Now & Then
◆ 20 FEBRUARY
1452: Earl of Douglas murdered by James II.
1472: Orkney and Shetland annexed to the crown of Scotland as security for the dowry of Princess Margaret, daughter of Christian I, King of Norway and Denmark, and wife of James III of Scotland.
1547: The coronation of nine-yearold King Edward VI (son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour) took place in Westminster Abbey. He died of consumption at 15.
1570: Lord Hunsdon defeated Leonard Dacre’s rebel army, ending the Northern Rebellion in England. 1878: Pope Leo VIII (Gioacchino Vincenzo Pecci) was elected at the third ballot, following the death of Pope Pius IX.
1938: Anthony Eden resigned as Foreign Secretary, being unable to support prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy on Germany.
1947: Lord Louis Mountbatten was appointed the last Viceroy of India, the same day London announced that the British would leave India by June 1948.
1952: Britain’s first Olympic skating medal was won in Oslo by Jeanette Altwegg, who took the ladies’ figure title.
1962: Astronaut Colonel John Glenn became the first American in orbit when he circled the Earth three times in the Mercury capsule Friendship 7. The journey took nearly five hours.
1968: MPS passed a bill to raise National Insurance contributions and end free secondary school milk.
1975: Greek Cypriot government called on the United Nations to fix a deadline for withdrawal of 40,000 Turkish troops from that island. 1978: A judge indicted Senora Isabel Peron, Peron’s third wife and herself the ex-president of Argentina, for fraudulent use of £8 million from the funds of the staterun charity, the Solidarity Crusade. 1979: Poisonous fumes from Java volcano killed 175.
1988: Rainstorm triggered floods and mudslides in Rio de Janeiro that killed 65 people and left up to 100 elderly hospital patients missing and feared dead.
1990: Whyte & Mackay distillers sold to the United States for £160 million.
1991: Slovenia’s legislators voted overwhelmingly to initiate secession from Yugoslavia.
1992: Hoover announced further job cuts at its Cambuslang plant in Glasgow. Unions were told 162 of the 1,150 remaining workers would have to go.
1993: South African president FW de Klerk named first non-white Cabinet ministers.
1995: Indie band Blur won a record four categories, including best British group and best album, at the Brit Awards.
2005: Spain became the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout. 2009: Two Tamil Tigers aircraft packed with C4 explosives en-route to the national air force headquarters were shot down by the Sri Lankan military before reaching their target, in a kamikaze-style attack.
2010: In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain caused floods and mudslides, resulting in more than 40 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago.
◆ BIRTHDAYS
Lauren Ambrose, American actress (Six Feet Under), 46; Brenda Blethyn OBE, British actress, 78; Gordon Brown, former prime minister, 73; Ian Brown, rock singer (Stone Roses), 61; Cindy Crawford, model, 58; Patty Hearst, American heiress, 70; Mike Leigh OBE, British dramatist and director, 81; Rihanna, singer, 36; Imogen Stubbs, Lady Nunn, British actress, 63; James Wilby, British actor, 66; Anthony Head, British actor, 70; Buffy Sainte-marie, singer, 83.
◆ ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1784 Adam Black, Edinburgh-born publisher of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; 1888 Dame Marie Rambert, founder of Ballet Rambert; 1925 Robert Altman, film director (notably M*A*S*H); 1929 Bill Walker, deputy chairman of SNP, MP 1979-97; 1950 Tony Wilson, record producer, TV presenter and journalist. Deaths: 1920 Robert Peary, first man to reach the North Pole; 1961 Percy Grainger, Australianborn composer and pianist; 1966 Chester W Nimitz, admiral; 1995 Robert Bolt, playwright and screenwriter.