NOW & THEN
15 MARCH
1603: Samuel de Champlain, French navigator and explorer, sailed for the New World.
1776: United States Congress resolved that authority of British Crown should be suppressed.
1814: Highland Clearances began in Sutherland.
1874: France assumed protectorate over central Indochina region of Annam, which broke off vassalage to China.
1877: Australia beat England at Melbourne in first cricket Test match.
1886: Opening of Glasgow’s Queen Street low-level system, the first of the city’s three undergrounds.
1892: The first escalator, the Reno Inclined Elevator, was patented by Jesse Reno – and installed at the Old Iron Pier on Coney Island four years later.
1894: France and Germany agreed on boundaries between French Congo and Cameroons.
1903: British conquest of northern Nigeria was completed.
1909: Selfridge’s, “the world’s most beautiful store”, opened in Oxford Street, London. Its American owner, Gordon Selfridge, issued 600,000 invitations.
1916: United States force of 12,000 soldiers under General Pershing was ordered to Mexico to capture revolutionary leader Pancho Villa.
1932: The New BBC Dance Orchestra made its debut under the direction of Henry Hall. The programme closed with the tune Here’s To The Next Time, destined to become a classic.
1943: Japanese planes attacked Darwin, Australia.
1945: Album record charts were first published in America, by Billboard, with the King Cole Trio number one.
1949: Clothes rationing ended after eight years.
1952: The greatest fall of rain in recorded history began – 73.62 inches in 24 hours at La Reunion, Indian Ocean.
1956: My Fair Lady opened on Broadway with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. The title was adapted from the Cockney pronunciation of Mayfair.
1961: Doctor Richard Beeching became British Railways chief.
1962: United States military training personnel in South Vietnam exchanged fire with Communist guerrilla forces.
1969: Fighting broke out between Soviet and Chinese forces along border.
1985: The first internet domain name is registered (symbolics. com).
1989: President Mikhail Gorbachev called for rapid measures to ease chronic Soviet food shortages.
1990: Iraq hanged Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft for alleged spying.
1990: Mikhail Gorbachev was elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union.
1992: Armenian and Azerbaijani officials signed a draft truce agreement in Tehran.
2004: French president Jacques Chirac signed the law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools, known as the headscarf ban.
2007: It was revealed that the number of young children in the UK being diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes had increased five-fold in two decades.
2011: Civil war broke out in Syria.
BIRTHDAYS
Isobel Buchanan, Scottish soprano, 65; Very Reverend John B Cairns, Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1999-2000, 77; Ry Cooder, American blues-folk guitarist, 72; David Cronenberg, Canadian film director, 76; Professor Emeritus Sir James Dunbar-nasmith CBE, British architect and conservationist, 92; John Duttine, British actor, 70; ; Dame Deirdre Hutton CBE, chairwoman, UK’S Civil Aviation Authority, 70;; Eva Longoria, actress, 44; Mike Love, American pop singer (The Beach Boys) and composer, 78; Ben Okri OBE, Nigerian author, 60.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1767 “Old Hickory” Andrew Jackson, 7th United States President; 1779 Viscount Melbourne, Whig statesman and prime minister; 1918 Earl Haig of Bemersyde OBE, artist, Deputy Lieutenant of Ettrick and Lauderdale (and Roxburghshire. Deaths: 44BC Julius Caesar (assassinated); 459 Attila the Hun; 1975 Aristotle Onassis, shipping magnate; 1984 Tommy Cooper, comedian; 1998 Doctor Benjamin Spock, paediatrician and author on child care; 2014 Clarissa Dickson Wright, barrister, cook and broadcaster.