On this day: Forth Rail Bridge marks centenary

EVENTS, birthdays, annviersaries
On this day in 1990 a fireworks party celebrated the centenary of the Forth Bridge at Queensferry. Picture: TSPLOn this day in 1990 a fireworks party celebrated the centenary of the Forth Bridge at Queensferry. Picture: TSPL
On this day in 1990 a fireworks party celebrated the centenary of the Forth Bridge at Queensferry. Picture: TSPL

Close season for trout fishing begins.

1769: Captain Cook reached New Zealand.

1799: The Royal Navy frigate HMS Lutine sank off the coast of Holland. Her bell was later recovered and presented to Lloyd’s of London where it was traditionally struck when news of an overdue ship arrived - once for the loss of a ship and twice for her return.

1806: The first carbon paper was patented by Ralph Wedgewood in London.

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1876: The first greyhound race using an artificial hare, the Hendon Cup, was run.

1879: Britain invaded Afghanistan.

1913: In America Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line.

1920: Oxford University admitted its first 100 women for full degrees.

1922: The first royal broadcast was made by the Prince of Wales, on 2LO, 11 days before it changed its named to the British Broadcasting Company.

1932: London Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first performance.

1946: Woman’s Hour, a daily programme of music, advice and entertainment for the home, was first broadcast.

1949: The state of East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic, was formed.

1959: The first photographs of the far side of the Moon were transmitted from Russia’s Lunik III.

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1963: United States, Britain and Soviet Union signed nuclear test ban treaty.

1970: Egyptian vice-president Anwar Sadat officially succeeded the late General Gamal Abdel Nasser as president.

1981: Egypt’s vice-president Hosni Mubarak was nominated as successor to slain President Anwar Sadat.

1985: Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked by Palestinians in Mediterranean.

1987: Chinese police set up roadblocks and patrolled Lhasa, capital of Tibet, to prevent demonstrations for independence.

1990: Fireworks party celebrated centenary of Forth Bridge.

1996: The Fox News Channel began broadcasting.

2001: The US and Britain hit targets across Afghanistan, promising that the Taleban would pay the price for harbouring Osama bin Laden.

2008: As the global credit crisis continued, shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland, the country’s biggest company, fell 39 per cent.

2013: James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on transport systems in cells.

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2014: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing blue light emitting diodes.

2014: A Spanish nurse was diagnosed with Ebola, the first case outside west Africa.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1552 Sir Walter Raleigh, explorer, poet and courtier; 1900 Heinrich Himmler, Nazi chief of police; 1917 June Allyson, actress; 1921 John Gere, art historian; 1927 Al Martino, singer and actor; 1929 Robert Westall, author.

Deaths: 1290 Margaret, “The Maid of Norway”, Queen of Scotland; 1796, Thomas Reid, professor of moral philosophy at Aberdeen and Glasgow; 1849 Edgar Allan Poe, writer; 1956 Clarence Birdseye, inventor of deep-freezing process; 2009 Irving Penn, photographer; 2011 George Baker MBE, actor and writer.

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