NOW & THEN
25 MARCH
Annunciation Day, the old legal New Year until 1599. Lady Day.
1306: Robert de Brus, Earl of Carrick and Lord of Annandale, was crowned King of Scots at Scone by the Countess of Buchan.
1802: Treaty of Amiens was signed with France, Spain and Holland, returning most of Britain’s possessions taken in the French Revolutionary Wars.
1807: Slave trade in Britain abolished.
1810: The Commercial Bank of Scotland was officially founded in Edinburgh by John Pitcairn, Lord Cockburn and others.
1815: Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia formed alliance against Napoleon Bonaparte to maintain established order in Europe.
1821: Greek patriots began revolt against domination of Ottoman Empire, an uprising that lasted 12 years and won Greek independence.
1876: First Scotland versus Wales football international was played in Glasgow: Scotland won 4-0.
1897: The Scottish Trades Union Congress was founded.
1925: Greece was formally declared a republic.
1936: The United States, Britain and France signed the London Naval Convention.
1940: The Mosquito, Britain’s two-seater fighter bomber, made its maiden flight.
1941: Yugoslavia joined Rome-berlin-tokyo Alliance.
1949: Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet won five Oscars – the first British film to win an Academy award.
1957: Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed Treaty of Rome and established the European Economic Community.
1969: Pakistan’s president, Ayub Khan, turned power over to military after 11 years of leadership.
1975: Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal was assassinated in palace in Riyadh by nephew with history of mental illness.
1980: Dr Robert Runcie was enthroned as the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury.
1982: Former Labour deputy leader Roy Jenkins took traditional Conservative seat at Glasgow Hillhead for the SDP in sensational by-election victory.
1987: More than 80 Afghan guerrillas and civilians were killed when Afghan air force jets attacked camps close to Pakistani border.
1989: The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race had two women as coxes for the first time in its 135 years. Oxford won.
1990: Eighty-seven people were killed in the Happy Land Club fire in the Bronx, New York. The cause was fireraising.
1992: Aldershot Football Club collapsed with debts of £1.2 million.
1993: The Warrington IRA bomb atrocity claimed a second young victim when 12-year-old Tim Parry died in hospital.
1993: Barbara Harmer, 39, became civil aviation’s first woman supersonic pilot when she flew as first officer on the Concorde.
2002: Halle Berry became the first black woman to win the Best Actress Academy Award, for Monster’s Ball.