NOW & THEN
9 MARCH
1562: Kissing in public was banned in Naples, contravention being punishable by death.
1776: Foundation of modern economics, with publication of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, written in Kirkcaldy by Adam Smith.
1796: Napoleon married Josephine. Both parties gave their ages as 28, although Napoleon was only 27 and Josephine was nudging 33.
1802: The upright piano was patented by Thomas Loud.
1831: The French Foreign Legion was founded by King Louis Philippe, with headquarters in Algeria.
1846: Treaty of Lahore ended first Sikh War in India, whereby Britain gained additional territory.
1876: Alexander Graham Bell filed patent for the first telephone – only three hours ahead of a similar one by Elisha Gray.
1891: Hurricane winds with snow swept across Britain, particularly in south-west regions, felling trees and sinking 14 ships. The storms continued for four days and there were 60 deaths.
1915: Defence of the Realm Act was passed.
1932: Eamon de Valera was elected president of the Irish Free State.
1946: Thirty-three football fans died and more than 400 were injured when crash barriers collapsed at Burnden Park, before an FA Cup match between Bolton Wanderers and Stoke City.
1956: Archbishop Makarios, implicated in terrorism in Cyprus, was deported by Britain to the Seychelle islands.
1959: A doll named Barbara Millicent Roberts – Barbie for short – was exhibited at the New York toy fair.
1974: Britain returned to a fiveday working week, having been on three days since December, 1973, to conserve fuel restricted by Arab-israeli war.
1976: Cable car plunged to ground near northern Italian city of Trento, killing 42 skiers.
1990: National Union of Mineworkers’ executive ordered independent inquiry into alleged financial irregularities by Arthur Scargill and others.
1990: The two Germanies began reunification talks.
1991: Yugoslav military moved into Belgrade with dozens of tanks after thousands of anticommunist rebels clashed with police in street battles, leaving at least two people dead.
1994: IRA terrorists launched mortar-bomb attack on Heathrow Airport. All the missiles failed to explode.
1995: The Queen visited Northern Ireland for the first time since the IRA and Loyalist ceasefires were announced.
2007: The Common Riding event in the Borders town of Hawick was named as one of the top annual celebrations in the world by a party guide.
2008: Police in China revealed that they had thwarted an attempt to sabotage the Beijing Olympics.
2009: A policeman was shot dead in Northern Ireland, sparking fears that the province would descend into violence.
BIRTHDAYS
Sir Bill Beaumont CBE, English rugby player and broadcaster, 68; Juliette Binoche, French actress, 56; John Cale OBE, British rock musician (Velvet Underground), 78; Martin Johnson CBE, English rugby player and coach, 50, David Matthews, British composer, 77; Howard Shelley OBE, British pianist and conductor, 70
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1454 Amerigo Vespucci, Italian navigator after whom America is named; 1839 Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, composer; 1881 Ernest Bevin, union leader and politician; 1892 Vita Sackville-west, novelist, poet and member of the Bloomsbury group; 1918 Mickey Spillane, US crime novelist; 1934 Yuri Gagarin, Russian astronaut, first man in space; 1943 Bobby Fischer, world chess champion 1972-75; 1946 Alexandra Bastedo, British actress.
Deaths: 1979 Barbara Mullen, actress; 1988 Richard C Adams, US inventor of the paint roller; 1992 Menachim Begin, former Israeli prime minister; 1993 C Northcote Parkinson, author, historian, deviser of Parkinson’s Laws; 1996 George Burns, US comedian/actor;2017 Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin CBE, British artist