NOW & THEN
MAY 7
1544: Earl of Hertford invaded Scotland in an attempt to force the Scottish estates to agree to the marriage of Edward, son of Henry VIII, and Mary Queen of Scots. Known as “The Rough Wooing”, it resulted in the burning and destruction of Border towns and abbeys and of Edinburgh.
1821: British African Company was dissolved because of heavy expense, and Sierra Leone, Gambia and Gold Coast were taken over by the British government to form British West Africa. 1888: George Eastman patented his Kodak box camera with a name he thought would be easy to remember.
1909: St Ives lifeboat, James Stevens No10, made a dramatic rescue of the crew of the schooner Loango, foundering in high seas near Porthminster. The lifeboat, built in 1899, was still seaworthy in 2008 when it was put up for sale.
1907: The first Isle of Man TT Race was held. The winner was Charles Collier on a Matchless, at an average speed of 38.22mph.
1915: The 762-foot Cunard passenger liner, Lusitania, captained by William Turner, was torpedoed by a German submarine ten miles off Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, and sank in 18 minutes with the loss of 1,198 lives.
1918: In the Budget debate, Herbert Henry Asquith announced the government’s intention to introduce an old age pension – five shillings (25p) a week for every person over 70, or seven shillings and sixpence for married couples.
1928: Women’s suffrage in Britain was lowered from the age of 30 to 21.
1932: French president Paul Doumer was assassinated. 1941: In possibly the biggest intelligence coup of the war, Germany’s Enigma master codes were uncovered by Allies via documents found aboard a German ship seized off the coast of Iceland.
1945: Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. 1973: The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for the work of its reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in exposing the Watergate scandal.
1990: In Hungary, the Prince and Princess of Wales began the first official Royal tour to a Warsaw Pact country.
1991: An estimated one million people in refugee camps in east
ern Ethiopia faced starvation as emergency food supplies from the West began to run out and fresh deliveries failed to arrive. 1995: Right-wing Gaullist Jacques Chirac was elected president of France, ending 14 years of socialist rule.
2000: Vladimir Putin was inaugurated president of Russia. 2001: The Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs, arrived back in Britain from Brazil, ending more than 35 years on the run. 2008: Cannabis was reclassified as a class B drug.
2015: In the UK General Election, the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, was returned to government with a clear majority; north of the Border, the Scottish Nationalist Party, led by Nicola Sturgeon, celebrated a landslide victory, winning 56 of a possibly 59 seats at Westminster.
BIRTHDAYS
Peter Carey, Australian author, 79; Eagle-eye Cherry, singer, 54; Anne Dudley, British pop musician (Art of Noise) and orchestral composer, 66; Sir Nicholas Hytner, British film, theatre and opera director, 66; Kate Lawler, English broadcaster, 42; Traci Lords, actress, 54; Breckin Meyer, actor, 48; Christy Moore, Irish folk singer, 77; Sir Tony O’reilly KBE, Irish rugby player and newspaper owner, 86; Richard O’sullivan, British actor, 78; Steve Diggle, guitarist (Buzzcocks), 67; Liam Tancock, British swimmer, 37; Bill Kreutzmann, US drummer (the Grateful Dead), 76.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1711 David Hume, philosopher and historian;1840 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer; 1901 Gary Cooper, film actor; 1916 Sir Huw Wheldon, pioneering broadcaster; 1917 David Tomlinson, actor; 1921 Lord (Asa) Briggs, British historian.
Deaths: 1940 George Lansbury, Labour Party leader; 1957 Eliot Ness, US government agent; 1963 Max Miller, comic known as ‘The Cheeky Chappie’; 1983 John Masters, novelist; 1985 Dawn Addams, actress; 2011 Severiano Ballesteros, Spanish golfer.