Now & Then
◆ 15 MARCH
Ides of March – Anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44BC.
1776: US Congress resolved that authority of the British Crown should be suppressed.
1814: Highland Clearances began in Sutherland.
1877: Australia beat England at Melbourne in the first cricket Test match.
1886: Opening of Glasgow’s Queen Street low-level system, the first of the city’s three undergrounds. 1894: France and Germany agreed on boundaries between French Congo and Cameroons.
1899: Marylebone Station, London, was opened.
1903: British conquest of northern Nigeria was completed.
1909: Selfridge’s, “the world’s most beautiful store”, opened in Oxford Street, London. Its American owner, Harry Gordon Selfridge, issued 600,000 invitations.
1916: United States force of 12,000 soldiers under General Pershing was ordered to Mexico to capture revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. 1921: Ruanda (now Rwanda), East Africa, was ceded to Britain by Belgium.
1932: The New BBC Dance Orchestra made its debut under the direction of Henry Hall. The programme closed with the tune Here’s To The Next Time, destined to become a classic.
1943: Japanese planes attacked Darwin, Australia.
1945: Album record charts were first published in America, by Billboard, with the King Cole Trio number one.
1949: Clothes rationing ended after eight years.
1952: The greatest fall of rain in recorded history began – 73.62 inches in 24 hours at La Reunion, Indian Ocean.
1956: My Fair Lady opened on Broadway with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. The title was adapted from the Cockney pronunciation of Mayfair.
1961: Doctor Richard Beeching became British Railways chief. 1962: United States military training personnel in South Vietnam exchanged fire with Communist guerrilla forces.
1969: Fighting broke out between Soviet and Chinese forces along the border. 1985: First internet domain name registered (symbolics.com).
1987: Bomb on railway bridge in southern India sent passenger train crashing into river bed, killing at least 22 people.
1988: Israeli authorities imposed a travel ban on Palestinians in Occupied Territories.
1990: Ignoring worldwide appeals for clemency, Iraq hanged Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft for alleged spying.
1990: Mikhail Gorbachev was elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union. 1994: Britain was facing a deep rift with Europe over voting rights which could block unacceptable EU legislation.
2004: French president Jacques Chirac signed the law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools, commonly known as the headscarf ban.
2007: It was revealed that the number of young children in the UK being diagnosed with type-1 diabetes had increased five-fold in two decades.
2011: Civil war broke out in Syria.