NOW & THEN
16 JULY
AD622: Traditional starting day of the Islamic Era, when a persecuted Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina.
1328: David II, the son of Robert the Bruce, married Joan, the sister of Edward III. He was four years old, she was seven.
1429: Joan of Arc and the French army marched into Reims.
1439: Kissing was banned in England to prevent the spread of germs.
1661: Europe’s first banknotes were issued by the Bank of Stockholm.
1809: The city of La Paz, Bolivia, declared independence from the Spanish crown and formed the first independent government in South America.
1832: Thirty-one Shetland “sixerns”, with a total of 105 crewmen, were lost in a storm. It is still remembered as “The Bad Day”.
1918: Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family were executed by a Bolshevik firing squad at Ekaterinsburg, Siberia.
1920: China joined the League of Nations.
1926: National Geographic took its first natural-colour undersea photographs.
1945: First atomic bomb was exploded over desert in New Mexico, United States, during the Second World War, heralding start of atomic age.
1949: Chinese Nationalists organised Supreme Council under Chiang Kai-shek, which began to move forces to Taiwan.
1950: Uruguay defeated Brazil 2-1 to win the football World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, before an estimated crowd of 210,000, a record attendance for a sporting event.
1956: The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, promoted as “The Greatest Show on Earth”, gave its final performance under a canvas tent.
1965: The seven-mile Mont Blanc road tunnel was opened, linking France with Italy.
1969: US Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, with Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins, to attempt first manned landing on Moon.
1970: The 13th Commonwealth Games opened in Edinburgh.
1979: Saddam Hussein succeeded president Al-bakr as president of Iraq.
1980: Ronald Reagan was nominated as US presidential candidate by Republicans in Detroit.
1983: Twenty people were killed in Britain’s worst helicopter disaster when a Sikorsky-s61 came down off the Isles of Scilly.
1994: A fragment of the Shoemaker-levy 9 comet caused a mark the size of the Earth when it collided with the planet Jupiter at 138,000mph.
1994: The Three Tenors – Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras – performed together in Los Angeles.
1996: Relatives of the 16 children killed in the Dunblane massacre appealed for tough gun controls when they met MPS at Westminster at the start of a campaign for early legislation.
2009: Nasa admitted it deleted the only high-resolution images of the first moonwalk in 1969.