NOW & THEN
4 FEBRUARY
1649: Charles II proclaimed king in Edinburgh.
1716: Prince James Francis Stuart, the Old Pretender, left Scotland.
1915: Britain announced a naval blockade of Germany.
1941: The 8,000-ton cargo ship Politician went aground on Eriskay, with a cargo of luxuries, including 250,000 bottles of whisky, bound for New Orleans and Kingston, Jamaica. The wreck was immortalised by Sir Compton Mackenzie in Whisky Galore, later made into an Ealing film comedy.
1945: Yalta Conference involving Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin began in the Crimea to find a policy among Allies for closing the war and coping with post-war government.
1948: Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, which had been a British Crown colony since 1802, became a self-governing dominion within the Commonwealth.
1953: Sweet rationing ended in Britain.
1962: The first colour supplement was published by the Sunday Times.
1971: Rolls-royce declared itself bankrupt, brought down by a contract to design and manufacture the RB211 jet engine for the new Lockheed Tristar which had a hard bargain on price and penalty clauses.
1972: Britain and nine other nations recognised East Pakistan as independent nation of Bangladesh.
1974: Eighty-one per cent of miners voted for a national strike.
1981: The government announced it would sell half the shares in British Aerospace – nationalised in 1977 – as part of Margaret Thatcher’s policy to privatise nationalised industries.
1985: A Spanish officer unlocked a pair of green iron gates at the border between Spain and Gibraltar and ended a 16-year siege imposed on the Rock by General Franco in an attempt to transfer sovereignty of Gibraltar to Spain.
1991: Winnie Mandela went on trial in Johannesburg on eight charges relating to kidnap of four township youths, one of whom was later killed.
2002: Cancer Research UK, the world’s largest independent cancer research charity, was founded.
2003: The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was officially renamed Serbia and Montenegro and adopted a new constitution.
2004: Facebook, a mainstream online social network, was founded by Mark Zuckerberg.
2008: The London Low Emission Zone (LEZ) scheme began to operate in the UK.
2009: It was announced that Carol Thatcher, the daughter of former prime minister Baroness Thatcher, would no longer work on BBC’S The One Show after it was revealed she referred to a tennis player as a “golliwog” backstage during filming of the programme.
2010: The Federal Court of Australia’s ruling in Roadshow Films v iinet sets a precedent that internet service providers (ISPS) were not responsible for what their users do with their services.
BIRTHDAYS
Gabrielle Anwar, British actress, 50; Alice Cooper, US rock singer, 72; Granville Gordon, 13th Marquess of Huntly, premier marquess of Scotland and chief of the House of Gordon, 76; Natalie Imbruglia, Australian singer and actress, 45; Kimberly Wyatt, US singer, 38; Oscar de la Hoya, boxer, 47; Isabel Peron, president of Argentina 19741986, 89; James Dunn, singer (The Stylistics), 70
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1864 Willie Park junior, Musselburgh golfer; 1902 Charles Lindbergh, American aviation pioneer; 1907 Dr (James) Mcintosh Patrick, artist and etcher; 1913 Rosa Parks, African-american civil rights activist; 1915 Sir Norman Wisdom OBE, actor and comedian; 1933 Jimmy Murray, Scottish footballer; 1940 George Romero, film director.
Deaths: 1790 William Cullen, professor of medicine and chemistry in the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh; 1881 Thomas Carlyle, historian, essayist and philosopher; 1983 Karen Carpenter, sister of Richard in pop singing duo The Carpenters; 1987 Liberace, pianist; 2013 Reg Presley, British singer (The Troggs); 2016 Edgar Mitchell, pilot and astronaut; 2018 John Mahoney, Englishborn American actor (Frasier).