This is the week that was

20 November:

1906: Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Royce decide to go into partnership.

1970: The ten-shilling note goes out of circulation.

1979: Sir Anthony Blunt is stripped of his knighthood.

21 November:

1783: Jean de Rosier and the Marquis d'Arlandes make the first free flight in a hot-air balloon, which lasted 25 minutes.

1906: A Glasgow man drowns in 200,000 gallons of hot whiskey that burst suddenly from vats.

1936: The first television gardening programme is broadcast, called, imaginatively, In Your Garden.

22 November:

A day of coincidences:

It is the feast day of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music, and also the date on which Sir Arthur Sullivan died (1900) and Benjamin Britten was born (1913).

In tennis, it marks the birth of Billie-Jean King (1943) and Boris Becker (1967).

In politics, it is the assassination date of President Kennedy (1963) and the resignation of Margaret Thatcher (1990).

23 November:

1852: The first pillar boxes in the UK come into use in St Helier, Jersey.

1889: The Palais Royal Salloon in San Francisco becomes the first bar to have a jukebox.

1906: Enrico Caruso is fined $10 for sexual harassment.

1910: Dr Crippen is hanged.

1963: The first episode of Dr Who is screened.

1988: Chiyonofuji becomes only the fifth sumo wrestler in history to win 50 contests in a row.

24 November:

1642: Abel Tasman discovers Tasmania, and names it Van Diemen's Land after the gov-ernor of the Dutch East Indies.

1859: Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species.

1868: Smithfield meat market opens.

25 November:

2348 BC: According to old theologians, the date the Great Flood began.

1884: Evaporated milk is patented in St Louis, Missouri.

1896: The first parking summons in Britain is issued against a man named William Marshall. The case was later dismissed.

1937: BBC radio broadcasts its first quiz show: an inter- regional spelling competition.

1952: The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre.

1953: At Wembley, England lose 6-3 to Hungary, their first home defeat.

26 November:

1789: The first national celebration of Thanksgiving in the US - a celebration of the harvest of 1621.

1832: Trams are introduced in New York City.

1988: A woman in Torquay spends pounds 10,000 to repeat her daughter's wedding because she didn't like the video first time around.