What happened this week in history

1708 - James Francis Edward Stuart landed at the Firth of Forth.

1743 - during the first performance of Handel’s Messiah, George II rose to his feet at the beginning of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. he was followed by the rest of the audience, and thus the standing ovation tradition was established.

1861 - London’s trams began operating for the first time, in Bayswater.

1801 - Tsar Paul I of Russia was struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death inside his bedroom at St Michael’s Castle.

1839 - The word OK was used for the first recorded time in print, in the Boston Morning Post.

1888 - In England, The Football League, the world’s oldest professional association football league, met for the first time.

1891 - Goal nets were used for the first time in an FA Cup Final. They had been invented by Liverpudlian J A Brodie.

1901 - It was revealed the British had starved South Africans in concentration camps during the Boar War.

1901 - Dame Nellie Melba revealed how to make Melba toast.

1919 - The Italian Fascist Party was formed by Benito Mussolini.

1925 - Authorities in Tennessee forbade the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools.

1929 - The first telephone was installed in the White House.

1956 - Pakistan became the first Islamic republic in the world.

1961 - Elvis Presley set a new UK record of three consecutive number one singles - Its Now or Never, Are You Lonesome Tonight? and Wooden Heart.

1970 - Damages of £370,000 were awarded to 18 children who suffered birth defects after their mothers used thalidomide during pregnancy.

1998 - At the Oscars, Titanic won Best Picture and Best Director, amongst its 11 awards.

2001 - The Mir Space Station crashed to earth.