NOW & THEN
26 OCTOBER
740: An earthquake struck Constantinople, causing damage to city walls and buildings
1407: Mobs attacked the Jewish community of Kraków
1492: Lead (graphite) pencils first used
1524: Spanish troops gave Milan to France
1529: Sir Thomas More was appointed Lord Chancellor of England
1814: The Governor-general of India declared war on the Gurkhas of Nepal.
1861: The first public demonstration of the telephone was made to the Physical Society, Frankfurt.
1863: Football Association was formed at a meeting in London.
1896: Italian protectorate of Ethiopia was withdrawn by Treaty of Addis Ababa.
1907: The Territorial Army was established by Richard Haldane, secretary of state for War.
1911: Chinese Republic was proclaimed.
1912: Woolwich Tunnel under the River Thames was opened.
1917: Brazil declared war on Germany.
1950: First sound and television broadcast from the House of Commons came as King George VI reopened the chamber after repair of 1941 bombing damage.
1955: Republic of South Vietnam was proclaimed under Ngo Dinh Diem.
1962: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev offered to withdraw missiles from Cuba if the United States removed bases in Turkey, but was rebuffed.
1976: United Nations General Assembly voted 134-0 to call on member governments to prohibit all contacts with the Transkei – first of the South African black homelands to secure independence.
1988: In Strasbourg, Jacques Delors accused Margaret Thatcher of wrecking progress towards an open European market in 1992.
1989: Nigel Lawson resigned as chancellor of the Exchequer, plunging the government into the greatest turmoil of the Margaret Thatcher years. She named John Major, her recently appointed foreign secretary, to succeed Mr Lawson.
1989: An RAF corporal and his baby daughter were shot dead by the IRA at a petrol station near RAF Wildenrath in West Germany.
1991: Hundreds of foreigners left Kinshasa as military mutiny spread in Zaire.
1994: An environmental report called for a doubling of petrol prices in Britain in ten years and said the government had to move faster on restraining the use of public cars.
1999: House of Lords voted to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in the upper chamber of Parliament.
2001: The United States passed the Patriot Act into law following the atrocities of 11 September that year.
2002: More than 100 hostages died when Russian special forces using knock-out gas attacked Chechen guerrillas holding more than 800 people hostage in a Moscow theatre.
2010: A survey revealed that more people (91 per cent) owned a mobile phone compared to a watch (86 per cent).
Douglas Alexander, former Labour MP, 54; Cary Elwes, British actor, 59; Adam Mars-jones, British novelist and film critic, 67; Seth Macfarlane, creator of US TV series Family Guy, 48; Natalie Merchant, singer-songwriter, musician (10,000 Maniacs),
58; Sir Andrew Motion, poet laureate 1999-2009, 69; György Pauk, Hungarian violinist, 85; Jaclyn Smith, American actress (Charlie’s Angels), 76; Shaun Woodward, Labour MP 20012015, 623 Claire Cooper, British actress, 41; Uhuru Kenyatta, president of Kenya 2013 to present, 60; Julie Dawn Cole, actress, 64.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1911 Sorley Maclean, poet and teacher; 1911 Mahalia Jackson, gospel singer; 1914 Jackie Coogan, film actor; 1916 Francois Mitterand, president of France 1981-1995; 1942 Bob Hoskins, British actor.
Deaths: AD899 Alfred the Great; 1764 William Hogarth, painter and engraver; 1932: Molly Brown (“The Unsinkable Molly Brown”), socialist, activist and Titanic survivor; 1966 Alma Cogan, singer; 1972 Igor Sikorsky, Russian-born American engineer who developed first successful helicopter in 1939.