NOW & THEN
26 SEPTEMBER
1580: Francis Drake and crew arrived back in Plymouth in the 100- ton Golden Hind to become the first Englishmen to circumnavigate the world. 1687: The Parthenon was destroyed when the Venetians bombarded Athens.
1831: British Association for the Advancement of Science set up. 1860: First Open golf championship was held at Prestwick. The Belt was won by Willie Park of Musselburgh. 1887: The first gramophone, invented by Emile Berliner, was patented.
1892: John Philip Sousa’s band made its first public appearance in New Jersey.
1904: Earl Grey was named the British governor- general of Canada.
1907: New Zealand became self- governing dominion within British Commonwealth.
1918: Allies launched offensive that eventually broke Germany’s Hindenburg Line.
1934: The Cunard liner Queen Mary was launched from John Brown’s yard at Clydebank. 1937: Arabs murdered British district commissioner for Galilee. 1938: Adolf Hitler issued an ultimatum to the government of Cechoslovakia damanding possession of Sudetenland. 1941: British Eighth Army formed.
1944: Soviet forces occupied Estonia.
1945: All old Dutch banknotes were declared invalid.
1950: United Nations forces recaptured Seoul, capital of South Korea.
1953: Sugar rationing ended in Britain.
1957: Bernstein & Sondheim’s musical West Side Story premiered at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York.
1968: Hawaii Five- O was broadcast for the first time on CBS- TV.
1969: The Beatles released their Abbey Road album.
1970: A groups of Protestant youths attacked the Catholic Unity Flats during rioting in the Protestant Shankill Road area of Belfast.
1970: Jordan’s King Hussein named new government to placate critics who accused him of plotting to liquidate Palestinian guerrillas in his country.
1976: Leaders of five black African nations declined to accept plan presented by Rhodesia’s prime minister, Ian Smith, to achieve black majority rule.
1984: Britain and China initialled agreement to return Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997.
1989: Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze told the United Nations General Assembly that Moscow would join the United States in reducing or destroying all chemical weapons.
2000: The MS Express Samina sank off Paros in the Aegean sea, killing 80 passengers.
2002: The overcrowded Senegalese ferry MV Joola capsized off the coast of Gambia killing more than 1,000.
2008: German commandos arrested two men on a KLM plane at Cologne airport. They were suspected of planning attacks and had intended to carry out “holy war”.