Now & Then
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13 FEBRUARY
1601: John Lancaster led the first East India Company’s voyage from London.
1633: Italian astronomer Galileo arrived in Rome and was detained by the Roman Catholic Inquisition. 1689: English Parliament adopted a Bill of Rights.
1692: The Massacre of Glencoe, in which 34 men, two women and two children, members of the Macdonald clan, were slaughtered by Campbells and other soldiers on government orders after the inadvertent failure of the clan chief to sign allegiance to William II. 1866: Jesse James robbed his first bank.
1874: Treaty of Fomena, under which King Koffee of Ashanti, West Africa, promised free trade, and an open road to Kumasi, and agreed to pay indemnities to Britain and stop human sacrifices.
1931: Scottish Youth Hostels Association was formed.
1945: Allied forces captured Budapest, Hungary.
1945: 1,400 RAF and 450 United States Air Force bombers devastated Dresden in three waves over a 14-hour period.
1969: It was announced that eggs removed from a woman volunteer had been fertilised in a test tube as a result of work done at Cambridge University in collaboration with a doctor at Oldham General Hospital. 1975: Turkish Cypriots proclaimed separate administration in the Turkish-occupied northern part of Cyprus.
1989: A two-and-a-half-inch meteor crashed through the roof of Lewes Station, Sussex.
1989: Soviet Union’s Red Army left the Afghan capital of Kabul in ceremony, leaving behind a handful of soldiers.
1992: Ford of Britain announced losses of £920 million, the biggest in its 81-year history.
1994: John Major’s back-tobasics project took battering with resignation of Conservative MP Hartley Booth over relationship with Commons researcher.
2000: The last original Peanuts comic strip appeared in newspapers one day after Charles M Schulz died.
2001: An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hit El Salvador, killing at least 400 people.
2004: The Harvard-smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics announced the discovery of the universe’s largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star Lucy after The Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
2007: Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigned as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei. 2008: Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd made a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations.
2009: The second Test between West Indies and England at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua was abandoned after only ten balls because of a dangerous outfield. 2010: The start of the Winter Olympics were overshadowed by the death of a luge competitor who left the track at high speed. Georgian Nodar Kumaritashvili’s sled flipped and he smashed into a steel pole at the Whistler Sliding Centre, killing the 21-year-old.
BIRTHDAYS
Caroline Blakiston, British actress, 91; Liam Brady, football manager, 68; Stockard Channing, US actress, 80; Peter Gabriel, singer, 74; Peter Hook, musician, 68; John Mcallion, former MP and MSP, 76; Jamie Murray OBE, Scottish tennis player, 38; Kim Novak, US actress, 91; Henry Rollins, US actor and rock singer, 63; Sir Simon Schama CBE, academic, 79; Jerry Springer, chat show host, 80; Mena Suvari, US actress, 45; Robbie Williams, British singer, 50.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1901 Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell), novelist; 1903 Georges Simenon, Belgian author (Maigret); 1938 Oliver Reed, actor; 1936 Neville Garden, broadcaster and writer.
Deaths: AD858 Kenneth Macalpin, first King of Scots; 1542 Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII; 1883 Richard Wagner, opera composer; 1917 Mata Hari, First World War spy; 1958 Dame Christabel Pankhurst, suffragette; 1970 HM Bateman, cartoonist; 1976 Lily Pons, singer; 1979 Jean Renoir, film-maker; 2015 John Mccabe CBE, British composer and pianist.