ON THIS DAY

DECEMBER 14

1918: Women over 30 voted in a British general election for the first time. 1922: John Reith was appointed general manager of the fledgling BBC. 2012: Twenty-seven people, including 18 children, were killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, US. 2014: Actor Peter O’Toole died. He received eight Oscar nominations for films including Lawrence Of Arabia, without ever winning.

DECEMBER 15

1966: Walt Disney, cartoon film producer and creator, died aged 65.

1979: Two Canadians, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, came up with the idea for a game called Trivial Pursuit. It was manufactured in 1982 and sold 45 million copies worldwide in its first five years.

1991: More than 470 people drowned when a ferry carrying mainly Egyptian pilgrims sank in the Red Sea.

2014: Nelson Mandela was buried after a funeral ceremony that included a 21-gun salute and fly-overs by military aircraft as well as a eulogy by a traditional African leader.

DECEMBER 16

1929: The first all-talking feature film was made in Britain. Called The Clue Of The New Pin, it featured a young actor, John Gielgud, as the villain. 1937: The first performance took place in London of Noel Gay’s Me And My Girl, which introduced The Lambeth Walk. 2010: Rare first editions of Ian Fleming’s James Bond spy book sold for almost £30,000 when they went under the hammer at Dominic Winter auctioneers in Gloucestershire.

DECEMBER 17

1973: More than 30 people died after Arab guerrillas hijacked a West German airliner at Rome Airport.

1983: An IRA car bomb killed three police and three Christmas shoppers, and injured scores of others outside Harrods in London’s Knightsbridge. 1986: Mrs Davina Thompson created medical history when at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge she was given a new heart, lungs and liver.

DECEMBER 18

1912: Newspapers ran headlines of the discovery of Piltdown Man in Sussex. It was claimed to be the fossilised skull and remains of the earliest known European. In 1953 it was proved to be a hoax .

1952: Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men, were first seen on BBC TV, along with Little Weed.

1969: The death penalty for murder was formally abolished in Britain.

2012: The Queen capped her Diamond Jubilee year by becoming the first monarch to attend the Cabinet in more than two centuries.

2014: Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber who escaped from prison, died aged 84. See picture above.