NOW & THEN
DECEMBER 7
521: Birth of St Columba or Colmcille in Ireland
1732: The original Covent Garden Opera House, then called the Theatre Royal, opened in London.
1783: William Pitt the Younger became the youngest British prime minister, at 24.
1889: Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera The Gondoliers premiered at the Savoy Theatre, London.
1898: A campaigner for women’s suffrage, Mrs Frances Birdloughton, blustered her way into the Sparrow’s Club in London, dressed in male clothes, and locked herself in the lavatories for 18 hours.
1909: A Royal proclamation was read creating the self-governing Union of South Africa, bringing together the four colonies of Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Transvaal and Orange River.
1916: David Lloyd George succeeded Herbert Asquith as prime minister.
1917: USA declared war on Austria-hungary.
1937: Carl Romme, minister of social affairs in the Netherlands, declared that married women were forbidden from working.
1941: Japanese aircraft attacked the United States Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor. The death toll amounted to almost 2,500.
1959: Eight members of the crew of the Broughty Ferry lifeboat, Mona, died when it went to the aid of the drifting North Carr light vessel in a gale.
1972: Apollo 17 was launched.
1979: Charles Haughey elected prime minister of the Republic of Ireland for the first time, on the resignation of Jack Lynch.
1982: Charles Brooks, a prisoner at Fort Worth, Texas, was executed by being given a lethal injection, the first to die by that method in the United States.
1988: An earthquake destroyed the Armenian town of Spitak, killing about 50,000 people. 1991: More than 100 people were injured when two trains crashed in the four-mile-long Severn Tunnel under the Bristol Channel.
2002: A fire destroyed 11 buildings in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town, causing millions of pounds worth of damage. It burned for 36 hours.
2007: Former champion jockey Kieran Fallon and two other riders were cleared of race-fixing when an Old Bailey trial collapsed. They had been accused of conspiracy to defraud customers of betting exchange Betfair.
2008: All pork products made in the Irish Republic since September were recalled over fears they were contaminated with a toxic substance.
2009: Sir Richard Branson unveiled the rocket plane he hoped to use to take fare-paying passengers into space.
2014: The mayor of Paris called for diesel cars to be banned from the city by 2020 in order to reduce pollution.
2017: Paisley was one of five contenders bidding to be named the UK City of Culture for 2021, but lost out to Coventry.
2017: HMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest, most powerful warship ever built for the Royal Navy, was commissioned by the Queen in a ceremony at Portsmouth. The £3.1 billion carrier would support 48 aircraft.