Now & Then
1813:
British fleet blockaded Chesapeake and Delaware Bays in United States during War of 1812.
Sikhs were defeated at Chillianwala in India, but the British suffered heavy casualties.
Lagos became a separate British colony from Nigeria.
The Independent British Labour Party was formed by Keir Hardie.
The writer Emile Zola’s letter, “J’accuse”, was published in support of Captain Alfred Dreyfuss, a Jewish artillery officer in the French army, whose conviction for treason was based on false evidence. Entirely innocent, he was incarcerated on Devil’s Island off the coast of South America from 1895 until 1899.
Earthquake in central Italy killed 30,000 people.
The first windscreen wipers introduced by Mills Munitions in Birmingham.
The pilot of an experimental jet fighter was the first man to use an emergency ejector seat button, landing safely from 7,875ft in Germany.
A government directive on wartime school uniforms decreed that all schoolwear must be either navy or grey, to avoid wastage of materials and dyes.
Belgium granted reforms in Belgian Congo after disturbances.
An outbreak of smallpox spread throughout Britain.
A reluctant Capitol Records released the first Beatles record in the United States “to see how it goes”. I Wanna Hold Your Hand became their fastest selling single – one million copies were sold in the first three weeks.
United Kingdom appointed first ambassador to communist China.
A Boeing 737 hit a bridge full of commuter traffic and landed in the Potomac river, Washington, hitting five ships, during a blizzard. Seventy-eight people died.
Employee of Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was charged with setting a New Year’s Eve fire that killed 96 people and injured more than 140 others.
A 600lb Second World War bomb found in a quarry at Brixton, Devon, was defused.
Thirty-thousand people showed strength of public support for ambulance workers at a rally
1849:
1886:
1893:
1898:
1915:
1921:
1942:
1943:
1959:
1962:
1964:
1972:
1982:
1987:
1989:
1990:
held in the city of London.
Undercover troops shot dead three men robbing a betting shop in the Falls Road, West Belfast.
Lithuanian station in Kauna was seized by Soviet paratroopers in a brutal assault that left 14 people dead.
Ford workers at the Dagenham plant were told to speed up or risk losing their jobs, as the company aimed to match output at German plants.
Space shuttle Endeavour headed for space for the third time as STS-54 launched from the Kennedy Space Centre.
An earthquake hit El Salvador, killing more than 800 people.
A gangster, dubbed Scotland’s “public enemy number one”, was shot dead in a supermarket car park. Kevin Carroll, nicknamed “Gerbil”, died at the scene in Glasgow.
A cruise ship carrying over 4,000 passengers and crew ran aground after hitting rocks off western Italy. Several people died.
1990:
1991:
1992:
1993:
2001:
2010:
2011:
Births:
1918 Lord Willis, playwright and novelist (creator of Dixon of Dock Green); 1919 Robert Stack, actor (The Untouchables); 1926 Craigie Aitchison CBE, Edinburghborn artist; 1926 Michael Bond CBE, British author, creator of Paddington Bear;.
1941 James Joyce, novelist; 1978 Hubert Humphrey, US vice-president 1965-69; 2009 Patrick Mcgoohan, actor; 2010 Teddy Pendergrass, US soul singer; 2017 Antony Armstrong-jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, photographer; 2020 Philip Tartaglia, Archbishop of Glasgow
Deaths:
As colourful uniforms were banned, pupils in 1943 try an escape chute extending from a third floor window to the ground