Months Past

On 25 December 336 Rome’s believers celebrated Christmas Day – the earliest recorded use of that date as it spread across Christendom.

On 23 December 1800 Joseph Marie Jacquard set out to revolutionise weaving – and took his first step towards greatness.

The ancestor of the London Gazette was launched on 16 November 1665, surviving its bitter rival to become the oldest newspaper in the English-speaking world still in print.

On 14 November 1848 the Fox sisters conjured up a movement when they made contact with the dead – or so they claimed.

On 16 October 1930 Britain’s sense of its historical greatness was skewered with the release of 1066 and All That.

On 9 October 1676 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek – the ‘Father of Microbiology’ – presented his findings to the Royal Society.

On 25 September 1066 the ‘Viking Age’ came to a close when Harold Hardrada was slain at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

On 13 September 1971 a plane carrying Mao’s anointed heir crashed in Eastern Mongolia. What really happened to Lin Biao?

On 24 August 1662 those clergy who refused to accept the Book of Common Prayer were to be ejected from the Church of England. How many paid the price for their non-conformity?

Court-martialled in absentia on 2 August 1940, the Vichy regime confiscated de Gaulle’s property and condemned him to death.