On this day

ARMISTICE DAY

1778: British forces take St Lucia in the West Indies from the French.

1831: Nat Turner, the leader of a bloody slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, was hanged in Jerusalem, the county seat.

1880: Australian outlaw Ned Kelly was hanged outside Melbourne Jail.

1887: Construction of the Manchester Ship Canal starts at Eastham.

1918: The Armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiegne to end the First World War.

1920: King George V unveiled the Cenotaph in Whitehall. 1925: The BBC broadcast its first radio play, The White Chateau by Reginald Berkley. 1940: Willys-Overland launched the Jeep (so-called from the initials GP, for general purpose car).

1946: Stevenage was designated the first new town in Britain.

1952: The first video recorder was demonstrated in Beverly Hills, California, by inventors John Mullin and Wayne Johnson.

1965: Ian Smith’s all-white Rhodesia government unilaterally declared independence from Britain. 1987: Van Gogh’s Irises fetched £29.3 million at Sotheby’s in New York.