NOW & THEN
NOVEMBER 22
1842: Mount St Helens in Washington state erupted.
1869: Cutty Sark, the last surviving tea clipper, was launched at Dumbarton.
1906: The international radio distress signal SOS was adopted.
1910: American inventor Arthur F Knight patented steel-shafted golf clubs.
1922: The Labour Party selected Ramsay Macdonald for a second spell as their leader.
1924: Britain ordered Egyptians out of Sudan.
1926: Scottish poet Hugh Mcdiarmid’s poem A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle was published. 1928: Ravel’s Bolero was performed for the first time in Paris. 1943: The RAF began the air bombing of Berlin
1946: The first Biro ballpoint pen went on sale. It was invented by a Hungarian, Laslo Biro. 1955: RCA Victor paid $25,000 dollars for the rights to Elvis Presley, a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi.
1957: The Miles Davis Quintet made its debut during a jazz concert at Carnegie Hall in New York.
1963: US president John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated on a visit to Dallas, Texas. His alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was later shot dead while in police custody.
1966: First US serviceman died in the Vietnam War.
1975: The monarchy was restored in Spain when Juan Carlos was sworn in as King in Madrid, two days after the death of General Franco.
1977: Concorde, British/french supersonic airliner, began service at New York’s Kennedy International Airport.
1986: Mike Tyson, at 20, became the youngest heavyweight boxing champion when he defeated Trevor Berbick in Las Vegas. 1986: Iranian surface-to-surface missile hit a residential area in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, wounding 20 civilians.
1987: Authorities accused Tamil rebels of attacking Indian troops in northern Sri Lanka in violation of a 48-hour truce.
1989: In Beirut, Lebanese president Rene Moawad was among 16 killed in a bomb attack, 17 days after he took power.
1990: Four crew of trawler Antares drowned when submarine HMS Trenchant snagged their nets in the Firth of Clyde. 1990: The Margaret Thatcher era ended when the prime minister told her Cabinet she would not fight on for the Tory leadership.
1995: Rosemary West was given multiple life sentences after being found guilty of murdering ten people in Gloucester.
2001: Jack Mcconnell was elected First Minister of Scotland to succeed Henry Mcleish. 2002: In Nigeria, more than 100 people were killed at an attack aimed at the Miss World contest. 2004: The Orange Revolution began in Ukraine.
2005: Angela Merkel became the first female Chancellor of Germany.
2010: Irish prime minister Brian Cowen announced he would call a general election in the New Year following a day of political turmoil over a European Unionled bail-out.