NOW & THEN
13 MARCH
1470: Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Stamford.
1567: Margaret of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, used German mercenaries to annihilate 2,000 Calvinists.
1770: Daniel Lambert of Leicester, born on this day, grew to 738lb (52st 11lb). When he died it took 20 men to lower his coffin into the grave.
1781: Amateur astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, 1,783 million miles from the sun.
1873: Scottish Football Association formed with constituent clubs Queen’s Park, Clydesdale, Vale of Leven, Dumbreck, Third Lanark, Eastern, Granville, and Kilmarnock.
1881: Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, was assassinated when a bomb was thrown at him near his palace.
1918: MPS voted to raise the school-leaving age to 14.
1925: MPS approved Summer Time Bill making daylight saving permanent.
1930: Discovery of planet Pluto was announced by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory, Arizona.
1935: The driving test was introduced in Britain. It became compulsory three months later.
1938: Nazi Germany invaded Austria. It was declared part of the German Reich (the Anschluss) under the name of Ostmark.
1942: British bombers staged saturation raid on German city of Cologne.
1961: Black and white Bank of England £5 notes ceased to be legal tender.
1972: Clifford Irving admitted to a New York Court that he had fabricated Howard Hughes’s autobiography after receiving a $750,000 advance from his publishers. He had hoped the reclusive millionaire would not venture into the public limelight to denounce him.
1978: South Moluccan gunmen seized more than 70 hostages in government building in Essen, the Netherlands, and demanded the release of comrades in Dutch jails.
1990: Israeli coalition government collapsed over Likud members’ refusal to agree to American proposals for peace talks with Palestine.
1992: Pravda, for eight decades the official newspaper of the Communist Party, suspended
publication funds. because of lack of
1994: of the Defence Sir Peter Staff, Harding, resigned Chief after newspaper reports of a relationship with the wife of former Conservative defence minister Sir Anthony Buck.
1996: Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 children and a teacher at Dunblane primary school, and then turned the gun on himself.
2003: 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human found in Italy, according to the journal Nature.
2008: Gold prices in the United States hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.
2013: Jorge Mario Bergoglio, from Argentina, was elected the 266th Pope, and would be known as Pope Francis. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas and the first from the Southern Hemisphere.
BIRTHDAYS
Baroness Amos, Leader of the House of Lords 2003-7, UN Under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, 66; Joe Bugner, British-australian boxer, 70; Adam Clayton, British rock musician (U2), 60; William H Macy, US actor, director and writer, 70; Dave Mattacks, British rock drummer (Fairport Convention), 72; Candi Staton, US singer, 80; Mike Stoller, American songwriter, 87
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1733 Joseph Priestley, clergyman and scientist who discovered gases, notably oxygen; 1855 Percival Lowell, American astronomer; 1884 Sir Hugh Walpole, novelist; 1913 Sir Reo Stakis, hotelier; 1935 David Nobbs, British comedy writer; 1921 Gitta Sereny CBE, Austrianborn historian and author; 1989 Peaches Geldof, British socialite. Deaths: 1901 Benjamin Harrison, 23rd US president; 1906 Susan Anthony, leader of women’s suffrage in America; 1933 Robert Innes, Scottish astronomer who discovered Proxima Centauri; 1967 Sir Frank Worrell, West Indian Test cricketer; 1990 Jane Grigson, cookery writer; 2016 Adrienne Corri, Scottish actress and author.