Happy Anniversary: From top hat frights to public flirts
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Your support makes all the difference.WE BEGIN the new year of dates with a celebration of some of the odder happenings of this week in history, a period traditionally full of innovation and bounce, writes William Hartston.
3 January
1888: Paper drinking straws are patented in the United States.
1915: Tear gas is first used in warfare, by the Germans fighting the Russians in Poland.
1961: The one millionth Morris Minor comes off the production line in Oxford.
4 January
1835: The first chess column in any newspaper appears in Bell's Life in London.
1885: In Iowa, Dr William West Grant performs the first appendectomy. The patient, a 22-year-old farm girl, made a complete recovery and lived until 1919.
1910: Britain's first juvenile courts open for business in London.
1936: The first nationally based popular music chart is published by Billboard in the United States.
1961: The longest strike in history ends when apprentice barbers return to work in Copenhagen. They had been out since 1938.
1982: Erika Roe achieves instant fame, streaking at the England-Australia rugby international at Twickenham.
5 January
1797: John Hetherington appears before the Lord Mayor of London accused of wearing a top hat 'calculated to frighten timid people'. It was the first time such apparrel had been seen in public. He was bound over to keep the peace in consideration of a sum of pounds 50.
1964: The first automatic ticket barrier on the London underground comes into operation at Stamford Brook station.
1971: A washed-out Test match ushers in the age of instant cricket with the first one-day international, between Australia and England at Melbourne.
1976: President Giscard d'Estaing proclaims French the only permissible language for use in advertisements.
6 January
1926: The German airline Lufthansa is founded.
1991: John Major says the poll tax will not be abolished.
7 January
1610: Galileo discovers four moons of Jupiter, naming them Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, after three women and a youth loved by Zeus.
1785: First balloon crossing of the English Channel.
1857: The London Central Omnibus Company starts regular services.
1904: The universal distress signal CQD comes into operation - CQ for 'seek you' and D for distress. It does not catch on and is replaced by SOS two years later.
1927: Abraham Sapperstein of Chicago founds the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.
1990: The Leaning Tower of Pisa is declared unsafe and closed to the public for the first time in more than 700 years.
8 January
1800: The first soup kitchens for the poor start serving in London.
1902: The New York State legislature outlaws flirting in public.
1921: David Lloyd George becomes the first Prime Minister to take up residence at Chequers.
9 January
1811: The first women's golf tournament is held at Musselburgh in Scotland.
1951: The French film La Vie Commence Demain becomes the first to be given a British 'X' certificate.
1988: Edgar Dakin of Yorkshire patents the 'Dakin Plastic Tombstone'.
(Photograph omitted)
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