Scott Allsop's Blog, page 88

4th January 1642: Charles I of England attempts to arrest the Five Members of Parliament, prompting the English Civil War

Charles I himself entered the House of Commons chamber – an act that was a huge violation of Parliamentary privilege – and sat in the Speaker’s chair to demand the Five Members be handed over to ...

3rd January 1961: United States of America severs its diplomatic relationship with Cuba and closes its embassy in Havana

Fidel Castro's nationalisation of American-owned businesses and private property led the Eisenhower administration to cut all diplomatic ties with ...

2nd January 1980: Jimmy Carter instigates the end of détente after the USSR invades Afghanistan

In response to Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter brought the period of détente to an ...

1st January 1942: Declaration by the United Nations agreed and signed by the four major Allied nations during the Second World War

The original signatories – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the USSR’s Ambassador to the US Maxim Litvinov, and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs T. V. Soong – were joined the next day by a further 24 ...

31st December 1759: Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease for St. James’s Gate Brewery

Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease for the derelict St. James’s Gate Brewery in ...

30th December 1922: Foundation of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)

In 1922 the USSR consisted of just four Soviet republics – the Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR and Transcaucasian ...

29th December 1890: Lakota Sioux massacred at Wounded Knee

More than 150 Native Americans from the Lakota tribe were killed by U.S. soldiers in the Wounded Knee ...

28th December 1895: Wilhelm Röntgen publishes his discovery of X-rays

Röntgen was experimenting with vacuum tubes at the University of Würzburg when he discovered the new ‘invisible light’ on 8 November ...

27th December 537: Hagia Sophia inaugurated by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I and Patriarch Menas of Constantinople

Hagia Sophia's long history saw it serve as both a Greek Orthodox cathedral and a Roman Catholic cathedral, before Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mehmed II in ...

26th December 1991: Soviet Union dissolved in the final meeting of the Supreme Soviet

As it became obvious that the USSR was falling apart, on 25 December Gorbachev resigned as President and the Soviet Union was formally dissolved the next ...