The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Past times
ON THIS DAY
1777: George Washington defeated the British at the Battle of Princeton.
1870: Work on the Brooklyn Bridge began.
1883: Clement Attlee, Labour Party leader and prime minister from 1945-51, was born.
1892: Author JRR Tolkien, creator of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, was born in South Africa. He died in Bournemouth in 1973.
1911: The Siege of Sidney Street took place when anarchists were besieged by police in a house in London’s East End.
1924: English explorer Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.
1946: Nazi propagandist William Joyce – the notorious Lord Haw-Haw– was hanged for treason.
1959: Alaska became the 49th state of America.
1961: The millionth Morris Minor, the British car designed by Sir Alec Issigonis, came off the assembly line at Oxford.
1997: The death toll in Europe’s big freeze hit 220 as temperatures plunged to -10C from Britain to central Russia.
2009: Matt Smith was named as the new Doctor Who. He became the 11th Time Lord since the programme started in 1963.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
The family of a girl shot in the head by the Taliban for promoting women’s rights was allowed to stay in the UK, following an announcement by the Pakistani High Commission. Do you have a nostalgic picture you would like to share with P&J readers? Please send prints to: Past Times, The Press and Journal, Lang Stracht, Mastrick, Aberdeen AB15 6DF. Remember to include your name and address if you want us to return your picture.