NOW & THEN
18 MAY
1642: Montreal in Canada was founded.
1736: Witchcraft statutes were repealed in England.
1804: Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of the French.
1830: Edwin Budding, of Stroud, Gloucestershire signed an agreement for the manufacture of his invention, the lawn mower. The first customer was Regent’s Park Zoo, London.
1843: The Disruption, when more than 400 ministers and many elders left the Established Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland.
1882: The fourth Eddystone Lighthouse was opened.
1912: First automatic telephone exchange opened in Britain at Epsom.
1921: The first reconnaissance party on Mount Everest began operations, led by Colonel Howard Bury.
1936: Jasmine Bligh and Elizabeth Cowell became the BBC’S first women announcers.
1944: Monte Cassino Monastery in Italy was taken from Germans by Polish troops after bitter fighting.
1953: Jacqueline Cochrane, piloting a North American F-86 Sabre, became the first woman to fly faster than sound.
1955: The first Wimpy Bar opened in London, beginning the fast-food invasion.
1960: Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 at Hampden Park, Glasgow, to win the European Cup for the fifth year in succession.
1969: Apollo 10 was launched with Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan.
1972: Four bomb-disposal experts parachuted into Atlantic from RAF plane and boarded liner QE2 after bomb threat for ransom.
1974: India exploded its first nuclear bomb.
1980: Mount St Helens volcano in the American state of Washington, erupted, killing 57 people and creating a cloud of ash 2,500 miles long and 1,000 miles wide.
1982: Rev Sun Myung Moon, Unification Church founder, was found guilty of income tax fraud.
1990: A treaty was signed in Bonn to introduce economic and monetary union between East and West Germany.
1991: Helen Sharman became Britain’s first woman in space when she was sent into orbit aboard Soyuz spacecraft to
spend a week on space station Mir with two Soviet cosmonauts.
1992: An inquest jury returned “unlawful killing” verdicts on nine British soldiers killed by American “friendly fire” in the Gulf War.
1993: The Danes reversed their previous rejection of the Maastricht Treaty, 56.8 per cent voting in favour of it in a second referendum.
2009: The LTTE were defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides.
2014: Around 300 landslides triggered by unprecedented rain, causing the Balkan region’s worst flooding since records began, killed more than 30 people and caused more than 10,000 to flee their homes in Bosnia. Thousands more evacuated in neighbouring Croatia and Serbia
BIRTHDAYS
Holly Aird, British actress,
53; Rodger Davis, Australian golfer, 71; John Higgins MBE, Scottish snooker champion, 47; Professor Malcolm Longair CBE, Professor of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge, Astronomer Royal for Scotland 1980-90, 81; Martika, singer and actress, 53; Rick Wakeman, British rock musician (Yes) and composer, 73; Toyah Willcox, singer and actress, 64; Chow Yun-fat, actor, 67; Jessica Watson, Australian round-theworld yachtswoman, 29; Jens Bergensten, game designer (Minecraft), 43; Manu Tuilagi, England international rugby union player, 31.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1868 Nicholas II, last Tsar of Russia; 1872 Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl, philosopher and mathematician; 1909 Fred Perry, Wimbledon tennis champion; 1919 Dame Margot Fonteyn, prima ballerina; 1920 Pope John Paul II.
Deaths: 1799 Pierre de Beaumarchais, dramatist; 1807 John Douglas, Scottish scholar and bishop of Salisbury; 1909 George Meredith, novelist; 1911 Gustav Mahler, composer, conductor; 1932 Harry Randall, music hall entertainer and pantomime dame.