Now & Then
◆ 10 FEBRUARY
1306: Stabbing of the Red Comyn by Robert the Bruce in Greyfriars’ Church, Dumfries.
1355: St Scholastica’s Day riots in Oxford lasted for three days after six university men were slain in a pub quarrel.
1495: A bull from Pope Alexander VI confirmed the foundation of the University of Aberdeen.
1495: Sir William Stanley, King Henry VII’S Lord Chamberlain, was executed.
1763: France ceded Canada to Britain as the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the French and Indian War.
1794: The 4th Duke of Gordon was authorised to raise the Gordon Highlanders.
1828: Simon Bolivar, South American revolutionary, became ruler of Colombia.
1840: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married in the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace. Both were aged 20.
1846: British forces under Hugh Gough defeated Sikhs at Sobrahan, India.
1863: Tom Thumb, of Barnum’s circus, married. He was 2ft 11in and his bride Lavinia was three inches shorter. It was a short service.
1913: A relief party found the bodies of Captain Scott and two companions in a snow-covered tent in the Antarctic wastes. Scott’s last words in his diary were: “We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, and the end cannot be far. For God’s sake look after our people.”
1942: The first “gold” disc was presented to US bandleader Glenn Miller, for Chattanooga Choo Choo. 1944: Pay As You Earn income tax was introduced.
1955: MPS voted by a majority of 31 to keep the death penalty.
1964: A magistrate declared the book Fanny Hill obscene, and ordered the confiscation of all copies.
1969: United States, Britain and France rejected restrictions on travel to West Berlin, and reminded Soviets of their responsibility to ensure free access.
1972: Rockall was formally incorporated into Scotland. The uninhabited rock, about 290 miles out in the Atlantic, had been annexed by a boarding party from HMS Vidal in 1955.
1989: Pregnant and sick people warned not to eat soft cheese because of the danger of listeria bacteria.
1996: The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov for the first time.
1998: Voters in Maine repealed a gay rights law passed in 1997 to become the first US state to abandon such a law.
2003: France and Belgium broke the Nato procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq.
2005: North Korea announced that it possessed nuclear weapons. 2009: The former bosses of RBS and HBOS – the two biggest UK casualties of the banking crisis – apologised “profoundly and unreservedly” for their banks’ failure.
2009: United States and Russian communications satellites collided in space in the first such reported accident. A satellite owned by the American company Iridium hit a defunct Russian satellite at high speed 485 miles over Siberia, Nasa said.
◆ BIRTHDAYS
Laura Dern, US actress, 57; Roberta Flack, US rock singer, 87; Keeley Hawes, English actress, 48; Greg Norman, Australian golfer, 69; Nicholas Owen, television journalist, 77; Leontyne Price, American soprano, 97; Peter Purves, British actor and presenter, 85; Mark Spitz, US Olympic swimming champion, 74; Robert Wagner, US film actor and producer, 94; Holly Willoughby, English TV presenter, 43; Boris Avrukh, chess grandmaster, 46.
◆ ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1890 Boris Pasternak, Soviet author; 1893 Jimmy Durante, US comedian; 1894 Harold Macmillan, prime minister 195763; 1898 Bertolt Brecht, German poet; 1910 Joyce Grenfell, actress, comedienne and broadcaster; 1914 Larry Adler, musician; 1940 Hamish Imlach, Scottish folk singer. Deaths: 1932 Edgar Wallace, author; 1981 Sophie Tucker, singer; 1994 Mel Calman, cartoonist; 2005 Arthur Miller, playwright; 2011 Trevor Bailey CBE, cricketer and commentator; 2014 Shirley Temple Black, US child film star and diplomat.