On this day: Chinese Republic proclaimed

1814: Governor-general of India declared war on Gurkhas of Nepal.

1861: First public demonstration of the telephone made to the Physical Society, Frankfurt.

1896: Italian protectorate of Ethiopia was withdrawn by Treaty of Addis Ababa.

1907: The Territorial Army was established by Richard Haldane, secretary of state for war.

1911: Chinese Republic proclaimed.

1917: Brazil declared war against Germany.

1950: First sound and television broadcast from the House of Commons as King George VI reopened chamber after repair of 1941 bombing damage.

1955: Republic of South Vietnam was proclaimed.

1962: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev offered to withdraw missiles from Cuba if United States removed bases in Turkey, but was rebuffed.

1976: United Nations General Assembly, demonstrating disapproval of apartheid, voted 134-0 to call on member governments to prohibit all contacts with the Transkei – first of South African black homelands to secure independence.

1988: In Strasbourg, Jacques Delors accused Margaret Thatcher of wrecking progress towards an open European market in 1992.

1989: Nigel Lawson resigned as chancellor of the Exchequer, plunging the government into the greatest turmoil of the Margaret Thatcher years. She named John Major, her recently-appointed foreign secretary, to succeed Mr Lawson.

1989: An RAF corporal and his baby daughter were shot dead by the IRA at a petrol station near RAF Wildenrath in West Germany.

1991: Hundreds of foreigners left Kinshasa as military mutiny spread in Zaire.

1994: An environmental report called for a doubling of petrol prices in Britain in ten years.

1999: House of Lords voted to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in the upper chamber.

2001: The United States passed the Patriot Act into law.

2002: More than 100 hostages died when Russian special forces using knock-out gas attacked Chechen guerrillas holding more than 800 people hostage in a Moscow theatre.

2010: A survey revealed that more people (91 per cent) owned a mobile phone compared to a watch (86 per cent).

BIRTHDAYS

Senator Hillary Clinton, United States secretary of state 2009-13 and United States first lady 1993-2001, 66; Douglas Alexander, shadow foreign secretary and Labour MP, 46; Bob Hoskins, actor, 71; Adam Mars-Jones, novelist and film critic, 59; Seth MacFarlane, creator of US animated television series Family Guy, 40; Natalie Merchant, singer (10,000 Maniacs), 50; Andrew Motion, poet laureate 1999-2009, 61; György Pauk, violinist, 77; Jaclyn Smith, actress, 68; Shaun Woodward, Labour MP, 55.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1685 Domenico Scarlatti, harpsichordist and composer; 1759 George Jacques Danton, French revolutionary; 1872 CP Scott, journalist and politician; 1879 Leon Trotsky, one of founders of Soviet state; 1906 Primo Carnera, world heavyweight boxing champion 1933-34; 1911 Sorley MacLean, poet and teacher; 1930 John Arden, playwright.

Deaths: AD899 Alfred the  Great; 1764 William Hogarth, painter; 1966 Alma Cogan,  singer; 1972 Igor Sikorsky, creator of first successful helicopter in 1939.

On this day: Chinese Republic proclaimed | Hilary Clinton born