NOW & THEN
21 AUGUST
1689: The Battle of Dunkeld was fought between the Jacobite clans supporting deposed King James VII of Scotland and a government regiment of covenanters supporting William of Orange. The Jacobites retreated having lost 300 men.
1808: The Battle of Vimeiro in the Peninsular War took place in Portugal, with Wellington defeating General Junot’s French forces.
1879: An apparition of the Blessed Virgin was reported in the village of Knock, Co Mayo, in the Republic of Ireland.
1911: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris by an Italian waiter, Vincenzo Peruggia. It was recovered two years later from where he had hidden it – under a bed in a hotel.
1959: Hawaii became the 50th US state.
1961: Goya’s masterpiece The Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery, London.
1961: Jomo Kenyatta was freed by British authorities after nine years’ detention following Mau Mau terrorism campaign in Kenya.
1970: The Social Democratic and Labour Party was founded in Northern Ireland, with Gerry Fitt as its first leader.
1972: Glasgow-born Don Cameron and Mark Yarry became the first people to fly a hot air balloon over the Alps.
1975: United States lifted a 12-year ban on exports to Cuba by foreign subsidiaries of US companies, but kept embargo on direct trade between Cuba and the US.
1985: US runner Mary Decker set a new women’s world record of 4:16.71 for the mile.
1986: Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon killed at least 1,500 as poison gas formed by a mixture of carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas escaped from a volcanic lake.
1986: Ian Botham took a world record 356th Test wicket for England against New Zealand at The Oval.
1987: Swimmer Silke Hörner of Germany set a new women’s world record of 1:07.91 for the 100 metres breaststroke.
1989: Voyager 2 began its fly-by of planet Neptune.
1990: 100,000 gathered in Prague’s Wenceslas Square for first free commemoration of 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
1991: Soviet coup collapsed. Boris Yeltsin took over troops and Supreme Soviet legislative bodies reinstated president Mikhail Gorbachev as he returned from house arrest in the Crimea region.
2001: The Red Cross announced that a famine was striking Tajikistan, and called for international financial aid for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
2004: An Israeli air striker in Rafah killed three of Hamas’s top commanders – Mohammed Abu Shammala, Raed al Atar and Mohammed Barhoum.
2007: Hurricane Dean made its first landfall in Costa Maya, Mexico, with winds of 165mph. Dean was the first storm since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 to make landfall as a Category 5.
Dame Janet Baker DBE, opera singer, 87; Dina Carroll, singer, 52; Kim Cattrall, British actress, 64; Robert Lewandowski, footballer, 32; Carrie-anne Moss, actress, 53; Johnny Reid, Lanark-born country music artist, 46; Peter Weir, film director, 76; Anne Hobbs, former British No 1 tennis player, 61; Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, 47.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1754 William Murdock, Old Cumnock-born engineer and inventor of coal-gas lighting; 1872 Aubrey Beardsley, author and illustrator; 1904 Count Basie, jazz pianist and bandleader; 1906 Isadore “Friz” Freleng, animator (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies); 1930 Princess Margaret; 1933 Barry Norman CBE, broadcaster; 1937 Donald Dewar, MP, MSP, First Minister 1999-2000; 1938 Kenny Rogers, country singer; 1938; 1952 Joe Strummer, musician, singer and songwriter (The Clash). Deaths: 1935 Rev Hohn Hartley, English clergyman who won Wimbledon twice; 1940 Leon Trotsky, Communist revolutionary; 2005 Robert Moog, inventor of Moog synthesiser; 2013 Sid Bernstein, music promoter; Jean Redpath MBE, Edinburgh-born folk singer; 2016 Sir Antony Jay CBE, British writer; 2018 Baron Mackay of Drumadoon, QC, Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland, Lord Advocate.