NOW & THEN
2 On this day in 1924 Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell refused to run in the heats of the 100 metres at the Paris Olympics on a Sunday of 6.6 magnitude struck Nepal and India.
Fifty-one people partying on the Thames pleasure cruiser Marchioness drowned when it was hit by a dredger in London.
1993: Britain’s Colin Jackson set a world record of 12.91 seconds for the 110-metre hurdles.
1993: Mother Teresa was hospitalised with malaria.
1994: There were calls for an urgent investigation by the Lord Advocate into a third drugsrelated death in three months at a “rave” at the Hangar 13 nightspot in Ayr.
1998: The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Quebec could not secede from Canada with the federal government’s approval.
2009: The Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-megrahi, left Scotland, bound for Libya, after being freed from prison on compassionate grounds.