1973 President Nixon halted US bombing in North Vietnam after peace talks in Paris.
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2001 the Wikipedia website went online.
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2009 US Airways Flight 1549 safely crash-landed in the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.
1604 the Hampton Court Conference ended, in which King James I authorised a new translation of the Bible.
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1920 prohibition of the sale of alcohol began in America.
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1944 General Dwight D Eisenhower arrived in England as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe.
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1969 21-year-old student Jan Palach set fire to himself in Prague in protest at the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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1970 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi became the leader of Libya, following a coup against King Idris.
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1979 the Shah of Iran was forced into exile in Egypt.
1773 Captain Cook’s Resolution crossed the Antarctic Circle, the first ship to do so.
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1874 conjoined Thai-American brothers Chang and Eng Bunker, regarded as the original Siamese twins, died within two hours of one another, aged 62, in North Carolina.
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1912 Captain Robert Scott reached the South Pole, to discover his rival Roald Amundsen had reached it first.
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1983 the BBC introduced breakfast television.
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1991 allied forces launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraqi positions following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.
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1995 more than 6,400 people were killed when an earthquake struck Kobe, Japan.
1778 Captain Cook sighted the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).
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1813 Joseph Farwell Glidden, farmer who patented the first commercially viable barbed wire, born in New Hampshire.
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1871 William of Prussia was proclaimed the first German Emperor.
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1882 AA Milne, children’s writer, was born.
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1884 Arthur Ransome, children’s writer, was born.
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1911 piloted by Lt Eugene B Ely, the first aircraft to land on a ship touched down on the cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbour.
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1919 the Versailles Peace Conference opened.
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1989 Bruce Chatwin, travel writer (In Patagonia) and novelist, died in Nice aged 48.
1736 James Watt, designer of the steam engine that largely powered the Industrial Revolution, was born in Greenock, Renfrewshire.
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1813 Sir Henry Bessemer, inventor of a steel production process that reduced the alloy’s price to a fifth of its former cost, was born in Charlton, Hertfordshire.
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1915 in the first air raid on Britain, a German zeppelin crossed the Norfolk coast and bombed Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn.
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1937 aviator Howard Hughes set a new record by flying from Los Angeles to New York in 7 hours and 28 minutes.
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1966 Indira Gandhi became India’s first woman prime minister.
1841 Britain and China signed the Convention of Chuanbi, which ceded Hong Kong to the British.
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1900 RD Blackmore, novelist (Lorna Doone), died.
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1900 John Ruskin, art critic, died.
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1942 Reinhard Heydrich chaired the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, which established the framework for the final solution to the Jewish question.
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1972 unemployment in the UK rose above one million for the first time since the 1930s.
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1987 Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy in Lebanon, was kidnapped in Beirut.
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1993 Audrey Hepburn, actress (Roman Holiday, My Fair Lady), died aged 63.
1790 Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the guillotine to the newly formed National Assembly of Paris as a humane method of execution.
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1793 King Louis XVI of France was executed (by guillotine).
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1907 taxi cabs were officially recognised in Britain.
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1911 the first Monte Carlo car rally began.
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1924 Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), Russian revolutionary, died at Gorki, Moscow, aged 53.
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1950 George Orwell (Eric Blair), essayist and novelist, died aged 46.
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1954 the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched.
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1976 Concorde made its inaugural commercial flight, from London to Bahrain in 3hr 37min.
1440 Ivan III, the Great, whose conquests created a consolidated Russian state, was born.
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1666 Shah Jahan, Mughal emperor of India, died.
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1788 George Gordon Byron (6th Baron Byron), poet, was born.
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1901 Queen Victoria, Britain’s monarch since 1837, died.
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1905