● Dec 31 in History
1759 — Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum for the unused St
James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, and starts brewing Guinness. He exports his ale for the first time on May 19 1769, shipping six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain.
1790 — The first issue of Efimeris, the oldest Greek-language newspaper of which issues have survived till today, is published in Vienna.
1853 — To grab press and public attention, sculptor and natural history artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, creator of the world’s first dinosaur sculptures for the new Crystal Palace Park, hosts 21 leading academics and notable persons at a dinner party inside the life-size model of an iguanodon to mark the launch of the models. 1879 — In the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison lights up a street in Menlo Park, New Jersey. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company ran special trains to Menlo Park in response to public enthusiasm over the event. 1879 — The cornerstone is laid for ‘Iolani Palace in Honolulu, the royal residence of the rulers of the Kingdom of Hawai’i until the monarchy is overthrown in 1893. It is the only royal palace on US soil.
1938 — Cops in Indianapolis put the “drunkometer” to its first practical test as a breath analyser by making drivers breathe into a balloon. It proves a success. It was invented by Dr Rolla N Harger, an Indiana University biochemist, in 1931. He patented his device in 1936 and helped draft the act that made it the legal method for helping to establish blood-alcohol levels.
1968 — The Russian Tupolev Tu-144, the world’s first commercial supersonic transport aircraft, makes its maiden flight from Zhukovsky Airport, two months before the British-French Concorde. On May 26 1970 it becomes the world’s first commercial transport aircraft to exceed Mach 2. 1992 — Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in “the Velvet Divorce”, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.
1998 — The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the eurozone and establishes the value of the euro currency, which comes into existence on January 1 1999.
2004 — The 509m Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper in the world until 2009 (now the 11th tallest), is opened in Taipei, Taiwan.