Now & Then
12 JANUARY
1809: Britain took Cayenne, French Guiana from France and retained it until 1814.
1820: The Royal Astronomical society was founded.
1836: HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, reached Sydney, Australia.
1866: The Royal Aeronautical Society was founded.
1879: Lieutenant-general Chelmsford invaded Zululand as the British-zulu War began in Africa.
1895: The National Trust was founded.
1896: The first X-ray photograph was made in the United States. Doctor Henry Louis Smith fired a bullet into a corpse and then took an exposure which, when developed, showed the exact location of the bullet.
1906: Sir Henry Campbellbannerman’s cabinet embarked on sweeping social reforms following a Liberal landslide in the general election.
1916: The fighting tank was first tested and given official approval by British top brass. The army ordered 49.
1948: The first full-size supermarket opened in Britain, the London Co-op at Manor Park. 1950: British submarine Truculent sank in a Thames collision with the loss of 65 lives.
1958: Soviet Union proposed a zone free of nuclear weapons from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean.
1959: Henry Cooper became the British and European heavyweight boxing champion when he defeated Brian London on points over 15 rounds.
1970: Civil war in Nigeria ended after the Biafran army surrendered. 1978: Lady Churchill’s executors said she had burnt the controversial Graham Sutherland portrait of Sir Winston 18 months after it had been presented to him by the Commons in 1954.
1986: Tamil separatist guerrillas killed seven Sri Lanka army soldiers and wounded nine others in an ambush in the northern province of Sri Lanka.
1988: Soldiers and Palestinian crowds disrupted United Nations officials’ attempts to inspect Gaza Strip’s crowded refugee camps. 1989: British Rail chose King’s Cross as the second Channel
Tunnel train terminal, subject to approval of Parliament.
1990: Romania’s interim president, Ion Iliescu, announced the extinction of the Communist Party in that country.
1995: It was announced that troops were being withdrawn from daylight patrols in Belfast for the first time for 25 years.
1996: The bodies of 8,000 Muslims were found buried in an open-cast mine in Ljubija, in northern Bosnia.
1998: Nineteen European nations agreed to forbid human cloning. 2002: The Buttery, one of Glasgow's best restaurants for more than a century, ceased trading.
2004: The world’s largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, made its maiden voyage.
2006: Turkey released Mehmet Ali Agca from jail after he served 25 years for shooting Pope John Paul II.
2010: A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck in Port-au-prince, capital of Haiti, leaving 200,000 dead and three million affected.
BIRTHDAYS
Anthony Andrews, British actor, 76; Michael Aspel OBE, television presenter, 91; Simon Russell Beale CBE, British actor, author and music historian, 63; Maggie Bell, Glasgow-born soul-rock singer, 79; Melanie Chisholm (Spice Girl Mel C), 50; Lady (Hazel) Cosgrove CBE, Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland 1996-2006, 78; Shirley Eaton, British actress, 87; Brendan Foster CBE, Olympic athlete and, 76; Pixie Lott, British singersongwriter, 33.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1856 John Singer Sargent, portrait painter; 1876 Jack London, US novelist; 1907 Tex Ritter, actor; 1944 Joe Frazier, American boxer; 1960 Michael Hutchence, rock singer (INXS).
Deaths: 1625 Jan Brueghel, the Elder, painter; 1960 Nevil Shute, author and aircraft engineer; 1976 Dame Agatha Christie, author of detective stories; 2001 Michael Williams, actor; 2003 Maurice Gibb, rock guitarist (Bee Gees); 2014 Alexandra Bastedo, British actress; 2017 Graham Taylor OBE, football manager; 2020 Sir Roger Scruton, British philosopher.