1258 Baghdad was captured and destroyed by the Mongols.
1536 Henry VIII, 44, fell from his horse while jousting and was unconscious for several hours. Experts believed this triggered his mental instability.
1874 The original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, died within three hours of each other, aged 62.
1880 Slapstick king Mack Sennett, creator of the Keystone Cops, was born in Quebec.
1899 Chicago Mafia mobster Al Capone was born in Naples.
1940 The River Thames froze over for the first time since 1880 as bitterly cold weather engulfed Europe.
1983 Start of BBC's Breakfast TV with Frank Bough and Selina Scott.
1989 A gunman shot dead five children and injured 39 others in a Californian school playground.
2004 Controversial US doctor Panos Zavos claimed a 35-year-old woman had been implanted with a freshlycloned embryo.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
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