NOW & THEN
16 JUNE
1338: Siege of Dunbar by the English was raised.
1567: Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle.
1778: British forces were routed by the Green Mountain Boys of New England at the Battle of Bennington, during the American Revolutionary War.
1779: Spain declared war on Britain, and siege of Gibraltar opened.
1784: The wearing of orange clothes was made illegal in the Netherlands.
1871: The University Tests Act allowed students to be admitted to the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Durham without religious tests, with the exception of courses in theology.
1903: The Ford Motor Company was formed in Detroit to market the “horseless” inventions of Henry Ford, farmer’s son and engineer.
1904: The novel Ulysses by James Joyce takes place on this day, now known and celebrated in Dublin – where the novel is set – as Bloomsday, after the leading character, Leopold Bloom.
1905: Automobile Association was founded in Britain to help motorists avoid speed traps.
1920: Council of League of Nations held first public meeting at St James’s Palace in London.
1931: Electric tote first used on a racecourse, at Ascot.
1940: Marshal Philippe Pétain took over French government and asked Germany for an armistice.
1948: The Cathay Pacific Airways’ Catalina flying boat Miss Macao, on a scheduled flight to Hong Kong, was the first aeroplane to be hijacked, by a gang of Chinese bandits.
1958: Yellow no-waiting lines were introduced to British streets.
1961: Soviet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West while on tour in Paris with the Kirov Ballet.
1963: Valentina Tereshkova blasted off from Tyuratam in Vostok 6 to become the first woman in space.
1972: America’s biggest political scandal started when five burglars were caught breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex in Washington.
1976: Bloody rioting erupted in Soweto, largest black township in South Africa, setting off months of racial upheaval in which 600 blacks and three whites died.
1981: Liberal and Social Democrat parties in Britain merged into ill-fated Social and Liberal Democratic Alliance.
1992: The United States and Russia agreed to scrap twothirds of their long-range nuclear warheads.
1994: Lou Macari was dismissed as Celtic manager after eight months in the job.
2009: It was revealed that every household in the UK would pay a new broadband tax of 50p a month to help pay for the rollout of super-fast internet access across the country.
2016: Labour MP Jo Cox, a “leave” campaigner during the build-up to the UK referendum on whether to exit the EU, was murdered in the street in her Batley and Spen constituency.
BIRTHDAYS
SIMON WILLIAMS British actor, 74
Dame Eileen Atkins DBE, British actress and writer, 86; James Bolam MBE, British actor, 85; Ian Buchanan, Hamilton-born actor, 63; Baroness Shami Chakrabarti CBE, director of Liberty 20032016, 51; Michael Culver, British actor, 82; Lady Dorrian, senator of the College of Justice in Scotland, 63; , Phil Mickelson, US golfer, 50; Joyce Carol Oates, US novelist, 82; John Cho, Korean American actor, 48; Joe Mcelderry, English singer, 29; Tommy Tiernan, Irish comedian, 51
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1890 Stan Laurel, film comedian; 1912 Enoch Powell, politician; 1927 Tom Graveney OBE, English cricketer, president of the MCC 2004-5 and TV commentator; 1937 Erich Segal, academic and author (Love Story); 1941 Tommy Horton MBE, British golfer; 1954 Matthew Saad Muhammad, world lightheavyweight boxing champion. Deaths: 1971 Lord Reith, architect of the BBC; 1977 Werner von Braun, Germanborn pioneer of rockets in US manned moon flights; 1990 Dame Eva Turner, Britain’s first international opera star; 2017 Helmut Kohl, German chancellor 1982-98; 2018 Gennadi Rozhdestvensky CBE, Russian conductor.