NOW & THEN
4 OCTOBER
1537: The first complete English-language bible (the Matthew Bible) was printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.
1675: Dutch mathematician Christian Huygens patented the pocket watch.
1824: Mexico became a republic.
1853: Turkey declared war on Russia, starting the Crimean War.
1854: Abraham Lincoln made his first political speech at the Illinois State Fair.
1865: Napoleon III and Otto von Bismarck met at Biarritz, where Napoleon III agreed to Prussian supremacy in Germany and to a united Italy.
1873: Tom Kidd won the 13th Open Championship with a score of 179 at St Andrews.
1883: The Boys’ Brigade was founded in Glasgow, by Sir William Alexander Smith.
1883: The Orient Express made its first run, linking Turkey to Europe by rail.
1911: The first escalator on the London Underground was installed at Earl’s Court Station.
1916: Six-hundred French soldiers died when the cruiser Callia was torpedoed in the Mediterranean.
1930: Brazilian revolution, with Getulio Vargas becoming president.
1952: The first external pacemaker, developed by Dr Paul Zoll of Harvard Medical School, was fitted to David Schwartz to control his heartbeats. The first internal pacemaker was fitted six years later.
1957: Soviet Union put the first spacecraft, Sputnik I, into orbit around Earth.
1959: Soviet spacecraft Lunik III sent back the first close-up pictures of the Moon.
1969: China announced two nuclear weapons tests, including a hydrogen bomb explosion in the atmosphere.
1973: Peace talks began in Northern Ireland in an attempt to end five years of conflict that had taken almost 900 lives.
1983: Richard Noble made the fastest official land-speed mile over Black Rock Desert, Nevada, with his Rolls-royce Avon 302 jet-powered Thrust 2, at 633.468mph.
1992: Two nine-storey flats were demolished in Amsterdam when an El Al Boeing 747 cargo crashed, with two engines on fire, soon after leaving Schiphol Airport, killing 50 people.
1993: The hardline rebellion against Boris Yeltsin was crushed as Russian parliament leaders surrendered to troops loyal to the president.
1994: At the Labour Party conference in Blackpool, leader Tony Blair proposed ditching Clause 4, the party’s commitment to common ownership.
1996: The Ministry of Defence admitted some British troops who served in the Gulf campaign might have been poisoned by pesticides.
2008: OJ Simpson, the former American football star and actor, was found guilty of 12 charges of armed robbery, conspiracy to kidnap and assault with a deadly weapon after being accused of robbing two dealers of sports memorabilia in 2007.
2012: Nineteen people were killed when they were buried by a landslide in Yunnan, China.