Now & Then
◆ 11 APRIL
1564: Peace of Troyes ended the war between England and France. 1644: Sir Thomas Fairfax won the Battle of Selby in the English Civil War.
1677: William of Orange was defeated at Cassel, Germany, by the Duke of Orleans.
1689: William and Mary were crowned as joint sovereigns by the Bishop of London – the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to perform the ceremony.
1814: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated unconditionally as emperor of France and was exiled to Elba by Treaty of Fontainebleau. 1855: London’s first six pillar boxes were installed, painted green. 1881: The first incandescent street lights were switched on in Newcastle-upon-tyne.
1882: Battle of the Braes in Skye between a posse of police and tenants of Lord Macdonald threatened with eviction.
1905: Albert Einstein announced his theory of relativity of time and space.
1961: Trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, captured by Israelis in Latin America, opened in Jerusalem.
1981: IRA prisoner Bobby Sands won Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election on the 42nd day of his hunger strike in Maze Prison. 1983: Richard Attenborough’s film, Gandhi, won eight Oscars, the most ever won by a British film.
1990: Customs at Middlesbrough seized a consignment of cylinders believed to be designed for the barrel of a 140-ton supergun for Iraq.
1991: United Nations Security Council announced a formal end to the Gulf War, accepting Iraq’s pledge that it would pay for war damages and scrap its weapons of mass destruction.
1993: German golfer Bernhard Langer won the Masters in Augusta, United States, for the second time.
1994: Greek police said they had uncovered a terrorist plot to bomb the warship Ark Royal in the port of Piraeus, Athens.
1995: Questions were raised over the academic qualifications of German artist Maruma, new owner of the island of Eigg.
1996: Jessica Dubroff, seven, trying to become the youngest person to pilot an aircraft across the United States, died when her Cessna crashed shortly after takeoff in Wyoming.
1997: Scotland caused a cricket upset when they qualified for the 1999 World Cup by finishing third in the ICC Trophy in Malaysia. 2000: Hansie Cronje was sacked as the South African cricket captain after admitting receiving between £6,600 and £10,000 from an Indian bookmaker during a one-day series between South Africa, Zimbabwe and England in February.
2001: Australia beat American Samoa in a 31-0 win, the biggest ever in an international match of football.
2002: An attempted coup in Venezuela against president Hugo Chávez took place.
2006: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has successfully enriched uranium. 2007: Two bombings in the Algerian capital of Algiers left 33 people dead and 222 wounded. 2011: Fifteen people were killed and 200 injured in a bomb attack on the Minsk Metro.
◆ BIRTHDAYS
Ian Bell MBE, English cricketer, 42; Jeremy Clarkson, British journalist and broadcaster, 64; Vincent Gallo, American actor and director, 63; Joel Grey, American actor and singer, 92; Zöe Lucker, British television actor, 50; Derek Martin, British actor, 91; Cerys Matthews, pop singer (Catatonia) and broadcaster, 55; John Edward Hollister Montagu, 11th Earl of Sandwich, 81; Lisa Stansfield, British singer, 58; Joss Stone, British singer, 37.
◆ ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1770 George Canning, Conservative prime minister; 1819 Sir Charles Hallé, pianist, conductor and founder of orchestra; 1893 John Nash, artist; 1908 Dan Maskell, tennis commentator; 1958 Stuart Adamson, rock singer and guitarist (Big Country) and songwriter. Deaths: 1890: John Merrick, subject of the film The Elephant Man; 1975 Josephine Baker, singer; 1987 Primo Levi, author who survived Auschwitz; 2000 Andre Deutsch, publisher; 2007 Kurt Vonnegut, novelist (notably Slaughterhouse-five); 2008.