Now & Then
◆ 10 APRIL
1413: Henry V was crowned in Westminster Abbey, aged 25.
1710: Copyright had its statutory beginnings as the Copyright Act of 1709, called the Statute of Anne, came into effect, recognising the position of authors for the first time.
1820: The first British settlers arrived in South Africa, at Algoa Bay near Port Elizabeth.
1829: Parliament passed the Catholic Emancipation Bill.
1858: Big Ben, the bell in the Westminster clock tower, was cast in Whitechapel. It weighed 13.5 tons and was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, the commissioner of works, who was a large man known as Big Ben.
1917: Vimy Ridge, in Northern France, was finally taken by Canadian forces with heavy losses in an epic assault during the Battle of Arras.
1924: The first book of crosswords was published in New York by Simon & Schuster.
1945: American troops liberated Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany.
1955: David Blakely, a 24-yearold racing driver, was shot dead outside a pub in North London by Ruth Ellis, for which she was subsequently hanged.
1960: The American Civil Rights Bill was passed by the United States Senate.
1972: Britain, United States, Soviet Union and 46 other countries signed a convention outlawing biological weapons.
1976: Israel went ahead with elections in the occupied West Bank of Jordan in spite of rioting.
1981: Brixton riots erupted between young blacks and police in south London. Arrests totalled 213 and injured 210.
1988: Sandy Lyle became the first British golfer to win the Masters tournament in Augusta, United States.
1989: British and Australian forces arrived in northern Namibia to monitor planned withdrawal of black nationalist guerrillas.
1991: 200,000 workers went on strike in Minsk, capital of the formerly compliant republic of Byelorussia (now Belarus).
1992: Three people died and 90 were injured when an IRA postelection bomb caused devastation in the City of London.
1993: The body of an Edinburgh teacher murdered on holiday, Adrian Strasser, was found in New Orleans. The killing is unsolved. 1994: United Nations aircraft bombed Serbian forces shelling the town of Gorazde, raising the risk of the West becoming involved in a full-scale conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
1995: Channel Tunnel builder Eurotunnel warned that it could be “overwhelmed” by debt service costs after a net loss of £387 million in 1994.
2009: Plans were unveiled to create the world’s first solarpowered city, a $2 billion (£1.4bn) emission-free community in Florida.
2010: Polish president Lech Kaczynski and scores of other senior political figures from the country were killed in a plane crash in Russia. The plane hit trees as it approached Smolensk Airport in thick fog.
2014: A Public Health England report revealed that air pollution was responsible for ten times as many deaths in Scotland as obesity.
◆ BIRTHDAYS
Nicky Campbell OBE, Scottish television and radio broadcaster, 63; Sophie Ellis-bextor, British singer, 45; Lesley Garrett CBE, soprano, 69; Gloria Hunniford OBE, British broadcaster, 84; Peter Macnicol, American actor, 70; David Moorcroft OBE, British athlete, chief executive UK Athletics 1997-2007, 71; Steven Seagal, film actor and director, 72; Gerda Stevenson, Scottish actress, singer and writer, 68; Paul Theroux, American author, 83.
◆ ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1512 James V (at Linlithgow Palace); 1829 William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army; 1847 Joseph Pulitzer, newspaper publisher; 1870 Lenin, Communist leader and founder of Bolshevism; 1929 Max von Sydow, Swedish actor.
Deaths: 1840 Alexander Nasmyth, Edinburgh-born artist; 1909 Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet and critic; 1954 Auguste Lumière, pioneer of cinematography 1966 Evelyn Waugh, novelist; 2014 Sue Townsend, British author (creator of Adrian Mole); 2018 John Lambie, Scottish football manager.