NOW & THEN
19 JUNE
1820: A baton was first used to conduct an orchestra in England, by Ludwig Spohr.
1829: The London Metropolitan Police was founded by Sir Robert Peel.
1850: Discovery of spiral nebulae was announced by Earl of Rosse.
1866: First chess championships, the British Nationals, were played at St George’s Club, London.
1895: The Kiel Canal, 61 miles long, connecting the North Sea with the Baltic, was formally opened by the German emperor Wilhelm II.
1910: Deutschland, the first Zeppelin airliner, was launched. It crashed nine days later.
1917: The House of Commons voted by a majority of 330 to give votes to women over 30.
1931: Canadian opera singer Lissaint Beardmore made first cross-channel glider flight from Lympne, Kent, to Boulogne.
1960: Daimler was acquired by Jaguar Motors.
1967: The Monterey Pop Festival attracted thousands of hippies to watch stars including Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin and The Who.
1968: House of Lords rejected Labour government’s sanctions against Rhodesia.
1987: Israel condemned decision by Pope John Paul II to grant audience to Austria’s president, Kurt Waldheim.
1989: Terrorists were disturbed while planting bombs at a British Army barracks in Osnabrück, West Germany.
1990: President François Mitterrand of France called for the European Community to give aid to Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev to help his economic reforms.
1991: Police agreed to pay unprecedented £500,000 damages to 39 miners injured in clashes at Orgreave cooking plant seven years earlier.
1995: A report into the activities of Monklands District Council said that there had been abuse of power by councillors, including “jobs for the boys” and sectarian discrimination.
1996: Britain offered to increase the number of cows to be culled in the “mad cow” affair from 80,000 to 150,000 in an attempt to get the European Commission to lift its export ban.
1997: William Hague, 36, became the youngest Conservative leader in more than 200 years when he defeated Kenneth Clarke by 92 votes to 70, to succeed John Major.
2006: Prime ministers of several northern European nations participated in a ceremonial “laying of the first stone” at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway.
2008: Researchers from Aberdeen claimed to have discovered a gene linked to obesity which makes people eat almost 300 calories extra every day.
2009: Families of four servicemen killed in “Snatch” Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan revealed they were to sue the Ministry of Defence for compensation.
2009: A report claimed that 100 people are killed by sunbeds in the UK each year.
BIRTHDAYS
Paula Abdul, US singer, 58; Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and Burmese opposition leader, 75; Thelma Barlow, British actress, 91; Boris Johnson MP, British Prime Minister, 56; Gena Rowlands, US actress, 90; Kathleen Turner, US actress, 66; Rory Underwood MBE, English rugby player, 57; Samuel West, British actor, 54; Sadie Frost, English actress, 55
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1566 King James VI , only son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley (in Edinburgh Castle); 1623 Blaise Pascal, mathematician and philosopher, inventor of first calculating machines; 1861 Earl Haig, army commander; 1875 Sir William Ashbee Tritton, designer of the first tank to go into action; 1877 Charles Coburn, actor; 1896 Bessie Wallis Warfield, Duchess of Windsor; 1903 Walter Hammond, cricketer; 1906 Sir Ernst Chain, bacteriologist and pioneer of penicillin.
Deaths: 1937 Sir James M Barrie, author of Peter Pan; 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, spies (executed); 1991 Jean Arthur, actress; 1993 Sir William Golding, author (Lord of the Flies); 2013 James Gandolfini, actor (The Sopranos); 2019 Professor Norman Stone, Scottish historian.