IT HAPPENED TODAY

DECEMBER7

43 great BC: Roman Cicero orator, (Marcus was Tullius), executed the for Antony. a series of attacks on Mark

1732: The original Covent Garden Opera House opened with Way Of The World, by William Congreve.

1783: William Pitt the Younger became the youngest of Britain’s prime ministers — he was 24.

1815: Marshal Ney, Napoleon’s most famous general, was executed for supporting Napoleon at Waterloo when he was ordered by the Allies to arrest him.

1817: Captain Bligh (above), captain of mutiny ship The Bounty, died in London.

1940: Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo (below) remarried in San Francisco having divorced in 1939.

1941: The Japanese attacked the US fleet in Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.

1982: Charles Brooks Jnr, a prisoner at Fort Worth, was executed by a lethal injection, the first to die by this method in the US.

1988: Peter Langan, restaurateur, co-owner with Michael Caine of the famous London brasserie Langan’s, died in a fire at his home.

2014: Mayor of Paris calls for diesel cars to be banned from the French capital by 2020, to reduce pollution

2016: Pakistan International Airways plane crashes north of Islamabad, killing all 48 on board, including singer turned preacher Junaid Jamshed

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Fifteen safety recommendations announced following the Croydon tram crash.

BIRTHDAYS: Sue Johnston, actress, 75; Rosalind Ayres, actress, 72; Tom Waits, singer, 69; Colin Hendry, former footballer, 53; Damien Rice, singer, 45; John Terry, footballer, 38; Emily Browning, actress, 30; Nicholas Hoult (above), actor, 29.