Now & Then
◆ 11 JANUARY
1569: The first recorded lottery in England was drawn in St Paul’s Cathedral.
1671: The High Court of Justiciary reconstituted as the supreme criminal court in Scotland.
1693: Mount Etna in Sicily erupted. 1839: An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck the Caribbean island of Martinique, destroying half of the former capital, Fort Royal, leading to 700 deaths.
1841: The electric clock was patented by John Barwise and Alexander Bain.
1864: Charing Cross Station in London opened.
1866: The British steamship SS London, overloaded with cargo, sank in the Bay of Biscay with the loss of 220 lives.
1905: The cost of a third-class ticket by liner from Britain to America went up to £6.
1918: The Representation of the People Act was passed, giving votes to women.
1919: Romania annexed Transylvania.
1922: Leonard Thompson, aged 14, became the first diabetic patient to be treated successfully with insulin, at Toronto General Hospital.
1935: Pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart flew from Honolulu to Oakland, California.
1942: Japanese took Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.
1945: Truce was declared in the Greek civil war.
1946: Albania was proclaimed a people’s republic, with General Enver Hoxha at its head.
1962: Avalanche buried village in the Peruvian Andes; 3,000 reported killed.
1963: The first disco, called Whisky-a-go-go, opened in Los Angeles.
1970: In Nigeria, the 32-monthold secessionist Biafran regime collapsed under onslaughts by the Nigerian government.
1973: The Open University awarded its first degrees to 867 students.
1974: The first sextuplets to survive were born to Sue Rosenkowitz in Cape Town, South Africa.
1976: President Rodriguez Lara of Ecuador ousted in a coup.
1989: More Cuban troops left Angola under a United Statesbrokered agreement among Cuba, South Africa and Angola.
1990: 250,000 Lithuanians demonstrated for independence. 1991: Soviet tanks stormed key buildings in Vilnius, killing 15, as Moscow countered Lithuanian independence moves.
1996: One of the greatest private collections of surrealist and dadaist art, including works by Dali, Magritte, Bacon, Ernst and Man Ray, was bequeathed to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, by Gabrielle Keiller.
2007: Author JK Rowling completed the seventh and final Harry Potter novel (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) in room 552 of the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh
2008: American athlete Marion Jones, 32, was jailed for six months for lying about drug use and cheque fraud. She had already admitted taking a performance enhancing drug from 1999, a year before she won three gold medals and two bronze at the Sydney Olympics. She had already returned her medals.
◆ BIRTHDAYS
Phyllis Logan, Paisley-born actress, 68; Mary J Blige, R&B singer, 53; Anna Calder-marshall, actress, 77; Jason Connery, actor, 61; Ben Crenshaw, golfer, 72; Melvyn Hayes, actor, 89; Emile Heskey, former footballer, 46; Jamelia, singer, 43; Brian Moore, rugby commentator, 62; Rachel Riley, TV presenter, 38; Lee Ritenour, American jazz guitarist, 72; Arthur Scargill, former mine workers' leader, 86; Marc Blucas, US actor, 52; Jamie Vardy, footballer, 37.
◆ ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1794 Sir Charles Hastings, founder British Medical Association; 1857 Fred Archer, champion jockey and five-times Derby winner; 1921 Mick Mcmanus, wrestler; 1930 Rod Taylor, actor; 1943 Henry Cecil, racehorse trainer. Deaths: 1928 Thomas Hardy, poet and novelist; 1963 Hugh Gaitskell, politician; 1969 Richmal Crompton, creator of Just William; 1999 Naomi, Lady Mitchison, writer; 2008 Sir Edmund Hillary, mountaineer; 2014 Anita Ekberg, actress and model; 2017 Brian Fletcher, three-time Grand National-winning jockey.