On this day: Charles Kennedy resigns

On this day in 2006 Charles Kennedy resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrats after admitting having a drink problem. Picture: Reuters

7 January

1451: Glasgow University was founded by a bull of Pope Nicholas V, at the suit of King James II and Bishop William Turnbull.

1558: Calais, the last English possession on the mainland of France, captured by the French.

1598: Boris Godunov seized Russian throne on death of Feodore I.

1610: Galileo discovered the four satellites of Jupiter and named them Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

1714: A “contrivance” called a typewriter was patented by Henry Mill, but it was a century before it caught on.

1789: The first national American elections elected George Washington as president.

1904: The CQD distress call was introduced. CQ meant “seek you” with D added for danger. This was replaced by SOS in 1906.

1953: President Harry S Truman announced that US had developed hydrogen bomb.

1968: Government of Lebanon resigned after Israeli commando raid at Beirut airport.

1972: India resisted American pressure and granted full diplomatic recognition to China.

1978: Glasgow’s 100-bedroom Grosvenor Hotel was destroyed in six-hour blaze which could not be controlled by 60 servicemen standing in for firemen who were in the ninth week of strike. Earlier the same day, three members of a family died in a house fire at Linwood, Renfrewshire.

1989: Prince Charles pledged to devote his farm land to organic agriculture.

1990: Thousands of Romanians demonstrated nationwide to protest against the number of ex-Communists in country’s interim government.

1991: Russian Christians celebrated Orthodox Christmas as a public holiday for the first time in 73 years.

1999: The Senate trial in the impeachment of US president Bill Clinton began.

2006: Charles Kennedy resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrats two days after admitting to having a drink problem.

2008: After spending nearly 21 years on death row in Ohio, Scot Kenny Richey, 43, who won a long legal battle to have his murder conviction overturned, was set free. He had been sentenced to death on 1987, for killing his former girlfriend’s two-year-old child.

BIRTHDAYS

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and Deputy Prime Minister, 47; Sir Richard Armstrong CBE, conductor, 71; Geoffrey Bayldon, actor, 90; Andy Burnham MP, shadow secretary of state for health, 44; Nicolas Cage, actor, 50; David Caruso, actor, 58; Hunter Davies, Renfrew-born journalist and author, 78; Natalie Gulbis, golfer, 31; Lewis Hamilton MBE, racing driver, 29; Kenny Loggins, musician, 66.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1827 Sir Sandford Fleming, Kirkcaldy-born railway engineer and scientist; 1896 Arnold Ridley, dramatist and actor; 1899 Francis Poulenc, French composer; 1912 Charles Addams, New Yorker cartoonist and creator of the Addams Family television series; 1925 Gerald Durrell, zoologist and writer.

Deaths: 1536 Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII; 1619 Nicholas Hillyard, miniaturist painter; 1758 Allan Ramsay, poet, anthologist and author; 1981 Alvar Lidell, broadcaster; 1988 Trevor Howard, actor; 1989 Emperor Hirohito of Japan; 1990 Ian Charleson, actor; 2007 Magnus Magnusson, quizmaster of BBC’s Mastermind 1972-97.