ON THIS DAY

NOVEMBER 9

1812: One of the worst winters on record began – and caused the defeat of the mighty Napoleon. During his retreat from Moscow, troops endured temperatures as low as -37C for 27 consecutive days.

1859: Flogging in the British Army was abolished.

1881: Dr Thomas Kalmus, US inventor of Technicolor in 1912, was born.

1938: “Kristallnacht” in Germany, when Nazis burned 267 synagogues and destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and businesses, smashing windows – which gave the night its name.

1979: A computer fault led to a full-scale nuclear alert in the United States.

1989: The East German government lifted the Iron Curtain to allow free travel through the Berlin Wall.

NOVEMBER 10

1871: Henry Morton Stanley finally made contact with the Scottish missionary at Lake Tanganyika with the words: “Dr Livingstone, I presume.”

1982: Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died ofaheartattack,aged75.

1988: George Bush was elected US President.

1991: In Calcutta, a record 95,000 people watched South Africa’s return to international cricket. They won by three wickets.

NOVEMBER 11

1831: Nat Turner, the leader of a bloody slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, was hanged

1880: Australian outlaw Ned Kelly was hanged outside Melbourne Jail. 1887: Construction of the Manchester Ship Canal starts at Eastham.

1940: Willys-Overland launched the Jeep (so-called from the initials GP, for general purpose car).

1946: Stevenage was designated the first new town in Britain.

1952: The first video recorder was demonstrated in Beverly Hills, California. NOVEMBER 12

1035: Death of Canute, Danish King of England.

1859: The man who invented the leotard – Jules Leotard – gave the world’s first flying trapeze display in Paris.

1997: Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

NOVEMBER 13

1805: Johann Georg Lehner invented the hot dog.

1850: Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, was born in Edinburgh.

1954: Great Britain won the first Rugby League World Cup, defeating France 16-12 in Paris.

1970: A 120mph tropical cyclone hit the densely populated Ganges Delta region of east Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people in one night.

1990: Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web page on a NeXT workstation.