ON THIS DAY
1715: James Stuart, the ‘Old Pretender’, landed at Peterhead to lead a Jacobite rebellion. It failed.
1716: Lincoln’s Inn Theatre, London, put on England’s first pantomime, which included Harlequin, Columbine and Pantaloon.
1858: Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer of popular operas including La Boheme, Madame Butterfly and Turandot, which he never completed, was born in Lucca.
1894: Alfred Dreyfus, French officer found guilty of selling military secrets, was sent to Devil’s Island. Innocent of the crime, he was eventually exonerated.
1895: Wilhelm Roentgen made the first radiograph, or X-ray – of his wife’s hand.
1916: The British Ministry of Pensions was established.
1938: A fish identified as a coelacanth, thought to have been extinct for 65 million years, was caught by a fisherman off the coast of South Africa.
1989: A Romanian revolution overthrew president Nicolae Ceausescu; Ceausescu’s son Nicu was arrested.