On this day.....

On This Day

National Day of Ecuador
Feast day of St Laurence of Rome

1787 Mozart completed his famous Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. On the same day in 1788, he finished his Jupiter Symphony.

1842 The Mines Act was passed by the British Parliament, forbidding women and children to work underground.

1846 The Smithsonian Institution was founded in Washington DC, to foster scientific research.

1889 The screw bottle top was patented by Dan Rylands of Hope Glass Works, Yorkshire, UK.

1900 Lawyer Charles Russell died. He was best known for his brilliant success during the Parnell Commission of 1888-90, when, representing Parnell against The Times, he completely refuted the evidence of forger Richard Pigott.

1904 In the Russo-Japanese War, Japan inflicted heavy losses on the Russian fleet at the Battle of the Yellow Sea, off Port Arthur.

1911 British MPs voted to receive salaries for the first time.

1954 Gordon Richards, champion English jockey, retired after 4,869 wins.

1966 Orbiter I, the first US lunar satellite, was launched.

1975 Robert Childers Barton, nationalist and last surviving signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, died.

1976 In Belfast, three children were killed and their mother was badly injured when a car driven by a Provisional IRA member hit them. The deaths led to the foundation of the widely supported though short-lived Women's Peace Movement, later the Peace People, led by Betty Williams, Máireád Corrigan and Ciarán McKeown.