NOW & THEN
14 JUNE
1645: Battle of Naseby took place in Northamptonshire during the Civil War. Parliamentarians, under Cromwell and Fairfax, defeated the Royalists under Prince Rupert.
1777: The ‘Stars and Stripes’ flag was adopted by the United States Congress.
1789: Captain Bligh, cast adrift from the Bounty with 18 men, arrived at Timor, near Java, having sailed his small craft for 3,618 miles.
1800: Battle of Marengo was fought in north-west Italy in the French Revolutionary Wars. French army under Napoleon crushed the Austrians.
1873: King Priam’s treasure of 8,700 priceless pieces was discovered in Turkey by German/american Heinrich Schliemann. In disinterring it he destroyed what was left of Troy.
1894: The French president, Sadi Carnot, was assassinated by Italian anarchists in Lyons.
1900: Hawaii became part of the United States.
1940: Paris was captured and occupied by German forces. Eight days later the armistice was signed and the Vichy government was set up.
1964: Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Robben Island, seven miles off Cape Town, amid international protests.
1966: Vatican’s Index of Forbidden Books, which listed proscribed literary works, was abolished.
1970: Bobby Charlton played his 106th and last football game for England, in World Cup in Mexico City. His first was in 1958 against Scotland.
1982: Ceasefire was agreed in the Falklands.
1988: Top executives’ pay was reported to be rising at 22 per cent a year, as against a national average of 8.5 per cent.
1989: The Queen bestowed an honorary knighthood on President Ronald Reagan.
1991: BBC transmitted last live programme from Lime Grove studios, after 41 years.
1991: British Rail was fined £250,000 after admitting safety failures caused Clapham Junction disaster in which 35 people died.
1993: Prince Norodom Sihanouk was reinstated as Cambodian head of state.
1995: Two policemen were cleared at the Old Bailey of the unlawful killing of illegal immigrant Joy Gardner. A third officer had been cleared earlier.
1996: A Japanese trader ran up losses of at least £1.2 billion through unauthorised copper deals, most of them on the London Metal Exchange.
2007: A Glasgow City Council report revealed that as many as 40 staff at its Kerelaw children’s residential school in Stevenston, Ayrshire, had been guilty of physical and sexual abuse for 25 years. The school was closed in 2006.
2007: The SNP Executive said it was abolishing immediately the £2,200 graduate endowment fee introduced by the previous Labour/liberal Democrat administration when it scrapped tuition fees.
2017: Seventy-nine people died and others remained missing after fire raged through the Grenfell Tower housing block in North Kensington, London.
BIRTHDAYS
Alan Carr, English stand-up comedian and television presenter, 43; Julie Felix, American singer, 81; Boy George, pop singer (Culture Club), 58; Steffi Graf, Wimbledon champion, 50; Paul O’grady MBE, comedian, TV presenter. radio DJ, 64; Jonathan Raban, British novelist and travel writer, 77; Sir Antony Sher KBE, South African-born British actor and writer, 70; Donald Trump, US president 2017-, 73; Mike Yarwood OBE, impressionist and entertainer, 78; Baron Williams of Oystermouth, Archbishop of Canterbury 2002-12, 69
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1811 Harriet Beecher Stowe, American novelist noted for Uncle Tom’s Cabin; 11909 Burl Ives, American singer and film actor; 1924 Sir James Black, Scottish pharmacologist and Nobel laureate, chancellor, Dundee University 1992-2006; 1928 Che Guevara, guerrilla leader. Deaths: 1928 Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette; 1936 GK Chesterton, author; 1946 John Logie Baird, inventor and pioneer in television development; 1948 Sir John Blackwood Mcewan, composer; 1986 Alan Jay Lerner, American lyricist; 1991 Dame Peggy Ashcroft, actress.