NOW & THEN
1 OCTOBER
331BC: Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia at the Battle of Gaugamela.
959AD: Edgar I (“the Peaceful”) became King of all England.
1568: The Bannatyne MS, the most extensive collection of early Scottish poetry extant, was made by George Bannatyne, an Edinburgh merchant, while staying at Newtyle in Angus to escape the plague.
1763: The contract to construct the North Bridge, Edinburgh, was signed.
1792: Money orders were first issued in Britain.
1814: The Congress of Vienna began – to redraw the map of Europe following the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte.
1838: Britain’s first Afghan war, to prevent increasing Russian influence threatening British position in India.
1843: The News of the World began publication in London.
1864: Seventy thousand people were killed when a cyclone struck Calcutta.
1870: The first official issue of the postcard was made in Britain by the Post Office, together with the introduction of the halfpenny postage stamp.
1890: Yosemite National Park was established.
1911: Royal Navy’s then-biggest ship, the battleship King George V, was launched.
1918: Arab forces under the command of TE Lawrence (“of Arabia”) captured Damascus.
1923: Failure of Black Reichswehr coup in Germany.
1926: An oil field accident cost aviator Wiley Post his left eye. He used the settlement money to buy his first aircraft.
1931: Britain’s first traffic lights were installed as an experiment in Oxford Street, London.
1938: Germany annexed Sudetenland (approximately one-third of Czechoslovakia) following the Munich Agreement.
1949: The People’s Republic was founded in China, with Mao Tsetung its chairman.
1960: Nigeria achieved independence within the Commonwealth.
1961: First edition of Songs of Praise was broadcast.
1962: BBC transmitted first edition of the Tonight show.
1966: Speer and von Schirach were released from Spandau, leaving Rudolf Hess the sole prisoner from the Nazi war trials.
1969: Concorde 001 broke the sound barrier for the first time during a test flight in France.
1971: Disneyworld, the world’s largest amusement park, opened in Florida.
1974: The first Mcdonald’s opened in London to speed up the fast-food revolution.
1977: Pele retired from football after 1,363 games, in which the Brazilian scored 1,281 goals.
1982: Internal telegrams in Britain were abolished.
1992: Japanese scientists denied that a malfunction in a reactor near Tokyo had threatened a core meltdown.
1995: British shops were forced to observe a European Commission directive and switch to the metric system of weights, or face fines of up to £5,000.
2009: The Supreme Court took over the judicial functions of the House of Lords.