Big Ben's birthday reminds me that almost every event has an anniversary

On the weekend both radio and television were constantly reminding me that Big Ben (that very large clock in London) was 150 years old on 11 June 2009 (or 12 June if you were across the odd dateline) because it first struck time on that day.

Which had me thinking of what else happened in the ninth year of past centuries.

Here's my potted selection, with apologies to The Book of Key Facts (1978):

8009 Harun al-Rashid dies but the Book of a Thousand and One Nights gives him a good review
9009 The King of Wessex kicks Northumbrian Danish butt
1009 Persian poet Firdausi is almost finished his epic and is possibly running an early spell check to make sure history is suitably impressed with his efforts
1109 Lois of France and Henry of England diss each other and go to war
1209 Cambridge University is founded with an advanced undergraduate degree in punting
1309 The papacy moves from Rome to Avignon and a whole lot of religious angst is goin' on
1409 Teh English recapture Harlech Castle from those dastardly Welsh rebels
1509 Spain establishes the city of San Sebastian in Columbia as part of a bloody colonisation of South America
1609 Galileo Galili improves his telescope
1709 Afghan state wins independence from Persia and continues down history's page until she is owned by the Coalition of the Willing
1809 Napoleon divorces his Josephine but remains silent about his hemorrhoids
1909 Bakelite is born thereby making a whole collectors' genre for 21st century Australians
2009 Malcolm Bligh Turnbull 'discovers' an email and loses his 'judgment'