It happened today – this day in history – September 12

1217: French prince Louis and English King Henry III sign a peace treaty.

1624: The first submarine is publicly tested on the River Thames for James I.

1755: Giacomo Casanova is sentenced to five years imprisonment in Venice without trial for affront to religion and common decency.

1759: British soldiers capture Quebec.

1829: The Greek War of Independence ends after eight and a half years.

1846: Robert Browning marries fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett at Marylebone Church in London.

1848: Switzerland becomes a Federal state.

1878: Cleopatra’s Needle installed in London.

1890: Cecil Rhodes colonists found Fort Salisbury (now Harare, Zimbabwe).

1908: Winston Churchill marries Clementine Hozier.

1910: Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony premieres in Munich.

1918: US forces launch an attack on German-occupied St Mihiel.

1919: Adolf Hitler joins the obscure German Worker’s Party as its seventh member, agreeing not with worker’s rights, but with its German Nationalism and antisemitism.

1923: Britain takes over Southern Rhodesia from the British South Africa Co.

1933: Waiting at traffic lights on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, physicist Leo Szilard conceives idea of a nuclear chain reaction.

1935: Howard Hughes flies his own designed plane at 352.46 mph.

1940: Italian troops enter Egypt. On the same day, four teenagers, follow their dog down a hole near Lascaux, France, and discover 17,000 year old drawings now known as the Lascaux Cave Paintings.

1942: The Battle of Edson’s Ridge begins at Guadalcanal.

1948: The Indian Army invades the Pakistani state of Hyderabad.

1949: Theodor Heuss elected first President of the German Federal Republic (West Germany) with Konrad Adenaur as Prime Minister.

1953: Senator John F Kennedy marries Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.

1958: The US Supreme Court orders the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, to integrate.

1959: Luna 2 is launched by the USSR – the first spacecraft to impact on the Moon.

1963: Singles chart:

1. She Loves You – The Beatles
2. It’s All In The Game – Cliff Richard
3. Bad To Me – Bily J Kramer and the Dakotas
4. I’ll Never Get Over You – Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
5. I’m Telling You Now – Freddie and the Dreamers
6. You Don’t Have To Be A Baby To Cry – The Caravelles
7. I Want To Stay Here – Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme
8. Wipe Out – The Surfaris
9. Just Like Eddie – Heinz
10. Theme From The Legion’s Last Patrol – Ken Thorne

1964:

1965: Album chart:

1. Help! – The Beatles
2. The Sound Of Music – Original Soundtrack
3. Mary Poppins – Original Soundtrack
4. Almost There – Andy Williams
5. Bringing It All Back Home – Bob Dylan
6. Joan Baez No 5 – Joan Baez
7. Mr Tambourine Man – The Byrds
8. Sound Of The Shadows – The Shadows
9. Rolling Stones No 2 – The Rolling Stones
10. Beatles For Sale – The Beatles

1966: Gemini XI with Charles “Pete” Conrad and Richard F. Gordon aboard is launched for a 71-hour flight partly to test for the effects of long-term weightlessness.

1968: Albania announces it is withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.

1970: Palestinian militants blow up three planes they have been holding at an airfield in the Jordanian desert. On the same day, Concorde lands for the first time at Heathrow airport and LSD professor Timothy Leary escapes from a California jail.

1974: Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is overthrown in a coup.

1977: The leader of the black consciousness movement in South Africa, Steve Biko, dies in police custody.

1980: Military coup in Turkey under General Kenan Evren.

1986: US professor Joseph Cicippio is kidnapped in Beirut.

1988: Hurricane Gilbert devastates Jamaica.

1995: The Belarus military shoots down a hydrogen balloon, killing its two American pilots.

1999: Indonesia announces it will allow international peace-keepers into East Timor.

2003: Death of music legend Johnny Cash aged 71. On the same day, US forces mistakenly shoot and kill eight Iraqi police officers in Fallujah. Also, the UN lifts sanctions against Libya after it agreed to accept responsibility and recompense the families of victims in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

2005: The bodies of more than 40 patients discovered in a flooded hospital in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. On the same day, England win the Ashes for the first time since 1987.

2007: Shinzo Abe announces his intention to resign as Prime Minister of Japan.

2009: Belgian Kim Clijsters becomes the first unseeded player and wildcard to win the US Open Women’s tennis tournament, beating Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark 7-5, 6-3.

2012: Excavators announce that they may have found the remains of King Richard III under a car park in Leicester.

2013: Ray Dolby, the US engineer who founded Dolby Laboratories and pioneered noise reduction in audio recordings, died of leukemia at the age of 80.

2014: Death of actor Donald Sinden aged 90. On the same day, loyalist politician Ian Paisley dies aged 88.

2015: Jeremy Corbyn is elected leader of the Labour party. On the same day, 12 tourists mistaken for militants, are killed by Egyptian forces in the Western Desert.

2017: A monster fatburg the size of 11 buses is found in the sewers under east London.

2018: The European parliament votes to pursue disciplinary action against Hungary for anti-democratic actions the first ever such vote.

BIRTHDAYS: Patrick Mower, actor, 82; Linda Gray, actress, 80; Maria Muldaur, singer-songwriter, 77; Maria Aitken, actress, 75; Rachel Ward, actress, 63; Hans Zimmer, film score composer, 63; Joe Pantoliano, actor, 59: Ben Folds, singer-songwriter, 54; Louis C.K. (Louis Székely), comedian, 53; Ángel Cabrera, golfer, 51; Ben McKenzie, actor, 42; Jennifer Hudson, singer/actress, 39; Alfie Allen, actor, 34.