DATELINE

December 10

1851: Melvil Dewey, who devised the library cataloguing system which bears his name, was born in New York.

1868: London’s first traffic lights were installed in Westminster, to help MPs get to the House of Commons. 1868: Whitaker’s Almanack was published for the first time.

1869: Wyoming became the first American territory to grant women the vote.

1896: Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Swedish chemist and industrialist who invented dynamite, died. On this day in 1901 the first Nobel Prizes were awarded.

1907: Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first time it had been awarded to an English writer. 1936: Edward VIII signed the Instrument of Abdication. He choose his love of American divorcee Wallis Simpson over his royal duty.