NOW & THEN
21 MARCH
1801: French forces were defeated at Alexandria, Egypt, by British under Ralph Abercromby.
1803: French Civil Code – the Code Napoleon – was completed.
1859: The National Gallery of Scotland opened.
1884: France legalised trade unions.
1919: Soviet Republic was proclaimed.
1919: A rise of two shillings a day was recommended for British coal miners by a government commission.
1922: Queen Mary opened Waterloo Station, London.
1923: French scientists announced that smoking was good for you as nicotine fought bacteria.
1952: Doctor Kwame Nkrumah became first black African prime minister south of the Sahara when he was elected premier of the Gold Coast, now Ghana.
1960: Police killed 57 when they fired on demonstrators against pass laws at Sharpeville in Transvaal, South Africa.
1961: Boxer Henry Cooper won his first Lonsdale Belt when he defeated Joe Erskine.
1963: Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay was closed.
1975: Military government in Ethiopia abolished royal position of Emperor.
1977: India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi, resigned after losing her seat in parliamentary elections.
1988: Jordan’s King Hussein called on Muslim world to support Palestinian unrest in Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
1990: Sterling, shares and gilts fell sharply in reaction to “saver’s” Budget produced by John Major previous day.
1991: Michael Heseltine, environment secretary, unveiled plan to replace poll tax with council tax.
1992: In Turkey, fighting between government forces and Kurdish separatists escalated, leaving 75 dead over five days of conflict.
1996: Britain’s beef industry was in crisis after five countries banned meat imports and schools took beef off dinner menus following the disclosure of a likely link between BSE and its human equivalent, Creutzfeldt-jakob disease.
1999: Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.
2002: Alain Baxter, the winner of Britain’s first Olympic ski medal, was stripped of the bronze he won at Salt Lake City after testing positive for methamphetamine, a drug he said was in a Vicks inhaler bought in an American supermarket.
2002: In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh along with three other suspects were charged with murder for their part in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
2011: Royal Mail revealed plans to axe 1,700 jobs and close two mail centres in London.
2013: Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, announced that the independence referendum would be held on 18 September, 2014.
BIRTHDAYS
Matthew Broderick, US actor, 58; Peter Brook CBE, British theatre director, 95; Adrian Chiles, British broadcaster, 53; Lord Heseltine, MP 1966-2001, deputy prime minister 1995-7, 87; Sir Jonathan Mills, former director, Edinburgh International Festival, 57; Rosie O’donnell, US actress, 58; Gary Oldman, British actor, 62; Mike Westbrook, British jazz composer, 84; Mark Williams MBE, Welsh snooker player, 45
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1685 Johann Sebastian Bach, composer; 1835 Modest Mussorgsky, composer; ; 1921 Antony Hopkins CBE, British composer, conductor and broadcaster.
Deaths: 1556 Thomas Cranmer, first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, condemned as a traitor and heretic (burned at the stake); 1729 John Law, Scottish economist and monetary reformer; 1843 Robert Southey, Poet Laureate; 1982 Harry H Corbett, actor; 1985 Sir Michael Redgrave, actor; 1991 Leo Fender, pioneer of electric guitar; 1997 Rev W Awdry, creator of Thomas the Tank Engine; 1999 Ernie Wise, comedian; 2015 Jackie Trent, singer and songwriter; 2017 Colin Dexter OBE, author (creator of Inspector Morse).