NOW & THEN
10 OCTOBER
1375: Northern Netherlands flooded after Westfriese sea wall broke.
1802: The Edinburgh Review was published. Its first editor was Sydney Smith and its aim was “to erect a higher standard of merit, and secure a bolder and a purer taste in literature, and to apply philosophical principles and the maxims of truth and humanity to politics”.
1839: The first Bradshaw’s Railway Timetable was issued. It continued publication until 10 March, 1961.
1865: John Hyatts patented the billiard ball.
1881: The Savoy Theatre, London, first public building to be lit by electricity, opened with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience.
1892: The entire Hong Kong national cricket team died in a shipwreck off Taiwan.
1903: Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women’s Social and Political Union to fight for female emancipation in Britain.
1913: Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were linked by the blowing up of the Gamboa Dam of Panama Canal.
1932: The world’s biggest dam – the Dniepr Dam in USSR – went into operation.
1935: George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway in New York.
1935: The League of Nations denounced Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia.
1938: Nazi Germany completed occupation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.
1951: First party political broadcast put out, by Lord Samuel on behalf of the Liberal Party.
1961: A volcano erupted on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha and the whole population was brought to Britain.
1963: The second James Bond film, From Russia With Love, starring Sean Connery, premiered in London.
1964: The 18th modern Olympic Games opened in Tokyo, Japan.
1970: Fiji became an independent member of the Commonwealth, having been a British colony since 1874.
1974: Labour won the general election by an overall majority of three seats, and Harold Wilson became prime minister.
1981: An IRA bomb outside the Guards’ barracks, Chelsea, killed one and injured 40, including 25 Irish guardsmen.
1981: Former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s funeral was held in Cairo.
1983: Israel’s Knesset voted 60-53 to endorse Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister.
1988: Sandy Lyle won the World Matchplay Golf Championship at Wentworth.
1988: Suspected Tamil militants attacked village in northern Sri Lanka, killing at least 47 people as they slept.
1990: Left-wing guerrillas bolted door of a passenger train carriage in southern India and set it on fire, killing at least 47.
1997: An Austral Airlines DC-932 crashed and exploded near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay, killing 74.
2006: The Greek city of Volos flooded in one of the prefecture’s worst recorded floods.
2009: After closed borders for nearly 200 years, Armenia and Turkey signed protocols in Zurich to open their borders.
BIRTHDAYS
Amanda Burton, actress, 63; Judith Chalmers OBE, television presenter, 84; Charles Dance OBE, actor and director, 73; Fiona Fullerton, actress and singer, 63; Martin Kemp, actor and rock musician, 58; Nicholas Parsons CBE, broadcaster, 96; Rebecca Pidgeon, actress, 54; Sir Matthew Pinsent CBE, four times Olympic gold medallist oarsman, 49Chris Tarrant OBE, broadcaster, 73; Sir Willard White CBE, operatic singer, 73; Una Healy, TV presenter, singer-songwriter (The Saturdays), 38; David Lee Roth, singersongwriter, actor (Van Halen), 65; Dan Stevens, actor, 37.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1813 Giuseppe Verdi, composer; 1731 Henry Cavendish, chemist and physicist who discovered hydrogen; 1780 John Abercrombie, Aberdeen-born, first consulting physician in Scotland; 1906 1917 Thelonious Monk, pianist;; 1930 Harold Pinter, playwright, screenwriter and director. Deaths: 1708 David Gregory, Aberdeen-born mathematician and astronomer; 1983 Sir Ralph Richardson, actor; 1985 Orson Welles, actor, director, writer, producer; 2009 Stephen Gately, pop singer (Boyzone); 2010 Dame Joan Sutherland DBE, soprano.