Now & Then
19 APRIL
1587: Sir Francis Drake’s fleet sacked Cadiz in Spain. He called the action “singeing the King of Spain’s beard”.
1689: Followers of the Covenanter Richard Cameron, who had assembled at Edinburgh to guard the Revolution Convention of Estates, formed into a regiment under the Earl of Angus. The Cameronians disbanded in 1968. 1775: The Battle of Lexington, the opening engagement in the War of American Independence, took place near Boston.
1783: United States Congress announced the end of the War of American Independence.
1794: Britain, by Treaty of The Hague, subsidised 60,000 Prussian and Dutch troops in coalition against France.
1843: The gas meter was patented by Carl Ludwig Farwig.
1921: Government of Ireland Act went into effect.
1943: About 60,000 poorly armed Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto put up fierce resistance when attacked by a strong Nazi force with orders to wipe them out. A month later, the Nazi general in charge reported that the city’s Jewish quarter “no longer existed”.
1951: Miss Sweden won the first Miss World Contest, held at the Lyceum Ballroom in London. 1956: Prince Rainier of Monaco married film actress Grace Kelly. She was the first American to wed a reigning monarch.
1956: Diver Commander Lionel “Buster” Crabbe disappeared in Portsmouth Harbour while investigating the hull of a Russian cruiser which had brought the Soviet leaders Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev to Britain. His headless body was washed up 14 months later.
1964: Coalition government in Laos was deposed by right-wing military groups.
1971: Soviets launched the first space station, Salyut.
1975: India’s first satellite was launched by a Soviet rocket. 1982: Salisbury, capital of Zimbabwe, was renamed Harare. 1989: Riots erupted in Jordan against government-imposed price increases.
1990: In Nicaragua, representatives of Contras, outgoing Sandinista government and incoming government of
Violeta Barrios Chamorro agreed on a ceasefire.
1990: The government won a Commons majority of 97 for its bill to give full British citizenship to up to 225,000 Hong Kong Chinese. 1991: First of 5,000 British troops left for Incirlik, Turkey, to help set up Kurdish “safe havens” in northern Iraq for 600,000 refugees.
1993: At least 85 people died when the 51-day Waco cult siege in Texas ended in tragedy as a giant ball of flame engulfed the compound. 1994: South Africa was pulled back from the edge of disaster when Zulu Chief Buthelezi called off his boycott of the country’s first all-race elections.
1995: A bomb ripped through a federal government building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people 2005: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 78, of Germany, was elected successor to Pope John Paul II, taking the name Benedict XVI. 2009: Scottish scientists revealed they had found genetic “brakes” which could stop or slow down diseases such as MS and cancer.
BIRTHDAYS
11th Earl of Annandale and Hartfell, vice-lord lieutenant of Dumfries and Galloway, 83; Sue Barker OBE, broadcaster, 68; Harold “Dickie” Bird OBE, cricket umpire, 91; Tim Curry, British actor, 78; Dame Kelly Holmes MBE, DBE, Olympic double gold medal winner, 54; Kate Hudson, actress, 45; Ashley Judd, actress, 56; Professor Hugh Pennington CBE, scientist, 86; Alan Price, British pop musician, 82; Maria Sharapova, tennis player, 37; Ruby Wax OBE, US comedienne, 71
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1905 Jim Mollison, Glasgow-born aviator; 1932 Jayne Mansfield, US actress; 1935 Dudley Moore, actor; 1937 Antonio Carluccio OBE, Italian restaurateur; 1937 Dr Norman Godman, MP 1983-2001; 1941 Michel Roux OBE, French restaurateur; 1943 Margo Macdonald, MSP, MP 1973-4 and broadcaster.
Deaths: 1824 Lord Byron, poet; 1882 Charles Darwin, naturalist; 1906 Pierre Curie, French physicist; 1989 Daphne du Maurier, author; 1992 Frankie Howerd, comedian; 2009 JG Ballard, novelist; 2011 Elisabeth Sladen, British actress