On this day: Soviet counter-attack at Stalingrad

On this day in 1942 Soviet troops counter-attacked at Stalingrad and surrounded German troops. Picture: Getty

1620: The Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with pioneer settlers.

1850: Alfred, Lord Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate. He held the post until his death 42 years later.

1863: Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.

1905: Thirty-nine men died when fire broke out in the early morning at a model lodging house in Watson Street, near Glasgow Cross. There were between 300 and 400 people in the converted warehouse at the time.

1905: The cross-Channel steamer Hilda ran aground in fog and a snowstorm off St Malo. Five of the 128 people aboard survived.

1924: Sir Lee Stack, British governor of Sudan, was murdered in Cairo.

1931: The Bermuda, a 19,000-ton liner, was destroyed by fire in Belfast harbour.

1942: Soviet troops counter-attacked at Stalingrad and surrounded German troops.

1951: The world’s first atomic central heating plant started operating at Harwell.

1960: The first vertical take-off aircraft, made by Hawker Siddeley, made its maiden flight.

1960: National Service in Britain ended.

1969: US spacecraft Apollo 12 landed a module on the Moon.

1987: A 1931 Bugatti Royale was sold for a £5.5 million at an auction in London.

1990: The Cold War officially ended when 22 heads of state met in Paris and agreed to start dismantling Europe’s armouries.

1991: Eduard Shevardnadze was re-appointed as Soviet foreign minister. He quit the post in December.

1991: Terry Waite, special envoy of former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Runcie, returned home after nearly five years as a hostage in Beirut.

1999: The People’s Republic

of China launched its first Shenzhou spacecraft.

2008: The names, addresses, telephone numbers and jobs of 12,000 British National Party members were leaked on the internet, leading to many on the list receiving threatening and abusive phone calls and e-mails.

2010: Prime Minister David Cameron’s enterprise adviser, Lord Young, was forced to resign after claiming that people have “never had it so good”, despite the ongoing economic crisis.

BIRTHDAYS

Jodie Foster, actress, 52; Meg Ryan, actress, 53; Raymond Blanc OBE, chef and restaurateur, 65; Charles Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton, former justice secretary, 63; Calvin Klein, fashion designer, 72; David Lloyd-Jones, conductor, 80; James Randolph Lindesay-Bethune, 16th Earl of Lindsay, landscape designer and environmental consultant, 59; Ted Turner, media mogul, 76; Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, who sent the world’s first Tweet; 38; Gail Devers, triple Olympic champion athlete, 48; Eileen Collins, astronaut, 58; Dennis Taylor, former world snooker champion, 66; Laurent Blanc, football manager and former World Cup-winning player, 49.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1600 King Charles I (in Dunfermline Palace); 1849 Sir John Fleming, scientist; 1855 Billy Bates, English cricketer who scored more than 10,000 first-class runs; 1888 José Raúl Capablanca, world chess champion 1921-1927; 1917 Indira Gandhi, first woman prime minister of India.

Deaths: 1828 Franz Schubert, Austrian composer; 1887 Emma Lazarus, poet; 2011 Basil D’Oliveira CBE, cricketer.