The British took Fort Niagara during the War of 1812.
1865: Slavery was finally abolished in United States.
1878: John Kehoe, the last member of the Molly Maguires, an Irish-based secret society in the mining areas of Pennsylvania, was hanged in Pottsville.
1892: Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite premiered in St Petersburg.
1899: Field Marshal Lord Roberts was appointed British supreme commander in South Africa.
1902: Britain’s Education Act was passed by parliament.
1912: Piltdown Man was discovered in Sussex by Charles Dawson. The skull fragment was hailed as “missing link” in human evolution, but in 1953 was proved to be a forgery, a 600-year-old human skull and the lower jaw of an orangutan.
1944: Nazi occupiers of Amsterdam during the Second World War destroyed electricity plants in the city.
1945: Uruguay joined the United Nations.
1946: House of Commons voted to nationalise railways, road haulage and ports.
1956: Japan was admitted to United Nations.
1958: The first voice transmitted back to Earth from outer space was a Christmas message by US president Dwight D Eisenhower, via a communications satellite.
1961: EMI records rejected the Beatles.
1969: The death penalty for murder was formally abolished in Britain.
1970: Divorce law went into effect in Italy despite opposition by Roman Catholic Church.
1979: Stanley Barrett became the first man to break the sound barrier on land. He reached 739.6mph in California.
1985: Syria rejected plea by United States to remove newly deployed anti-aircraft missiles along its border with Lebanon.
1988: Bulgaria offered free holidays to anyone willing to catch field mice by hand, in an attempt to save winter wheat crops from the invaders without spraying dangerous chemicals.
1994: Russian tanks began shelling Grozny, capital of the rebel state of Chechnya, after its leader failed to meet Boris Yeltsin’s ultimatum to lay down arms.
1999: Nasa launched into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments.
2007: Nick Clegg, 40, was elected leader of the Liberal Democratic Party following the resignation of Sir Menzies Campbell.
2010: Governmental protests began in Tunisia, beginning the 2010-2011 Middle East and North Africa protests.
2012: Six health workers dispensing polio vaccinations were gunned down in Pakistan.