It happened today – this day in history – October 9

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:

1. One Moment In Time – Whitney Houston
2. Desire – U2
3. Don’t Worry Be Happy – Bobby McFerrin
4. Teardrops – Womack and Womack
5. He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother – The Hollies
6. She Wants To Dance With Me – Rick Astley
7. A Little Respect – Erasure
8. Wee Rule – The Wee Papa Girl Rappers
9. Nothing Can Divide Us – Jason Donovan
10. A Groovy Kind Of Love – Phil Collins

Album chart:

1. Flying Colours – Chris De Burgh
2. Revolutions – Jean Michel Jarre
3. New Jersey – Bon Jovi
4. Pop Art – Transvision Vamp
5. Moonlighting – Original Soundtrack
6. Kylie – Kylie Minogue
7. Rap Trax – Various Artists
8. Conscience – Womack and Womack
9. Staring At The Sun – Level 42
10. 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.