NOW & THEN
MAY 12
1536: Sir Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton and other alleged paramours of Queen Anne Boleyn went on trial for treason.
1679: Reverend James Kirkwood, the father of public libraries in Scotland, became minister of Minto.
1725: The Black Watch was commissioned under General Wade as the Independent Companies to police the Highlands.
1888: Britain established a protectorate over North Borneo and Brunei.
1915: Forces of South Africa’s Louis Botha occupied Windhoek, capital of German Southwest Africa.
1926: The General Strike in Britain ended after nine days.
1932: The kidnapped baby son of aviator Charles Lindbergh was found dead.
1935: Alcoholics Anonymous was founded by William Wilson in Ohio.
1937: The Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth took place in Westminster Abbey.
1938: Japanese warships captured the Chinese island of Amoy.
1940: First Victoria Crosses awarded to airmen in Second World War went posthumously to Flying Officer Donald Garland (pilot) and Sergeant Thomas Gray (observer) for a successful bombing attack, by 12 Squadron Fairey Battles, on the bridge at Maastricht.
1949: The USSR lifted its blockade of Berlin after 11 months. It had cost the Allies £200 million to fly in food and essential supplies.
1951: The first H-bomb test on Eniwetok Atoll in the mid-pacific proved it was possible to destroy a city more than 100 times the size of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1965: West Germany established diplomatic relations with Israel, and Arab states broke off relations with the Bonn government.
1969: The voting age in Britain was lowered to 18.
1982: The QE2 sailed to join the Falklands Task Force.
1988: World Health Organisation said more than 34,000 Aids cases had been reported worldwide.
1990: At a Baltic summit, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania revived a 1934 political alliance, hoping a united front would crack Soviet resistance to the republics’ attempts to break away from the Soviet Union.
1990: A 1,000-tonne oil slick leaked from the Liberian tanker Rose Bay, which was in collision with a trawler in the Channel.
1991: In Monte Carlo, Ayrton Senna won his fourth successive Grand Prix.
1992: The Queen made a historic first speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
2003: Clare Short, the international development secretary, quit the Cabinet and accused the prime minister, Tony Blair, of endangering Labour’s achievements through his “obsessive” pursuit of a place in history.
2009: The number of people out of work in the UK rose 244,000 to 2.22 million in the first three months of the year – the biggest quarterly rise since 1981.
2009: A rare blue diamond sold for a record 10.5 million Swiss francs (£6.2m) in Geneva.
BIRTHDAYS
Burt Bacharach, US composer, 94; Stephen Baldwin, actor, 56; Jason Biggs, actor, 44; Gabriel Byrne, Irish actor, 72; Bruce Boxleitner, US actor, 72; Andrew Coltart, Dumfries-born golfer, 52; Emilio Estevez, US actor, 60; Susan Hampshire OBE, Lady Kulukundis, British actress, 85; Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, QC and broadcaster, 72; Dame Jenni Murray, British broadcaster, 72; Lord Patten, MP 1979-92, governor of Hong Kong 19927, 78; Catherine Tate, British actress, 54; Deborah Warner CBE, British theatre director, 63; Steve Winwood, British rock singer (Traffic) and composer, 74
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1820 Florence Nightingale, nursing reformer; 1903 Wilfrid Hyde White, actor; 1907 Leslie Charteris, crime fiction writer; 1912 Katharine Hepburn, actress; 1924 Tony Hancock, comedian; 1942 Ian Dury, pop singer, songwriter and actor; 1975 Jonah Lomu, New Zealand rugby player.
Deaths: 1956 Louis Calhern, actor; 1957 Erich von Stroheim, silent director; 1994 John Smith, Labour Party leader 1992-4; 2001 Perry Como, singer; 2001 Simon Raven, author; 2018 Baroness Jowell, Labour MP 1992-2015.