On this day: Bush and Gorbachev declared Cold War over

In 1989, US president George Bush and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev declared that the Cold War was over. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

741: St Zachary began his reign as Catholic pope, succeeding Gregory III.

1557: Signing of the Common or Godly Band by the Earls of Argyll, Glencairn and Morton and others, the “Lords of the Congregation”, the first manifesto of the Reformation in Scotland.

1694: Triennial Bill became law in England, providing for new parliament to be elected every third year.

1808: Madrid surrendered to Napoleon Bonaparte’s French forces.

1828: Andrew Jackson was elected as the seventh US president.

1836: Three people were killed at Great Corby, near Carlisle, in the first fatal railway derailment.

1906: Her Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen opened.

1909: King Edward VII dissolved Parliament, and taxes on beer, spirits, tobacco and cars were lifted because no budget had been passed.

1926: Crime novelist Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared for 11 days.

1931: Alka Seltzer went on sale for the first time.

1944: The Home Guard “stood down” with a parade of 7,000 in Hyde Park, London.

1947: The audience cheered for 30 minutes when A Streetcar Named Desire, with Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, opened on Broadway.

1948: Don Bradman scored his last century – 123 in his final innings) – when more than 94,000 people turned up to watch his testimonial match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

1958: Dutch businesses were nationalised in Indonesia.

1965: The Beatles began their last UK tour with a concert at the Odeon cinema, Glasgow.

1967: Dr Christiaan Barnard of South Africa performed the world’s first human heart transplant operation. The recipient, 53-year-old Louis Washkansky, lived for 18 days.

1971: India invaded West Pakistan, sparking the Indo-Pakistan War, which lasted for 14 days.

1979: Eleven fans were trampled to death during a Who concert in Cincinnati.

1984: About 2,500 were reported dead and several thousand blinded after poisonous cyanide gas leaked from Union Carbide pesticide factory at Bhopal in central India.

1988: Edwina Currie said on television that most of Britain’s egg production was affected by salmonella.

1989: US president George Bush and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev declared that the Cold War was over.

1990: Russian parliament voted to allow private ownership of land for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution.

1992: Two IRA bombs exploded in Manchester. Sixty-four people were taken to hospital.

1995: Stephen Dorrell, The health secretary, said there was “no conceivable risk” of people being infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of BSE, from eating beef.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1368 Charles VI, king of France; 1753 Samuel Crompton, inventor of spinning-mule which revolutionised cotton industry; 1755 Gilbert Stuart, portrait painter; 1795 Sir Rowland Hill KCB, social reformer who introduced the postage stamp; 1820 Thomas Beecham, inventor of Beecham’s pills; 1838 Octavia Hill, philanthropist; 1857 Joseph Conrad, writer; 1872 Jack Judge, music hall entertainer who wrote It’s A Long Way to Tipperary; 1875 Max Meldrum, Scottish painter; 1884 Rajendra Prasad, first president of India; 1895 Anna Frued, psychoanalyst; 1897 Kate O’Brien, Irish novelist and playwright; 1905 Leslie Ames CBE, England Test cricketer; 1914 Irving Fine, composer; 1923 1927 Andy Williams, singer; 1923 Trevor Bailey, England Test cricketer, writer and broadcaster; 1949 John Akii-Bue, world record-breaking and Olympic champion hurdler; 1952 Mel Smith, comedian, Nicky Stevens, singer (Brotherhood of Man), 63.

Deaths: 311AD, Diocletian, Roman emperor; 1154 Pope Anastasius IV; 1882 Archibald Campbell Tait, Edinburgh-born Archbishop of canterbury; 1888 Carl Zeiss, lens-maker, founder of Carl Zeiss Jena; 1894 Robert Louis Stevenson, author; 1910 Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist; 1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist painter; 1926 Charles Ringling, circus owner; 1935 Princess Victoria of Wales, daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra; 1976 Mary Nash, actress; 1991 Alex Graham, Scottish cartoonist, creator of Fred Bassett; 1980 Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of British Union of Fascists; 1995 Jimmy Jewel, comedian and actor; 1999 Madeline Kahn, actress; 2003 David Hemmings, actor, director; 2009 Richard Todd, British actor and soldier.