NOW & THEN
1560: Scotland’s parliament abolished papal jurisdiction and approved a Calvinistic Confession of Faith, founding Presbyterian Church of Scotland under John Knox.
1589: King Henry III of France was assassinated by friar Jacques Clément.
1732: The foundations were laid for the Bank of England.
1747: The Proscription Act was passed, banning the wearing of tartan and carrying weapons.
1774: Joseph Priestley dicovered oxygen.
1793: The kilogram was introduced in France as the first metric weight.
1834: Slavery was abolished in the British Empire.
1842: The Lombard Street three-day race riot erupted in Pennsylvania. Churches, homes and public buildings were looted and burned.
1870: The Irish Land Act gave rights to tenants of landlords.
1873: San Francisco’s first cable car went into service.
1883: The inland postal service began in Geat Britain.
1896: Frank Samuelson and George Harbo became the first men to row across the Atlantic when they landed at the Scilly Isles, having left New York 55 days earlier.
1902: One hundred lives were lost in a mining accident at Wollongong, Australia.
1904: Japan declared war on China over Korea.
1907: The first Boy Scout camp opened in Dorset.
1914: German Emperor Willem II declared war on Russia and his nephew, Tsar Nicholas II.
1918: British troops entered Vladivostok.
1936: Adolf Hitler opened the 11th modern Olympic Games in Berlin.
1942: Race riots erupted in Harlem, New York.
1944: Anne Frank made her last diary entry. Three days later, she was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp.
1953: Cuban rebel Fidel Castro, who had led an attack on the Moncada Army Barracks, was arrested. He was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment but released after two.
1967: University of Dundee, formerly University College, Dundee, incorporated in the University of St Andrews in 1890, became a separate university.
1971: US Defence Department announced the pullout of 3,000 American troops from Vietnam.
1972: Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s first article exposing the Watergate Scandal was published.
1992: Linford Christie won the 100 metres and oarsmen Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent the coxless pairs at the Olympic Games in Barcelona.
2002: Ban on hunting with dogs came into force in Scotland.
2007: The Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis, carrying an eight-lane interstate highway over the Saint Anthony Falls, collapsed during the evening rush hour, killing 13 people.
2008: Eleven climbers and guides were swept to their deaths in a storm on 28,251ft Himalayan peak K2.
2013: Robert Mugabe won 142 of 210 seats to maintain power in Zimbabwe. Fiona Hyslop, SNP MSP, 54; Robert Cray, blues musician, 65; Adrian Dunbar, actor, 60; Graham Thorpe MBE, English cricketer, 49; Honeysuckle Weeks, actress, 39; Laila Morse, actress, 73; Andrew Nicholson, former world champion three-day eventer, 57; Pat Heywood, Scottish actress, 87 Births: 10BC Claudius, Roman Emperor, and uncle of Caligula; 1545 Andrew Melville, reformer, principal of Glasgow University, and St Mary’s College, St Andrews; 1819 Herman Melville, American author (Moby Dick); 1822 James Grant, Edinburghborn novelist; 1930 Lionel Bart, composer and lyricist; 1936 Yves St Laurent, fashion designer. Deaths: 30BC Mark Antony, Roman politician and general; 1714 Queen Anne, the last Stuart sovereign; 1903 Martha Jane Canary (“Calamity Jane”), American frontierswoman and scout; 1919 Oscar Hammerstein I, theatre impresario; 1977 Francis Gary Powers, pilot whose spy plane was shot down over Russia in the “U2 Incident”; 2005 King Fahd, ruler of Saudi Arabia 1982 to 2005; 2007 Tommy Makem, Irish folk singer and storyteller; 2015 Cilla Black OBE, singer and TV presenter.