Status Updates From On This Day: The History of...

January 11

'Tis the star-spangled banner;
O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free,
and the home of the brave!
Francis Scott Key, lyricist, who died today, 1814.

January 10

1839 Indian tea is auctioned for the first time in Britain.

January 9

This vice brings in one hundred million francs in taxes every year. I will certainly forbid it at once — as soon as you can name a virtue that brings in as much revenue,
Napoleon III, upon being asked to ban smoking. The emperor died today in exile in Kent at the age of 65 — 1873.

January 8

1895 French poet Paul Verlaine dies in poverty.

January 7

1970 Woodstock Festival — the biggest-ever rock event, held over three days last August with an attendance of half a million — caused $35,000 damage, neighbours claimed today in a civil action against Max Yasgur, the farmer who owns the land on which the festival was held.

January 6 Twelfth Night

1884 Gregor Mendel, the Austrian botanist who discovered the principles governing the inheritance of characteristics in living things, dies aged 62.

January 5

How could they tell?
Dorothy Parker, US writer, on being told that John Calvin Coolidge, 30th US president, had died today, 1933.

January 4

1896 Utah becomes the 45th state of the Union.

January 3

Human law is only by virtue of its accordance with right reason, and by this means it is clear that if flows from eternal law. In so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; and in such a case, it is no law at all, but rather an assertion of violence.

Thomas Aquinas, who died today in Rome, 1274.

January 2

1769 The British Royal Academy opens with painter Sir Joshua Reynolds as its first president.

January 1

AMERICA SLAVES "MUST BE UNCHAINED"

1863 As civil war rages in America, President Abraham Lincoln today declared freedom for all slaves in the southern states that have rebelled against his government. In Washington huge crowds of emancipated slaves celebrated the announcement, which honours a pledge made but the President before the war began. "The old South must be destroyed and replaced by new ...

December 31

1990 The giant Christmas tree in London's Trafalgar Square was attacked by a man with a chainsaw early this morning. Policer came upon Patrick Harward-Duffy, a 36-year-old Glaswegian, at 2;30 am as he was making his protest agains the unfairness of the Norwegian legal system. Harward-Duffy had sliced one-third of the way through the trunk of th 70-ft (23-m) pine, a present from the people of Oslo who...

December 30

1903 A raging fire breaks out in the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago during a performance and kills 578.

December 29

British Admiralty launches ship of iron

1860 The world's first true ironclad warship, Warrior, was launched at Blackwell on the River Thames today. The 9210-ton battleship is the first capital ship in the world to be built of iron throughout. The British Admiralty first showed interest in the idea of iron-built warships as a consequence of the calamitous showing of a wooden-built vessels during the ...

December 28

1734 Death of Rob Roy (Robert Macgregor), Scottish outlaw whose exploits were romanticized by Sir Walter Scott in the novel Rob Roy.

December 27

Peter Pan's premiere

1904 Five days later than originally planned, J. M. Barries Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up opened tonight at the Duke of York's theatre in London. Peter Pan is an ageless, motherless boy who comes into the nursery of three children called Darling, teaches them to fly and then takes them off into the night sky for fantastic adventures with exotic beings such as..

December 26

1904 Following months of unrest and riots, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia decrees that the conditions of the people, and particularly the peasants, will be improved.

December 25

Dalai Lama flees Lhasa

1950 The 15-year-old Dalai Lama, the temporal and religious leader of Tibet, is thought to have fled the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, to enlist further help for his county's struggle to maintain its status as the only country in the world entirely under the control of priests. The crisis has deepened since October when China first invaded Tibet. The Indian government has tried to ...

December 24

1828 William Burke goes on trial in Edinburgh, accused of robbing graves to sell corpses for medical research.

December 23

SAKHAROV RETURNS TO MOSCOW

1986 Soviet dissident and physicist Dr Andrei Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner, released on December 19 from the closed city of Gorky, returned to Moscow today. They have been in internal exile in Gorky since 1980. Their release comes following a telephone call from the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, whose policies of Glastnot have made their freedom possible.

December 22

1880 Death of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), English novelist who wrote Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda.

Patton dies after car crash

1945 American general George "Blood and Guts" Patton has died as a result of a car crash. The sixty-year-old general, famous for his drive and guts, had a glowing military record: during the current war he commanded the First Armoured Corps and in 1941 led the first US troops to fight in North Africa. Patton was given command of the 7th Army in 1943 which swept through Sicily.

December 20

1860 South Carolina secedes from the Union.

December 19

Scurvy claims Danish explorer

141 Vitus Bering, the Danish explorer in the service of the Russian Tsar, has died of scurvy after being shipwrecked along the Commander Islands off the Alaskan coast. An excellent navigator and explorer, he is credited with having discovered Alaska and the strait between it and Russia. In his first journey of exploration he discovered the strait while exploring a route ...

December 18

1919 Six months after his pioneering transatlantic flight with Sir Arthur Brown, British aviator Sir John Alcock is killed in a flying accident.

December 17

Britain faces a there-day week

1973 Prime Minister Edward Heath's confrontation with striking miners as part of his campaign to control inflation has provoked a crisis for the economy. Miners have continued with their overtime ban and as a result coal supplies to power stations are down by 40 per cent. As of today, industry and commerce will only be allowed five days' electricity in 14 until...

December 16

1850 The first immigrant ship, the Charlotte Jane arrives in New Zealand.

December 15

700,000 dead at Verdun

1916 The nine-month Battle of Verdun is finally over, at appalling cost and with little gain. The lines are more or less where they were in February — and more than 700,000 soldiers are dead. Meanwhile the Somme offensive has ended in a deadlock, again with little gained. It has cost the British 420,000 men, the French 195,000 and the Germans 600,000.

December 14

1861 Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, dies of typhoid,