NOW & THEN
1297: Scots under William Wallace defeated the English at Cambuskenneth.
1547: The Battle of Pinkie, in which the Scots, under the Earl of Arran, were heavily defeated by the English, with thousands of Scottish soldiers killed.
1846: Elias Howe patented the sewing machine.
1897: Marlborough Street Court, London, fined a taxi-driver, George Smith, £1 to make him the first person in Britain to be convicted for drunken driving.
1898: Empress Elizabeth of Austria-hungary was assassinated by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni in Geneva.
1907: The British colony of New Zealand became a dominion.
1921: The first motorway was completed in Germany.
1939: The German Army gained complete control of western Poland.
1943: German troops entered Rome and took over protection of the Vatican City.
1945: Vidkun Quisling, the puppet premier of Norway, was sentenced to death for collaboration.
1948: Australian cricketer Don Bradman scored 153 runs in his final first-class innings in England.
1960: Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia, running barefoot, set a new world record of 2:15:16.2 in the marathon at the Olympic Games in Rome, becoming the first subsahara African to win a gold medal.
1961: German racing driver Wolfgang von Trips was killed along with 13 people in the crowd who were struck by debris when two cars collided in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
1967: Gibraltar referendum resulted in huge vote to retain link with Britain rather than accept Spanish sovereignty.
1972: Three British soldiers were killed by a landmine near Dungannon, County Tyrone.
1976: Two airliners collided over Yugoslavia, killing all 176 people aboard.
1977: Hamida Djanoubi became the last person to be executed by guillotine in France.
1981: Picasso’s Guernica returned to Spain after 40 years custodianship in the US. Picasso refused to allow the painting to be shown in Spain until democracy was restored.
1992: Medical experts said a Pittsburgh patient who died after having a baboon liver transplant had contracted the Aids virus.
2001: Charles Ingram cheated his way into winning £1 million on the television quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
2002: Switzerland became a member of the United Nations.
2007: Wendy Alexander became leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, replacing Jack Mcconnell, the former first minister who stood down after the party’s defeat in the Scottish Parliament elections.
2008: The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, reported to be the biggest scientific experiment ever, went live in Geneva.
2015: The running shoes which Sir Roger Bannister wore when he became the first athlete to break the four-minute mile barrier (3:59.4) at Oxford in 1954, were sold for £266,500. Siobhan Fahey, singer, 60; Christopher Columbus, actor and director, 60; Carol Decker, singer, 61; José Feliciano, singer, 73; Colin Firth CBE, actor, 58; Judy Geeson, actress, 70; Karl Lagerfeld, fashion designer, 85; Hetti Bywater, actress, 24;; Amy Irving, actress, 65; Kate Burton, actress, 61; Luke Treadaway, actor, 34; Johnny Fingers, pianist (Boomtown Rats), 62 Births: 1659 Henry Purcell, composer; 1771 Mungo Park, Selkirk-born surgeon and explorer in West Africa; 1886 Hilda Doolittle, poet and novelist; 1890 Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Glasgow-born archaeologist; 1914 Robert Wise, film director and producer; 1915 Edmond O’brien, actor; 1918 Rin Tin Tin, dog star; 1926 Beryl Cook, painter; 1929 Arnold Palmer, golfer.
Deaths: 1797 Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin, pioneer of women’s rights; 1938 Charles Cruft, dog show founder; 1985 Jock Stein, football manager; 1999 Bill Mccue, singer; 2007 Jane Wyman, actress; 2007 Dame Anita Roddick, Body Shop founder; 2011 Cliff Robertson, actor; 2014 Richard Kiel, actor (“Jaws” in James Bond movies).