The Scotsman

NOW & THEN

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St Swithin’s Day

AD862: When St Swithin, Saxon Bishop of Winchester, died, he asked to be buried outside where rain could fall on his grave. Some 108 years later on the same day, when devoted monks decided to move the body from the “vile and unworthy grave”, a sudden deluge drenched the funeral party and it rained for nearly seven weeks.

1099: Jerusalem was captured by the Crusaders.

1381: John Ball, a leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, was hung, drawn and quartered in the presence of Richard II.

1783: The first steamboat, Pyroscaphe,was given its first run on River Saône in France.

1798: Marseillai­se became the French national anthem.

1799: The Rosetta Stone was found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta during Napolion’s Egyptian campaign.

1840: Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia signed the Quadruple Alliance.

1850: John Wisden bowled all ten wickets while playing for Sorth against North at Lord’s.

1856: Natal was formed as a British colony.

1857: The Massacre of Cawnpore, in which 197 British women and children were murdered during the Indian Mutiny.

1869: Margarine was patented in France

1889: New National Portrait Gallery for Scotland was opened in Edinburgh.

1893: Matabele staged uprising against rule of British South Africa Company.

1912: National Insurance or social payment, devised by Lloyd George, began.

1937: The concentrat­ion camp at Buchenwald was opened.

1939: Clara Adams became the first woman to complete a round-the-world flight.

1948: Alcoholics Anonymous was establishe­d in London, 13 years after starting in the United States.

1948: United Nations Security Council ordered truce in Palestine.

1965: US Mariner-4 sent back the first close-up pictures of Mars.

1974: Archbishop/president Makarios of Cyprus fled during a military coup.

1978: Jack Nicklaus scored 281 at St Andrews to win the Open Championsh­ip.

1987: Boy George was banned from appearing on British television shows, deemed to be a “bad influence”.

1992: Pope John Paul II was hospitalis­ed to have a tumour removed.

1994: Hundreds of thousands of Hutu fled to Zaire to escape genocide in Rwanda.

2002: Anti-terrorism Court of Pakistan handed down the death sentence to British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three others suspected of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

2009: A 7.9 magnitude earthquake centred 160 miles west of Invercargi­ll, New Zealand, triggered a small tsunami.

2009: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released.

2012: Thirty-nine pilgrims died in a bus crash in Parasi, Nepal.

 ??  ?? On this day in 1987 flamboyant pop star Boy George was banned from British TV because he was ‘a bad influence’
On this day in 1987 flamboyant pop star Boy George was banned from British TV because he was ‘a bad influence’

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