NOW & THEN
1520: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sailed through the strait later named after him and into the Pacific Ocean.
1666: Battle of Rullion Green and defeat of the Covenanters by Sir Thomas Dalyell.
1717: The pirate Blackbeard attacked the French merchant ship La Concorde, which he then captured and renamed Queen Anne’s Revenge.
1720: Irish pirate Anne Bonny and her English accomplice, Mary Read, were sentenced to death in Jamaica. They were subsequently given a stay of execution as they were both pregnant.
1814: The Times newspaper printed for the first time using automatic, steam-powered presses, heralding the beginning of newspapers being available to a mass readership.1885: British forces occupied Mandalay in Burma.
1905: Sinn Fein founded in Dublin.
1912: Albania declared independence.
1916: London experienced its first air raid.
1918: The Kaiser abdicated the crown of Prussia and Germany. 1919: American-born Lady Nancy Astor became the first female to take her seat in the House of Commons. Constance Markievicz was the first woman elected to the Commons although, being a representative of Sinn Fein, she did not take her seat.
1934: Winston Churchill gave warning that weak defences could leave Britain “tortured into absolute subjection” in a war with Germany.
1937: General Franco began a naval blockade of the Spanish coast.
1942: A fire that destroyed Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston resulted in 492 deaths. 1943: Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met in Tehran to discuss postwar policy.
1948: “Hopalong” Cassidy made his first television appearance. 1960: Mauritania became an independent Islamic republic. 1964: Nasa launched Mariner 4 to explore Mars.
1968: John Lennon was fined £150 for unauthorised possession of cannabis.
1971: Jordan’s prime minister, Wasfi Tell, was assassinated at an Arab conference in Cairo. 1977: Rhodesia announced
at least 1,200 deaths in raids against black nationalist guerrillas across the border in Mozambique.
1987: South African Airways jet with 159 people aboard crashed in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius.
1989: West German chancellor Helmut Kohl proposed a plan for the confederation of East and West Germany.
1990: Singapore’s prime minister Lee Kwan Yew stepped down after 31 years in power.
1994: Eight rebel MPS were stripped of the Conservative whip as Prime Minister John Major survived a vote of confidence on Europe.
1994: In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was clubbed to death by a fellow inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium.