Now & Then
◆ 12 APRIL
1606: The Union Flag was adopted as the flag of England, Wales and Scotland.
1621: French forces under King Louis XIII set out to crush the Huguenot rebellion.
1709: The Tatler magazine was first published.
1861: The American Civil War began with the bombardment of Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina by the southern Confederate army under General Pierre Beauregard.
1903: The world’s first motor omnibus service was inaugurated between Eastbourne Station and Meads, Sussex.
1914: George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion opened in London with Mrs Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle and Sir Herbert Tree as Professor Higgins.
1945: Harry S Truman was sworn in as United States president after the death from cerebral haemorrhage of Franklin D Roosevelt at age 63.
1954: Bill Haley recorded Rock Around The Clock, the first record to sell a million in Britain alone. It was featured in 14 films and recorded in 35 languages.
1961: Soviet Union put first man in space – Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made a safe landing after one orbit of Earth.
1981: The United States launched its pioneering space shuttle Columbia from Cape Canaveral, with Robert Crippen and John Young.
1989: Lord Lloyd-webber’s Cats was performed for the 3,358th time at the New London Theatre, Drury Lane, making it Britain’s longestrunning musical. Seats were booked to the end of 1999.
1990: The Soviet Union admitted the massacre of up to 15,000 Polish officers at Katyn in the Soviet Union in 1940.
1990: East German parliament named Lothar de Maizière as prime minister, supported swift reunification, apologised for Holocaust, and recognised Polish border.
1991: Tanker loaded with tens of millions of gallons of oil burned for a second day off the Italian Riviera after colliding with a ferry.
1991: German chancellor Helmut Kohl formed a pact with the opposition to rescue eastern Germany from collapse. 1993: Serbian shelling killed 56 people, including 15 children, in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
1995: The home secretary, Michael Howard, announced tougher laws on “video nasties”.
1996: The government’s majority in the House of Commons was reduced to one after Labour won Staffordshire South-east from the Conservatives in a by-election. 1996: West Indies captain Brian Lara scored a Test record 400 not out in the fourth against England, in Antigua.
1998: An earthquake in Slovenia, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale occurred near the town of Bovec. 1999: Bill Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving “intentionally false statements” in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit. 2002: A female suicide bomber detonated at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda open-air market, killing seven and wounding 104.
2010: A train derailed near Merano, Italy, after running into a landslide, causing nine deaths and injuring 28 people.
BIRTHDAYS
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE, British playwright, 85; Claire Danes, American actress, 45; Shannen Doherty, American actress, 53; Andy Garcia, actor, 68; Herbie Hancock, American jazz pianist, 84; David Letterman, American chatshow host, 77; Brian Mcfadden, pop singer (Westlife), 44; Lord Robertson of Port Ellen KT, MP 1978-99, secretary-general of Nato 1999-2003, 78; Saoirse Ronan, actress, 30; Scott Turow, American novelist, 75.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1925 Oliver Postgate, creator of Bagpuss and other characters; 1929 Elspet Gray (Lady Rix), Inverness-born actress; 1933 Montserrat Caballé, Spanish opera singer; 1941 Bobby Moore, footballer; 1944 Professor Lisa Jardine CBE, British historian; 1947 Tom Clancy, American novelist. Deaths: 1945 Franklin D Roosevelt, United States president; 1975 Josephine Baker, singer; 1981 Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber”, American and world heavyweight boxing champion; 1989 Sugar Ray Robinson, welterweight and middleweight boxing champion.