February 6

Dated 1514 in Venice, whose year began in March; 1515 here. In twenty years his press had issued more than a hundred editions, many of them first printings of Greek authors, under its sign of the dolphin and anchor.

Benjamin Franklin and his fellow commissioners signed two treaties with France: one of commerce, and a military alliance in which neither side would make a separate peace. France had been sending arms in secret since 1776.

By 187 to 168. The Federalists won by pairing a yes vote with a list of recommended amendments, the formula that carried the later states.

Stamford Raffles, a Company official, signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah and the Temenggong of Johor for a trading post at the mouth of the Singapore River. It was a free port from the start, the opposite of the Company’s own business model.

Analysing argyrodite from the Himmelsfürst mine, Clemens Winkler found his total about 7% short, and tracked down the missing element. Mendeleev had predicted eka-silicon's atomic weight at 72 and density at 5.5; Winkler measured 72.32 and 5.47.

About 8.4 million women gained the vote, but only those over 30 who met a property qualification, or whose husbands did. Men could vote at 21. From November a woman of 21 could stand for Parliament but not vote for it.

The first to go, and the slowest: a negotiated handover in which the party kept the presidency and the army while Solidarity took the government. Its success told everyone else that Moscow would not send the tanks.

Interior Minister Czesław Kiszczak and Lech Wałęsa, the electrician from the Gdańsk shipyard, faced each other across a purpose-built round table. After two months they agreed semi-free elections: 35 per cent of the Sejm’s seats open to a real contest and a new Senate freely elected. Solidarity…

The most spread-out Winter Games yet, shared between two host cities and venues across northern Italy. It opened at San Siro in Milan, seventy years after Cortina first held the Games in 1956.