Happy Anniversary: Manhole covers held to ransom
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Your support makes all the difference.A FORTNIGHT of neglected anniversaries to take us through the festive season:
20 December
1957: Elvis Presley receives his call-up papers to join the army.
21 December
1846: An anaesthetic (ether) is used for the first time by the surgeon Robert Liston for a leg amputation at University College Hospital, London.
1880: Women given the vote in the Isle of Man, as long as they are widows or spinsters owning property rated at pounds 4 a year or more.
1911: The Jules Bonnet gang make the first successful escape in a getaway car after a bank robbery in Paris.
22 December
1922: The Metropolitan Police allow covered-top buses to go on trial in London.
1938: A coelacanth is found off the coast of South Africa after having been believed extinct for 70 million years. (Some sources give 29 December, but what's a week in 70 million years?)
1943: The government says there are only enough turkeys for one family in ten.
1987: Thieves in Xianying, China, steal and hold to ransom 2,249 manhole covers.
23 December
1834: Joseph Hansom patents the 'safety cab'.
1888: Vincent van Gogh cuts off his ear.
1987: Santa Claus, by arrangement with the Finnish Tourist Board, has an audience with the Pope.
24 December
1922: The BBC broadcast the first play written for radio: The Truth About Father Christmas by Phyllis M Twigg.
1974: The Beatles partnership is formally dissolved.
25 December
1800: Queen Charlotte imports form Germany Britain's first Christmas tree.
1913: A New York couple are arrested and fined dollars 15 for kissing in the street on Christmas Day.
1983: A 70-year-old woman in Oakland, California, celebrates Christmas by shooting dead her 72- year-old husband because he was having an affair.
26 December
1717: Harlequin Executed, the first pantomime, is presented at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London.
27 December
1904: The first performance of Peter Pan stars Daphne du Maurier's father in the role of Captain Hook.
1945: The International Monetary Fund is established.
28 December
1934: The first cricket Test match for women, England v Australia, begins in Brisbane.
29 December
1890: The Battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, becomes the last major conflict between US troops and American Indians.
1914: First zeppelin sighted off British coast.
30 December
1894: Death of Amelia Janks Bloomer, the feminist whose ankle- exposing trousers gave a new word to the language.
31 December
1695: Window tax imposed.
1923: Chimes of Big Ben first broadcast.
1935: The game Monopoly patented by Charles Darrow.
1938: Dr R Hargen's 'Drunkometer', the first breathalyser, is used by police in Indianapolis.
1987: The year finishes one second early to make a necessary adjustment to the Georgian calendar.
1 January
1660: Samuel Pepys begins his diary.
1808: The import of slaves to the United States ends.
1955: Luncheon vouchers first issued in Britain.
1961: The farthing is no longer legal tender.
1988: Eric Bristow becomes the first darts player to receive an MBE.
2 January
1839: Louis Daguerre takes the first photograph of the moon.
1987: Publishers of the Noddy books give way to anti-racist lobby and change golliwogs to gnomes.
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