NOW & THEN
5MAY
1641: England’s Star Chamber was abolished by the Long Parliament.
1646: Charles I surrendered to Scots at Newark.
1824: British troops took over Rangoon, Burma.
1881: Louis Pasteur carried out successful inoculations against anthrax on ox, cows and sheep.
1882: Excavation of Corinth Canal began in Greece.
1912: First Pravda published.
1930: Amy Johnson left Croydon in the Gypsy Moth Jason to become the first female to fly solo to Australia, arriving on 24 May.
1936: Italian forces occupied Addis Ababa, ending Abyssinian (Ethiopian) War.
1941: Emperor Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia from exile in Britain after the liberation of his country by British forces.
1949: The Council of Europe was set up in London.
1961: Alan Shepard became the first American spaceman, in a Mercury capsule Freedom VII.
1975: The Scottish Daily News, the first workers’ co-op national newspaper, was published. It closed after seven months.
1978: Red Brigades in Italy said they were carrying out death sentence against former premier Aldo Moro, whose body was found two days later.
1980: SAS stormed the terrorist-occupied Iranian Embassy in Knightsbridge, London, killing four of the five gunmen who took over the building, and rescuing 19 hostages.
1981: Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker, died in jail. He had been elected MP in Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election on 11 April.
1988: The first live television broadcast from the summit of Mount Everest was transmitted by Japanese television.
1988: French assault team stormed cave in French Pacific territory of Nouméa, New Caledonia, and freed 22 gendarmes and prosecutor held hostage by Melanesian separatists.
1989: The first two-man flight in a microlight aircraft was made by Steve Mangan and Graham Jones of Hampshire, when they went from Cherbourg to Southampton for charity.
1990: So-called “Twoplus-four” talks on German unification, involving Britain, France, Soviet Union, United
States and the two Germanies, opened in Bonn.
1992: Twelve football supporters died and 527 were injured when a temporary stand collapsed at Bastia, Corsica.
1995: The Queen paid tribute to Second World War dead at the start of three days of celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of VE Day.
2005: Tony Blair secured an historic third term in government for Labour, with a majority down from 161 to 66.
2011: Voting took place in the Scottish election. A day later, the Scottish National Party emerged triumphant as it formed Scotland’s first ever majority government by taking 69 seats in the 129-seat parliament.
2016: For the first time, 16- and 17-year-olds were able to vote at the Scottish Parliamentary election.