This Day in History: Women in Britain voted for the first time in a general election

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 14:

1911 – Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer, and four companions became the first men to reach the South Pole.

1918 – Women in Britain voted for the first time in a general election and were allowed to stand as candidates.

1918 – Portuguese President Sidonio Pais was fatally wounded as he entered Rossio station in Lisbon only weeks after an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

1939 – The League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union for aggression against Finland.

1947 – Stanley Baldwin, who served three terms as British prime minister, died.

1989 – Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who shunned official honour to fight the Kremlin for human rights and political freedom, died aged 68.

1995 – Leaders from former Yugoslavia signed a Bosnian peace treaty in Paris, ending Europe’s worst conflict since World War Two and opening the way for thousands of NATO troops to move into the shattered country.

2000 – Cuban President Fidel Castro met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Havana.

2004 – Inauguration of Millau viaduct, the world’s highest bridge.

2006 – A British police inquiry ruled that Princess Diana was not the victim of a murder plot when she died in a car accident in 1997.

2008 – U.S. President Bush makes an unannounced farewell visit to Baghdad, weeks before leaving office; an Iraqi reporter calls Bush a “dog” and throws his shoes at him.

(Reuters)