14 november

Alexis-Claude Clairaut, with Joseph-Jérôme Lalande and Nicole-Reine Lepaute doing months of calculation by hand, worked out how the two giant planets would hold the comet back: by 618 days. He told the Académie des sciences to expect perihelion around 13 April 1759, give or take a month.

Guards at the workhouse beat 33 jailed suffragists. Lucy Burns was chained by her hands to the bars above her head overnight. Reports of the night, and of Alice Paul being force-fed in jail, turned opinion toward the pickets.

A Perpendicular parish church made a cathedral in 1918 burned in the night raid the Luftwaffe code-named Moonlight Sonata, which killed an estimated 568 people. Only the tower, spire and outer walls stood; Provost Richard Howard had “Father Forgive” inscribed on the wall behind the altar.

The first big battle between the U.S. Army and North Vietnamese regulars, in the Central Highlands. The 1st Cavalry Division flew into Landing Zone X-Ray by helicopter and held it; at nearby LZ Albany a battalion on the march was ambushed. About 240 Americans died in four days. Both sides decided…

Lightning hit the Saturn V twice in its first minute and knocked out the spacecraft’s electrics. Flight controller John Aaron recognised the garbled data and called “Try SCE to Aux”; Alan Bean found the switch. Five days later they landed a short walk from the Surveyor 3 probe.

The first spacecraft to orbit another planet, a fortnight ahead of the Soviet Mars 2 and Mars 3. Only the summits of four volcanoes showed above the storm.

A steel arch 108 metres high and 257 metres wide, built beside the reactor, was slid 327 metres on rails to cover Unit 4 and the old sarcophagus. It weighs 36,000 tonnes and is meant to last a hundred years.