NOW & THEN
10 AUGUST
1675: Greenwich Observatory was established by King Charles II, and its foundation stone laid.
1792: The French monarchy was abolished.
1842: The Mines Act was passed by parliament, forbidding women and children in Britain to work underground.
1846: The Smithsonian Institution was established in Washington, DC, by the bequest of the British scientist James Smithson.
1872: Education (Scotland) Act, passed. It provided for a state elementary education for all children, and amended previous provisions in the acts of 1696, 1793, 1839 and 1861.
1895: The first London Promenade Concert took place, founded by Henry Wood (later Sir) and Robert Newman, and played by an orchestra of 80, conducted by Henry Wood in the Queen’s Hall. Standing tickets cost one shilling.
1897: The Royal Automobile Club was founded, under the name of “The Automobile Club of Great Britain”.
1911: Members of Parliament were granted salaries for the first time. Figure was set at £400 per annum.
1911: House of Lords finally relinquished supremacy over Commons by passing Parliament Bill, which limited the power of peers to delay legislation proposed by lower chamber.
1920: The GPO issued the first airmail stickers.
1921: Within days of taking a dip in the waters of Fundy Bay after fighting a forest fire, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 39-year old future president of the United States had poliomyelitis and was paralysed from the waist down.
1952: European Coal and Steel Community, forerunner of the EC, was founded in Luxembourg.
1954: Sir Gordon Richards, champion jockey, retired after 4,870 wins.
1961: Britain applied for membership of the EEC.
1966: America’s first moon satellite, Orbiter 1, was launched.
1990: Saddam Hussein called on Arabs everywhere to “rise up and defend Mecca, which has fallen captive to the spears of the Americans and the Zionists”.
1992: The paramilitary Ulster Defence Association was outlawed by the Northern Ireland Office.
1993: Health Department figures showed hospital waiting lists above the million mark for the first time since records began.
2006: Britain went on “critical” security alert after the arrests of 24 British nationals about an alleged plot to detonate suicide bombs on airliners bound for the United States. Hundreds of flights to and from Heathrow were cancelled.
2008: Nicole Cooke, from Wales, claimed Britain’s first gold medal of the Beijing Olympics in a thrilling women’s cycling road race.
2009: Twentydied in Handlová, in the deadliest mining disaster in Slovakia’s history.
BIRTHDAYS
Ian Anderson MBE, Dunfermlineborn rock singer-musician (Jethro Tull), 72; Rosanna Arquette, US actress, 60; Antonio Banderas, actor, 59; Lawrence Dallaglio OBE, English rugby player, 47; Charlie Dimmock, TV gardener, 53; Julia Fordham, British singer, 57; Roy Keane, Irish footballer, manager and television pundit, 48; Justin Theroux, actor/ director/screenwriter, 48; Emily Symons, actress (Emmerdale), 50; Suzanne Collins, novelist (The Hunger Games), 57; Riddick Bowe, former world heavyweight boxing champion, 52; Ronnie Spector, singer (the Ronettes), 76
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1740 Samuel Arnold, organist and composer; 1869 Robert Binyon, poet and playwright; 1893 William Shepherd Morrison, 1st Viscount Dunrossil; 1897 Jack Haley, actor and singer (Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz); 1902 Norma Shearer, actress; 1909 Leo Fender, pioneer of the electric guitar.
Deaths: 1784 Allan Ramsay, artist; 1806 Johann Haydn, composer; 1932 Rin Tin Tin, German Shepherd dog and film star; 1949 John Haigh, acid bath murderer (hanged); 1969 Sharon Tate, actress (murdered); 2008 Isaac Hayes, soul musician.