The Times On This Day: Facts and trivia for every day of the year

1909 Geronimo, Apache leader, died in captivity aged 79.

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1972 the House of Commons voted to join the European Common Market.

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1478 George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV and Richard III, was said to have been drowned in a butt of malmsey at the Tower of London.

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1678 John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress was published, much of it having been composed while he was in prison for illegal preaching.

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1929 the winners of the first Academy Awards (known as Oscars from 1931) were announced, with the presentation being held later that year. (See 16 May.)

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1930 Pluto was discovered by the American astronomer Clyde W Tombaugh.

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1979 snow fell in the Sahara Desert.

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2005 a law banning hunting with dogs came into force in England and Wales.

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1473 Nicolaus Copernicus, astronomer who proposed that the sun not the Earth was the centre of the Universe, was born in Poland.

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1861 Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in Russia.

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1878 the patent for Thomas Edison’s phonograph (the original gramophone) was issued.

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1897 the Women’s Institute was founded by Adelaide Hoodless in Ontario, Canada, and came to Britain during the First World War.

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1945 US marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima, whose capture created a forward air base in the war against Japan.

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1985 the BBC televised the first episode of EastEnders.

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1632 Thomas Osborne (1st Duke of Leeds), statesman and leader of the Tories who was imprisoned twice on charges of bribery, was born.

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1811 Austria declared itself bankrupt because of the cost of fighting Napoleon.

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1816 the opening night of Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville was a fiasco, with one performer singing an aria with a bleeding nose after tripping on a trapdoor, and a cat attacking another during the finale to the first act.

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1947 Viscount Mountbatten of Burma was appointed last viceroy of India.

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1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

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1741 Jethro Tull, inventor of the more efficient horse-drawn seed-drill, died at Hungerford, Berks.

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1862 Nathaniel Gordon became the only American to be executed for slave trading, their shipping being illegal under the 1820 Piracy Act.

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1916 the ten-month-long Battle of Verdun began with nine hours of the heaviest artillery bombardment ever witnessed.

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1964 24,000 rolls of Beatles wallpaper were flown to America.

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1965 Malcolm X was assassinated in New York aged 39 by three members of the Nation of Islam.

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1972 President Nixon began his historic visit of rapprochement to China.

22 FEBRUARY (#ulink_134392c6-3049-53ef-b7f6-9ac1cb29ea63)