Now & Then
◆ 18 JANUARY
1126: Emperor Huizong abdicated the Chinese throne in favour of his son, Emperor Qinzong.
1535: Francisco Pizarro founded the city of Lima, Peru.
1671: The pirate Henry Morgan defeated Spanish defenders and captured Panama.
1778: Captain Cook became the first European to visit Hawaii – originally the Sandwich Islands. 1788: A penal settlement was established in Botany Bay, Australia.
1812: The Comet, built by John Wood and Co at Port Glasgow, the first Scottish passenger steamboat, made her trial trip from Glasgow to Greenock. She was designed by Henry Bell.
1884: Dr William Price attempted to cremate the body of his infant son Iesu Grist (Welsh for Jesus Christ) Price, which set a legal precedent for cremations in the UK.
1911: United States pilot Eugene Ely, in a Curtiss aircraft, made the first landing on the deck of a ship, the cruiser Pennsylvania moored in San Francisco Bay.
1944: The 900-day siege of Leningrad ended.
1963: Charles de Gaulle’s government insisted Britain be barred from the European Common Market.
1964: Plans to build the World Trade Center in New York were announced.
1967: Albert Desalvo, the Boston Strangler, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, armed robbery, assault and sex offences. 1973: The BBC broadcast the final episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
1974: Israel and Egypt signed a weapons accord.
1977: Scientists identified a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of Legionnaires disease. 1978: Geoffrey Boycott captained the England cricket team for the first time in a match against Pakistan in Karachi.
1989: Knuckle dusters, hand claws and other offensive weapons were officially banned by the Home Office.
1991: Iraq launched SCUD attacks against Israel.
1993: West Indies defeated Australia 2-0 to win cricket’s World Series Cup. 1994: A packed public meeting in Edinburgh protested against plans of the trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland to establish a gallery of Scottish Art in Glasgow. 1997: In north-west Rwanda, Hutu militia members killed three Spanish aid workers and three soldiers and seriously wounded one other.
1997: Børge Ousland of Norway became the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. 2000: The Tagish Lake meteorite hit the earth in British Columbia, Canada.
2002: Sierra Leone civil war was declared over.
2003: A bushfire killed four people and destroyed more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia. 2005: The Airbus A380, the world’s largest commercial jet, was unveiled in Toulouse, France. 2007: The strongest storm in the UK in 17 years killed 14 people. Hurricane Kyrill caused more than 40 deaths across 20 countries. 2009: Hamas announced they would accept the Israel Defence Forces’s offer of a ceasefire.
◆ BIRTHDAYS
Jane Horrocks, actress, 60; Peter Beardsley MBE, footballer, 63; John Boorman CBE, film director, 91; Kevin Costner, actor, 69; Richard Dunwoody MBE, jockey, 60; Sir Rocco Forte, hotelier, 79; Paul Freeman, actor, 81; Paul Keating, Australian prime minister 19916, 80; Sir Mark Rylance, artistic director, Globe Theatre 19952006, 64; Jason Segel, actor, 44; Pep Guardiola, football coach, 53; Dave Bautista, actor and former professional wrestler, 55.
◆ ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1779 Peter Roget, physician and lexicographer; 1882 AA Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh; 1884 Arthur Ransome, novelist; 1892 Oliver Hardy, comic actor; 1904 Cary Grant, actor; 1911 Danny Kaye, entertainer; 1933 Dr David Bellamy OBE, botanist. Deaths: 1954 Sydney Greenstreet, actor; 1980 Sir Cecil Beaton, photographer; 1985 Lord Wolfenden, social reformer; 2009 Tony Hart, artist, TV presenter; 2016 Glenn Frey, musician (The Eagles); 2017 Baroness Heyhoeflint OBE, English cricketer; 2020 Peter Hobday, radio presenter