NOW & THEN
JANUARY 29
1801: Cleopatra’s Needles rediscovered in Alexandria. One was moved to Thames Embankment in 1878, the other to Central Park, New York, in 1880.
1848: Greenwich Mean Time was adopted in Scotland.
1856: The Victoria Cross was instituted. The first medals were made of metal from guns captured from the Russians in the Crimean war.
1886: The first successful petrol-driven car, built by Karl Benz, was patented. It had three rubber-tyred wheels and went at 9.3mph. Benz crashed it into a brick wall during a demonstration.
1916: Germans staged first Zeppelin raid on Paris.
1927: Park Lane Hotel, London, opened. It was the first hotel in Britain to provide a bathroom for every bedroom.
1942: Desert Island Discs, devised and presented by Roy Plomley, started on Radio 4. Actor Vic Oliver was his first guest. Plomley died in 1985 after presenting 1,791 programmes of what is still the longest-running radio series.
1949: Britain granted de facto recognition to new state of Israel.
1950: First series of riots occurred in Johannesburg, provoked by South Africa’s racial policy.
1963: Britain was refused entry to European Common Market by France’s veto.
1975: Cost of colour television licences in Britain trebled from £6 to £18.
1985: Oxford University dons refused to grant Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher an honorary degree.
1988: Four seamen were reported killed in two Iraqi air attacks on shipping along Iran’s Gulf coast.
1990: Ousted East German Communist Party leader Erich Honecker arrested and ordered to stand trial for high treason.
1991: South African political rivals Mengosuthu Buthelezi and Nelson Mandela met for first time in 30 years and called jointly for ceasefire in feud between ANC and Inkatha loyalists.
1992: Boris Yeltsin announced further far-reaching cuts in Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
1996: President Jacques Chirac announced a “definitive end” to French nuclear weapons testing.
1996: La Fenice, Venice’s famous opera house, was destroyed by fire.
Thousands of student protesters in Indonesia stormed parliament and demanded that president Abdurrahman Wahid resign due to alleged involvement in corruption scandals.
2002: In his State of the Union Address, president George W Bush described “regimes that sponsor terror” as an “Axis of Evil”, in which he included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
2010: Former prime minister Tony Blair told the Chilcot inquiry, the public inquiry into the UK’S role in the Iraq War, that he had no regrets about supporting the United States in toppling Saddam Hussein.
2012: Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester decided not to accept the £963,000 shares-only bonus payment on offer to him due to “enormous political and media pressure”.