On this day: Apollo 12 landed on the moon

On this day in 1969 the US spacecraft Apollo 12 landed a module on the Moon. AFP/Getty

1493: Christopher Columbus discovered Puerto Rico on his second voyage.

1620: The Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with pioneer settlers.

1850: Alfred, Lord Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate. He held the post until his death 42 years later.

1863: Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg address.

1905: Thirty-nine men died when fire broke out in the early morning at a model lodging house in Watson Street, near Glasgow Cross. There were between 300 and 400 people in the converted warehouse at the time.

1905: The cross-Channel steamer Hilda ran aground in fog and a snowstorm off St Malo. Only five of the 128 on board survived.

1906: London was selected to host the 1908 Olympic Games.

1931: The Bermuda, a 19,000-ton liner, was destroyed by fire in Belfast harbour.

1933: Women were given the vote in Spain.

1942: Soviet troops counter-attacked at Stalingrad and surrounded German troops.

1951: The world’s first atomic central heating plant started operating at Harwell.

1960: The first vertical take-off aircraft, made by Hawker Siddeley, made its maiden flight.

1960: National Service in Britain ended.

1969: US spacecraft Apollo 12 landed module on the Moon.

1975: The movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Jack Nicholson, was released.

1976: Mrs Grace Hall set the female shouting record in Exeter by scoring 110 decibels.

1979: Rock ‘n’Roll singer Chuck Berry was released from prison having been sentenced to four months for evasion of $200,000 in taxes.

1987: A 1931 Bugatti Royale was sold for a £5.5 million at an auction in London.

1990: The Cold War officially ended when 22 heads of state met in Paris and agreed to start dismantling Europe’s armouries.

1991: Eduard Shevardnadze was re-appointed as Soviet foreign minister.

1991: Terry Waite, special envoy of former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Runcie, returned home after nearly five years as a hostage in Beirut.

1998: Vincent Van Gogh’s “Portait of the Artist Without Beard” sold at auction for $71.7 million.

1999: The People’s Republic of China launched its first Shenzhou spacecraft.

2008: The names, addresses, telephone numbers and jobs of 12,000 British National Party members were leaked on the internet, leading to many on the list receiving threatening and abusive phone calls and e-mails.

2010: Prime minister David Cameron’s enterprise adviser, Lord Young, was forced to resign after claiming that people have “never had it so good”, despite the ongoing economic crisis.

2010: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 – the seventh move based on the books by JK Rowling, was released worldwide.

2013: Twenty-three people were killed by a suicide bombing attack in Beirut.

2014: Nicola Sturgeon took up the post of Scotland’s First Minister, in succession to Alex Salmond who resigned after seven years in office.

Raymond Blanc OBE, chef and restaurateur, 66; Charles Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton, former justice secretary, 64; Jodie Foster, actress, 53; Calvin Klein, fashion designer, 73; David Lloyd-Jones, conductor, 81; Ted Turner, media mogul, 77; Larry King, TV host, 82; Allison Janney, actress, 56; Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, who sent the world’s first tweet, 39; Gail Devers, triple Olympic champion athlete, 49; Sandrine Holt, model and actress, 43; Lady Davina Lewis (born Windsor), daughter of Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, 38; William Russell, actor, 91.

Births: 1563 Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, Elizabethan statesman; 1600 King Charles I; 1805 Vicomte Ferdinand de Lesseps, engineer who built the Suez Canal; 1849 Sir John Fleming, scientist; 1917 Indira Gandhi, first woman prime minister of India.

Deaths: 1665 Nicolas Poussin, painter; 1798 Theobald Wolfe Tone, Irish patriot; 1828 Franz Schubert, composer; 1976 Sir Basil Spence, architect; 2011 Basil D’Oliveira CBE, cricketer; 2011 John Neville OBE, actor; 2014 Mike Nichols, film director and producer