December 20

A convention in Charleston voted 169 to 0 to dissolve “the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States”. The city celebrated with bells, cannon and bonfires.

Seven states in six weeks: South Carolina, then Mississippi (9 January), Florida (10 January), Alabama (11 January), Georgia (19 January), Louisiana (26 January) and Texas (1 February): the cotton South. Mississippi’s declaration was blunt: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the…

Britain built a metre-gauge line from Mombasa to Lake Victoria to hold East Africa, and critics in Parliament called it the “Lunatic Line”. Most of the work was done by more than 30,000 indentured workers from British India; disease, accidents and lions killed about 2,500 of them, and thousands…

Repaired at New Zealand’s expense and commanded by John King Davis, with Shackleton aboard, “signed on” at a shilling a month. The ship sailed from Port Chalmers and came home to Wellington.

Of heart and kidney disease, after a long illness, at Mercer Street. Einstein, who had often been cold to her, was shaken, and went on working every day, as he always had.

For 381 days Black Montgomerians walked, shared cars and rode a volunteer car pool rather than take the buses. The new Montgomery Improvement Association chose as its president a 26-year-old newcomer, the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church: Martin Luther King Jr. The boycott ended when the…

Under Algirdas Brazauskas the Communist Party of Lithuania voted to leave the Soviet party, the first republic’s party to do so. Lithuania declared independence in March 1990.

Workers from the factories marched into the centre and the army pulled back to barracks. From the balcony of the Opera, speakers declared Timișoara the first city free of Communism in Romania.

Nineteen parties met at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa. In the last speech of the first day de Klerk accused the ANC of keeping a private army. Mandela demanded the floor and rebuked him in public, in front of the world’s cameras.

Nineteen parties met at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, and all but two signed a declaration of intent for an undivided, democratic South Africa. The Inkatha Freedom Party and the Bophuthatswana government refused. The talks deadlocked in May 1992 over how large a majority should…

The Minister of Higher Education ordered universities to suspend women’s education until further notice. Four days later women were barred from working for aid organisations. In 2024 UNESCO counted about 1.4 million girls kept out of secondary school.