on this day in December

1990  Phillipe Cozette and Graham Fagg shook hands beneath the English Channel having removed the last piece of chalk separating England and France

1942  Enrico Fermi split the atom

1929  UK public telephone boxes came into service - how much longer will they last?

1916  The lights on the Statue of Liberty were turned on

1901  King Camp Gillette patented the safety razor  

1940  The wartime Food Minister, Lord Woolton, announced extra Christmas rations of 4oz sugar and 2oz tea

1937  Desperate Dan first appeared in The Dandy

1918  The poet Wilfred Owen was killed in action

1808  Napoleon abolished the Spanish Inquisition

1154  Nicolas Breakspear was made Adrian IV, the first and only English pope

1988  Roy Orbison died

1981  Joanna Bunkham became the first woman jobber on the London Stock Exchange

1542  Mary, Queen of Scots was  born

1960  The first episode of Coronation Street was shown on television

1954  Dr Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile in under four minutes, retired from athletics

1907  Rudyard Kipling became the first Briton to win the Nobel prize for literature

1845  Robert Thomson, Scottish civil engineer, patented the pneumatic tyre

1282  Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, the last Welsh-born Prince of Wales, was killed

1963  The Beatles' single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" reached the top of the charts and became the biggest selling single of all time, a record that was not broken until "Mull of Kyntyre" by Paul McCartney in 1977

1955  Christopher Cockerell patented the hovercraft

1925  The first 'motel' opened

1911  George V was crowned Emperor of India

1901  Marconi sent the first transatlantic telegraph message

1889  The poet Robert Browning died

1991  The cricket commentator John Arlott died

1977  Saturday Night Fever opened in New York

2002  The digital radio station BBC7 launched at 8pm, well 8:02 actually because it launched after the news headlines

1939  'Gone with the Wind' was premiered in Atlanta, Georgia

1962  William "The Fridge" Perry born, now working as a brick layer apparently

1901  Beatrix Potter first published The Tale of Peter Rabbit, privately

1809  Napoleon divorced Josephine

1773  The Boston Tea Party

1653  Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England

1903  Orville Wright made the first flight in a powered aircraft.

1919  Sir John Alcock, the aviator who first flew the Atlantic with Arthur Brown, died

1981  All eight crew members of the Penlee lifeboat died attempting a rescue in hurricane force winds off the Cornish coast

1560  The first general assembly of the Church of Scotland was held

1988  All 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground were killed when a Pan Am Boeing 747 crashed onto Lockerbie, Scotland

2000  Steve Norton left B&W Loudspeakers

1882  Steve Thomas Edison created the first string of Christmas tree lights

1808  In Vienna Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was performed for the first time

1986  The US aircraft Voyager piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager landed after having flown round the world without refuelling

1906  "The Story of the Kelly Gang", the first commercially made film of over one hour's duration was premiered in Melbourne, Australia

1959  Ringo Starr received a drum set as a Christmas present

1992  John Kemeny, who with Tom Kurtz created the programming language BASIC, died

1871  "Thespis", the first Gilbert and Sullivan opera, opened in London but ran for less than a month

1945  The International Monetary Fund was established

1999  Clayton Moore, the Lone Ranger, died aged 85

1934  The first women's test match took place in Brisbane between England and Australia

1895  Auguste and Louis Lumière opened the first cinema

1845  Texas became the 28th state of the United States of America

1916  Rasputin, confidant and confessor to the Tsarina, was murdered

1960  The British farthing (one quarter of an old penny) ceased to be legal tender at midnight