NOW & THEN
14 MAY
1610: François Ravaillac, a fanatic, assassinated France’s King Henry IV, who was succeeded by Louis XIII, aged nine, with Maria de Medici, the Queen Mother, as Regent.
1643: Louis XIV ascended the French throne, aged four, on the death of his father Louis XIII and reigned for more than 72 years.
1660: Charles II proclaimed restored king at Edinburgh.
1754: The Society of St Andrews Golfers was constituted, and became (in 1834) the Royal and Ancient Golf Club.
1791: British under Lord Cornwallis overthrew Tippoo of Mysore at Seringapatam in India.
1796: Edward Jenner made his first vaccination against smallpox, and laid the foundation for modern immunology.
1912: The Royal Flying Corps was established.
1921: The British Legion was founded in London by Earl Haig. It became the Royal British Legion in 1971.
1940: Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War, broadcast an appeal to all men between 17 and 60 who could hold a rifle to enrol as Local Defence Volunteers (later called Home Guard) to oppose landings in Britain by German parachute troops. Some 400,000 joined in the first week.
1948: British mandate in Palestine ended, and an independent Jewish state of Israel was established with Chaim Weizmann as president and David Ben-gurion as premier; Arab Legion of Transjordan invaded Palestine and entered Jerusalem.
1951: New law removed Coloured (mixed race) people from voting registers in South Africa.
1964: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev opened Aswan Dam in Egypt.
1973: America’s Skylab I was launched, returning to Earth on 11 July, 1979, after 34,981 orbits, where it disintegrated on impact with the atmosphere.
1977: Soviet newspaper Pravda warned the West that any aid to China eventually would be used to start world conflict.
1988: Iraqi warplanes attacked and set ablaze five ships at offshore oil-loading terminal belonging to Iran.
1989: Archaeologists and actors protested as bulldozers prepared to cover the remains of the Rose Theatre, London, where Shakespeare’s first plays were said to have been performed.
1990: Gordon Wilson quit as leader of Scottish National Party.
1990: Tens of thousands marched in Paris in protest against desecration of 34 Jewish graves in southern France.
1991: Mao Tse-tung’s widow, Jiang Qing, Gang of Four member, committed suicide in Peking. Chinese kept her death secret until 4 June.
1992: Police investigated largescale thefts from a Bank of England depot where worn-out bank notes are destroyed.
2010: Labour MP Stephen Timms was stabbed in the stomach while holding a surgery in east London.
2014: An Iron Age village and ancient artefacts dating back 9,000 years were found during construction of the A75 Dunragit bypass in Wigtownshire.
BIRTHDAYS
Francesca Annis, British actress, 75; Ian Astbury, rock singer (The Cult), 58; Cate Blanchett, actress, 51; Hazel Blears, Labour politician, 64; David Byrne, Dumbartonborn singer (Talking Heads), 68; George Lucas, film director, 76; Sir George Mathewson CBE, chairman, RBS Group 2001-06, 80; Dame Siân Phillips, Welsh actress, 87; Tim Roth, British actor, 59; Tony Stanger, Scots rugby player, 52; Robert Zemeckis, US film director,
68; Olly Murs, British singersongwriter, 36; Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, 36; Martine Mccutcheon, British singer and actress, 44.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1686 Gabriel Fahrenheit, physicist and inventor of mercury thermometer; 1727 Thomas Gainsborough, landscape and portrait painter; 1771 Robert Owen, Welsh industrialist and social reformer; 1926 Eric Morecambe, comedian; 1936 Bobby Darin, singer, Deaths: 1881 Mary Seacole, Jamaican nurse heroine of the Crimea War; 1912 August Strindberg, playwright; 1925 Sir Rider Haggard, novelist (King Solomon’s Mines); 1998 Frank Sinatra, singer and actor; 2003 Dame Wendy Hiller, actress