Now & Then
6 APRIL
1320: Declaration of Independence sent to Pope John XXII from the Scottish Parliament at Arbroath Abbey.
1789: George Washington was elected first United States president.
1830: The Mormon Movement (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), was founded in New York State by Joseph Smith. 1843: William Wordsworth was appointed Poet Laureate.
1850: Koh-i-noor diamond was sent from India to become part of British Crown jewels.
1866: Civil Rights Act, giving full citizenship to American blacks after the Civil War, was passed by the United States Congress. 1896: Snowdon Mountain Railway opened.
1896: Modern Olympic Games revived by Pierre de Coubertin at Athens.
1909: The first man at the North Pole was Robert Peary, an American explorer who arrived with a servant and 246 dogs.
1917: US declared war on Germany. 1944: Pay As You Earn income tax, devised by Sir Cornelius Gregg, came into operation.
1955: Sir Anthony Eden succeeded Sir Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.
1972: Scarman Report on 1969 outbreaks of violence and civil disturbances in Northern Ireland was published.
1973: The Pioneer 11 spacecraft was launched
1978: The world’s largest hovercraft, the Princess Anne, weighing 300 tons, was launched at Cowes, Isle of Wight.
1984: The 17-year-old South African barefoot runner Zola Budd, brought by the Daily Mail to Britain, was granted British citizenship by home secretary Leon Brittan after a matter of weeks.
1990: Police opened fire on prodemocracy demonstrators in Nepal, killing at least 35 people. 1990: The Irish Supreme Court refused to extradite former MP Owen Carron to Northern Ireland. 1992: European Community foreign ministers agreed to scrap its oil embargo on South Africa. 1993: Labour dropped its last commitment to nationalisation when it published its new proposals for industrial strategy. 1994: English FA called off a match with Germany, planned for Berlin on Hitler’s birth date, because of feared clashes between neo-nazis and anti-fascists.
1995: The Conservatives were all but eliminated from Scottish local government as Labour dominated council elections.
2000: MSPS voted 68-56 to go ahead with the Holyrood parliament building in Edinburgh, but with a fixed price of £195 million.
2006: Almost 1,000 square miles of Scotland were placed under quarantine after the first British case of the deadly strain of H5N1 bird flu was confirmed in a swan found dead at Cellardyke in Fife. 2009: A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck near L’aquila, Italy, killing 307 people.
2011: In San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, almost 200 bodies were exhumed from several mass graves made by the powerful and violent criminal syndicate Los Zetas. 2012: Azawad Declaration of Independence was declared (from the Republic of Mali).