It happened today – this day in history – October 9
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768: Charlemagne and his brother Carloman I are crowned Kings of The Franks.
1192: Richard I leaves Jerusalem in disguise.
1665: Due to the Great Plague, Parliament meets at the University of Oxford rather than the Palace of Westminster.
1781: Americans under George Washington and the French under Comte de Rochambeau begin the bombardment of Yorktown, the last battle of the American Revolutionary War.
1799: Sinking of the British frigate HMS Lutine, with the loss of 240 men and cargo worth £1,200,000 off the Dutch coast.
1806: Prussia declares war on France.
1831: Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of modern Greece, is assassinated in Nafplion.
1835: Birth of composer Camille Saint-Saëns in Paris.
1854: The siege of Sevastopol begins during the Crimean War.
1855: Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine motor.
1876: The first two-way telephone conversation over outdoor wires.
1914: German troops take Antwerp.
1932: Joseph Stalin expels Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev from the Communist Party after a power struggle.
1934: King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou are assassinated in Marseille by a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.
1940: Birth of John Lennon in Liverpool.
1941: President Franklin D Roosevelt approves an atomic program that will become the Manhattan Project. On the same day, Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia Arango is declared president of Panama after a coup.
1944: Prime minister Winston Churchill arrives in Russia for talks with Joseph Stalin.
1945: British troops occupy Andamanen in the Gulf of Bengal.
1946: Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” premieres in New York.
1949: English ballerina Margot Fonteyn debuts in America with her performance of Sleeping Beauty at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
1953: Konrad Adenaur is elected Chancellor of West Germany.
1959: The Conservatives win a third consecutive general election. Harold Macmillan becomes prime minister.
1961: Tanganyika becomes independent within the Commonwealth. On the same day, there are Volcanic eruptions on Tristan de Cunha in the south Atlantic.
1962: Uganda becomes independent from the UK.
1963: Prime minister Harold Macmillan resigns and is replaced by Alec Douglas-Home. On the same day, Hurricane Flora ravages Cuba and Haiti, killing 6,000 people.
1968: 2,000 students from Queen’s University Belfast try to march to Belfast City Hall in protest against police brutality, but are blocked by loyalists led by Ian Paisley.
1973: Elvis and and Priscilla Presley divorced after six years of marriage.
1975: A homeless man is killed when an IRA bomb detonates in Picadilly. On the same day, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
1981: The abolition of capital punishment in France.
1984: Kathy Sullivan becomes the first US woman to walk in space during a Space Shuttle mission.
1986: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” premieres in London.
1988: Cliff Gallup, hugely influential guitarist with Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps dies of a heart attack.
Singles chart:
- One Moment In Time – Whitney Houston
- Desire – U2
- Don’t Worry Be Happy – Bobby McFerrin
- Teardrops – Womack and Womack
- He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother – The Hollies
- She Wants To Dance With Me – Rick Astley
- A Little Respect – Erasure
- Wee Rule – The Wee Papa Girl Rappers
- Nothing Can Divide Us – Jason Donovan
- A Groovy Kind Of Love – Phil Collins
Album chart:
- Flying Colours – Chris De Burgh
- Revolutions – Jean Michel Jarre
- New Jersey – Bon Jovi
- Pop Art – Transvision Vamp
- Moonlighting – Original Soundtrack
- Kylie – Kylie Minogue
- Rap Trax – Various Artists
- Conscience – Womack and Womack
- Staring At The Sun – Level 42
- Ones On 1 – Various Artists
1990: The Stone Roses were each fined £3,000 after being found guilty of criminal damage at their former record company offices.
1991: The first Sumo wrestling tournament ever held off Japanese soil in the sport’s 1500 year history begins at the Royal Albert Hall.
1995: Sir Alec Douglas-Home dies aged 92, 32 years to the day after he became prime minister.
2011: Paul McCartney marries Nancy Shevell in a civil ceremony at Old Marylebone Town Hall.
2012: Teenage activist Malala Yousafzai is shot three times by a Taliban gunman as she sits on her school bus in the Swat district of northwest Pakistan.
2015: Former Tory government minister Geoffrey Howe dies aged 88. On the same day, broadcaster Gordon Honeycombe dies aged 79.
2017: Film producer Harvey Weinstein is fired from The Weinstein Company after allegations of sexual abuse.
2019: Turkey launches air strikes on Kurdish forces in Northern Syria after US President Donald Trump pulls back American forces.
BIRTHDAYS: Bill Tidy, cartoonist, 87; Brian Blessed, actor, 84; Jackson Browne, singer-songwriter, 72; Sharon Osbourne, TV personality/Ozzy’s manager, 68; Tony Shalhoub, actor, 67; James Fearnley, accordionist (The Pogues) 66; Scott Bakula, actor, 66; Steve Ovett, athlete, 65; Guillermo del Toro, director, 56; David Cameron, former prime minister, 54; Mat Osman, guitarist (Suede) 53; Steve McQueen, director, 51; P J (Polly Jean) Harvey, singer-songwriter, 50; Sean Lennon, musician, 45; Nicky Byrne, singer (Westlife) 42; Brandon Routh, actor, 41; Bella Hadid, model, 24.
