On this day: Nigel Lawson resigns as Chancellor

On this day in 1989, Nigel Lawson resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer, plunging the government into the greatest turmoil of the Margaret Thatcher years. Picture: Getty Images

National Days of Iran and Austria.

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

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

1863: Football Association was formed at a meeting in London.

1896: Italian protectorate of Ethiopia was withdrawn by Treaty of Addis Ababa.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

1912: Woolwich Tunnel under the River Thames was opened.

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 under Ngo Dinh Diem.

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 and said the government had to move faster on restraining the use of public cars.

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

2000: Laurent Gbagbo took over as president of Côte d’Ivoire following a popular uprising against president Robert Guéï.

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).

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1729 Lord Cockburn, Edinburgh-born judge; 1803 Joseph Hansom, inventor of the hansom cab; 1872 CP Scott, journalist and politician; 1879 Leon Trotsky, one of founders of Soviet state; 1902 Jack Sharkey, world heavyweight boxing champion; 1905 Viscount Muirshiel, formerly Jack Maclay, Scottish Secretary; 1911 Sorley MacLean, poet and teacher; 1916 Francois Mitterand, president of France 1981-1995; 1924 John Campbell Arbuthnott CBE, 16th Viscount of Arbuthnott, Lord Lieutenant of Grampian 1977-99; 1942 Bob Hoskins, actor.

Deaths: AD899 Alfred the Great; 1764 William Hogarth, painter and engraver; 1845 Carolina Oliphant (Lady Nairne), poet and songwriter (Gask, Perthshire); 1932: Molly Brown (“The Unsinkable Molly Brown”), socialist, activist and Titanic survivor); 1966 Alma Cogan, singer.