On this day: Russian tanks shell Chechnya

On this day in 1994 Russia started shelling Grozny after Chechnya failed to meet Boris Yeltsins ceasefire ultimatum. Picture: Getty

18 DECEMBER

1661: The ship Elizabeth, of Burntisland, was lost off the English coast with the Scottish state records aboard. They were being returned from London, to which they had been taken by Cromwell.

1780: The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was founded.

1865: Slavery was finally abolished in United States.

1903: United States-Panama treaty placed Canal Zone in American hands in perpetuity for annual rent.

1912: Piltdown Man was discovered in Sussex by Charles Dawson. The skull fragment was hailed as “missing link” in human evolution, but in 1953 was proved to be a forgery, a 600-year-old human skull and the lower jaw of an orangutan.

1946: House of Commons voted to nationalise railways, road haulage and ports.

1956: Japan was admitted to United Nations.

1969: The death penalty for murder was formally abolished in Britain.

1970: Divorce law went into effect in Italy despite opposition by Roman Catholic Church.

1979: Stanley Barrett became the first man to break the sound barrier on land. He reached 739.6mph in California.

1985: Syria rejected plea by United States to remove newly deployed anti-aircraft missiles along its border with Lebanon.

1988: Bulgaria offered free holidays to anyone willing to catch field mice by hand, in an attempt to save winter wheat crops from the invaders without spraying dangerous chemicals.

1994: Russian tanks began shelling Grozny, capital of the rebel state of Chechnya, after its leader failed to meet Boris Yeltsin’s ultimatum to lay down arms.

1995: A prison inspection team was withdrawn from Holloway Prison, in London, halfway through an inspection because it was so appalled at conditions for the 500 female inmates.

1999: Nasa launched into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments.

2007: Nick Clegg, 40, was elected leader of the Liberal Democratic Party following the resignation of Sir Menzies Campbell.

2010: Governmental protests began in Tunisia, beginning the 2010-2011 Middle East and North Africa protests.

BIRTHDAYS

Brad Pitt, actor, 50; Christina Aguilera, singer, 33; Frances Crook OBE, chief executive Howard League for Penal Reform, 61; Julie Fleeting, football player, 33; Robson Green, actor and singer, 49; Katie Holmes, actress, 35; Rosemary Leach, actress, 78; Ray Liotta, actor, 58; Bill Nelson, musician, 64; Keith Richards, guitarist (Rolling Stones), 70; Steven Spielberg, film maker, 67; Keifer Sutherland, actor, 47; Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, tennis player, 42.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1707 Charles Wesley, evangelist and prolific hymn writer; 1779 Joseph Grimaldi, Joey the Clown; 1856 Sir Joseph John Thomson, physicist and discoverer of the electron; 1870 Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), short-story writer; 1879 Paul Klee, abstract painter; 1908 Dame Celia Johnson, actress; 1916 Betty Grable, actress and wartime pin-up girl.

Deaths: 1737 Antonio Stradivari, violin-maker; Christopher Fry, dramatist, 97; 1919 Sir John Alcock, aviator who first flew Atlantic with Arthur Brown; 2000 Kirsty MacColl, singer and songwriter; 2006 Joseph Barbera, animator; 2011 Václav Havel, Czech writer and politician.