NOW & THEN
18 MARCH
1291: Pope Gregory X issued a bull awarding clerical tithes of Scotland to Edward I of England for crusade.
1689: The Earl of Leven was commissioned to raise regiment of 800 in Border country to hold Edinburgh against Jacobites. It became The King’s Own Scottish Borderers.
1834: The Tolpuddle Martyrs, who set up a society to stop the decline of agricultural wages, were sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Tasmania. Public outcry had them released after two years.
1891: The opening of the London-paris telephone system, with communication between the Prince of Wales and President Carnot. The service did not become public until 1 April.
1902: Enrico Caruso sang ten operatic arias into a horn in a room in Hotel de Milano to make the first successful song recording. He was the only person able to produce enough volume to disguise the crackles.
1922: Mahatma Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison in India for civil disobedience.
1925: Madame Tussaud’s London wax museum burned down.
1930: The planet Pluto was discovered by the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh..
1965: Aleksei Leonov left Soviet craft Voskhod 2 to make first space walk, lasting ten minutes.
1967: The oil tanker Torrey Canyon was wrecked on Pollard Rock between Isles of Scilly and Land’s End, spilling 120,000 gallons of crude into the sea.
1984: Oxford and Cambridge Boat race took place on a Sunday for the first time, having been postponed for a day because the Cambridge boat had been damaged in a collision.
1991: A Commons motion by 100 MPS urged the Queen to dismiss the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, over the Birmingham Six affair.
1992: South Africa’s referendum on power-sharing with black people resulted in a landslide Yes vote.
1992: Pat Clinton became the sixth Scot to hold a world boxing title when he dethroned the Mexican Isidro Perez for the World Boxing Organisation flyweight crown.
1995: England beat Scotland 24-12 at Twickenham to win rugby’s grand slam, Five Nations Championship and Calcutta Cup.
2002: MPS voted 386-175 to ban hunting with dogs in England and Wales. Alternative proposals to maintain the status quo and a licensing system were defeated.
2003: 139 Labour MPS rebelled in a Commons vote on war with Iraq and voted against the Labour government, the biggest act of defiance in British political history.
2009: Josef Fritzl, the Austrian accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering seven children with her, changed his plea to guilty on all charges. Fritzl admitted a string of offences, including rape, incest, murder and enslavement. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
2009: Natasha Richardson, the stage and screen actress and daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, died aged 45 following a head injury sustained when she fell during a skiing lesson in Canada.
BIRTHDAYS
VANESSA WILLIAMS American actress and singer, 57
Ron Atkinson, football manager, 81; Patrick Barlow, British actor, writer and director, 73; Luc Besson, French film director, 61; Irene Cara, American singer and actress, 61; Brad Dourif, American actor, 70; Timo Glock, German Formula 1 driver, 38; Queen Latifah, American actress and rap singer, 50; Sophia Myles, British actress, 40; Courtney Pine CBE, British jazz saxophonist, 56; Charley Pride, American singer, 82; Ingemar Stenmark, Swedish skier, 64; Stuart Zender, rock musician (Jamiroquai), 46.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1837 Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th United States president; 1869 Neville Chamberlain, Conservative prime minister 1937-1940; 1893 Wilfred Owen, war poet; 1937 Kenny Lynch OBE, British singer/actor; 1949 Alex Higgins, snooker player.
Deaths: 1455 Fra Angelico, artist; 1584 Ivan the Terrible, first to assume title of Tsar; 1745 Sir Robert Walpole, Whig statesman; 1965 King Farouk I of Egypt; 1983 King Umberto of Italy; 1988 Percy Thrower, horticulturist and broadcaster; 2008 Sir Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer; 2017 Chuck Berry, rock’n’roll singer-songwriter.