On this day: Iconic film King Kong was premiered in New York

The film King Kong premiered in New York in 1933. Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty

National day of Morocco

1802: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was published.

1813: Britain signed Treaty of Stockholm with Sweden, which agreed to supply army in return for British subsidies and promised not to oppose union with Norway.

1842: Mendelssohn’s third (“Scottish”) Symphony, inspired during a walk through the ruins of Holyrood Chapel at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, premiered in Leipzig Gewandhaus.

1845: Florida became the 27th state of the Union.

1857: The United Kingdom and France declared war on China (the Second Opium War).

1869: The Colonel, ridden by jockey George Stevens, won the Grand National at Aintree.

1875: The first performance of Bizet’s Carmen took place in Paris. The audience jeered Bizet as he fled from the theatre, and critics dubbed it “painful, noisy, blatant” and “eminently repulsive”. Bizet died broken-hearted three months later.

1875: The first recorded indoor ice hockey match took place at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal, Canada, between two teams made up of members of the Victoria Skating club, using a wooden puck.

1891: The penalty kick was introduced into the rules of Association Football, but didn’t come into effect until the start of the following season when, on 22 August, Alex McCall of Renton FC scored the first-ever penalty against Leith Athletic.

1894: Gladstone resigned as prime minister, and Lord Rosebery took over. Gladstone had seen his Home Rule Bill for Ireland rejected by a majority of 378 in the House of Lords.

1932: Chinese forces were driven back from Shanghai by Japanese.

1933: The film King Kong was premiered in New York.

1943: 173 people, including 62 children, died in a crush on stairs at Bethnal Green Tube station in London when people rushed to enter the station after an air raid warning. News of the tragedy was not released at the time because it was felt that it would affect war-time morale.

1969: Apollo 9 spacecraft launched, with James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart aboard.

1985: Miners agreed to call off their strike against pit closures without an agreement having been reached.

1986: Protestant militants went on car-burning rampage in Belfast in protest against British-Irish Agreement.

1990: President George Bush announced opposition to new Jewish settlements on West Bank or in East Jerusalem.

1991: Latvians and Estonians voted in favour of independence from the Soviet Union.

1992: Police said they recovered the bodies of 120 Azerbaijanis killed as they fled an Armenian assault in Nagorno-Karabakh.

2002: Switzerland voted in favour of becoming a member of the United Nations.

2005: Steve Fossett became the first person to fly an aeroplane non-stop around the world solo without refuelling.

Births: 1606 Edmund Waller, poet; 1847 Alexander Graham Bell, Edinburgh-born, inventor of the telephone; 1869 Sir Henry Wood, conductor; 1878 Edward Thomas, war poet; 1911 Jean Harlow American actress; 1918 Sir Peter O’Sullevan KBE, horse racing commentator, journalist; 1920 Ronald Searle CBE, British artist and cartoonist; 1952 Dermot Morgan, actor (Father Ted).

Deaths: 1792 Robert Adam, architect and designer; 1803 Duke of Bridgewater, pioneer of British inland waterways; 1987 Danny Kaye, American film actor; 1988 Dick Chipperfield, circus owner; 2010 Michael Foot, leader, Labour Party 1980-3.