Now & Then
5 MARCH
1496: King Henry VII commissioned John and Sebastian Cabot to discover new lands. 1770: British troops fired into a mob in Boston, Massachusetts, killing five in what became known as the Boston Massacre. It was one of the incidents which led to the War of American Independence. 1850: The Menai Tubular Bridge, joining Wales and Anglesey and constructed by Robert Stephenson, was opened.
1856: Covent Garden Theatre, London, was destroyed by fire. 1867: Abortive Fenian uprising started in Ireland.
1868: The stapler was patented. 1916: Over 400 died when Spanish steamer Principe de Asturias sank after striking a rock off Brazil. 1918: Moscow was declared the new capital of Russia, in place of Petrograd.
1933: Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party won greatest number of seats in German elections.
1936: The Spitfire fighter made its maiden flight.
1946: Winston Churchill fixed the phrase “Iron Curtain” in the language. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” he said in a speech at Fulton, United States.
1962: European extremists in Oran, Algeria, raided prison and killed several Muslim political prisoners.
1966: British airliner hit Japan’s Mount Fuji, killing all 124 people aboard.
1969: London gangland twins Ronald and Reginald Kray were found guilty of murder and given life jail sentences.
1970: Nuclear non-proliferation treaty went into effect after 43 nations had deposited instruments of ratification.
1974: Ethiopia’s leader Haile Selassie, confronted by continued unrest, agreed to constitutional convention to create a system of elected democratic government. 1975: Arab commandos landed on the beach at Tel Aviv, Israel, shot their way into the hotel and held about 40 guests and staff hostage. 1987: Gulf fighting intensified as Iraq fired six missiles into Tehran and its air force attacked other Iranian cities.
1990: South Africa sent troops to Ciskei homeland to suppress mob attacks on factories and shops after a military coup there ousted the authoritarian president.
1991: Iraq repealed its annexation of Kuwait and released the last of its allied Pows.
2001: In Mecca, 35 Muslim pilgrims were crushed to death during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
2007: Edinburgh University research claimed Scotland was “sleepwalking” into a diabetes epidemic due to figures that suggested the number of people diagnosed with type-2 diabetes would soar by 60 per cent in the next ten years.
2008: The Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, branded Scotland’s laws on rape as “the worst in the world”. 2009: The Scottish Labour Party announced it would oppose SNP plans for a referendum on independence.
2010: Explosions ripped through Baghdad, killing 17 people and raising tensions ahead of parliamentary elections.
2020: Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline, went into administration.