NOW & THEN
8 APRIL
1766: London watchmaker David Marie patented the first fire escape – a wicker basket let down by chain and pulley.
1838: Brunel’s steamship Great Western left Bristol for New York on her maiden voyage.
1907: Britain and France signed convention confirming independence of Siam (Thailand).
1908: Herbert Henry Asquith became Liberal Prime Minister and held office until 7 December, 1916.
1912: More than 200 drowned when a Nile excursion steamer sank after a collision near Cairo.
1913: First parliament of Chinese Republic opened.
1919: Russian communist army entered the Crimea.
1938: Paul Temple, the amateur detective created by Francis Durbridge for an eight-part radio series in the English Midlands, began his sleuthing – and continued for 30 years.
1939: Albania’s King Zog fled as Italian troops invaded his country.
1950: India and Pakistan signed pact at New Delhi on treatment of minorities.
1953: Jomo Kenyatta and five others were convicted of involvement with Mau Mau terrorism in the British colony of Kenya. Kenyatta stayed in detention until 1959 and was Kenya’s first president and prime minister.
1958: United States president Dwight D Eisenhower proposed mutual inspection as means of enforcing atomic test ban.
1962: Nearly 1,200 Bay of Pigs invaders were sentenced to 30 years in jail in Cuba.
1966: Leonid Brezhnev became Soviet leader.
1967: The Eurovision Song Contest was won by the British entry, Puppet On A String, sung by the shoeless Sandie Shaw.
1967: All but one of the 27 horses still running in the Grand National were involved in a pile-up at the 23rd fence. The exception, 100-1 shot Foinavon, ran on to win.
1986: Clint Eastwood, film actor, was elected Mayor of Carmel in California.
1989: Norwegian authorities searched for evidence of radioactivity from Soviet nuclear submarine that caught fire and sank off northern Norway with the loss of more than 40 crew.
1992: Yasser Arafat, Palestine Liberation chairman, survived a plane crash in a sandstorm in Libyan desert. 1992: Punch magazine folded after 151 years.
1992: Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announced that he has Aids, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.
1993: The Salvation Army said it had lost £5 million in an allegedly fraudulent investment scheme.
2002: A 300 million worldwide TV audience watched the Queen Mother’s funeral at Westminster Abbey. 200,000 people queued for up to eight hours to walk through Westminster Hall over the four days of the lying in state.
2014: Voters in Quebec voted a resounding “No” in a third referendum on independence from Canada, one of the worst ever electoral defeats for the main separatist party in the French-speaking province, Parti Quebecois.
BIRTHDAYS
Patricia Arquette, US actress, 51; Mark Blundell, racing driver and commentator, 53; Gordon Chisholm, Scottish footballer, 59; Alec Stewart OBE, English cricketer, 56; Dame Vivienne Westwood DBE, fashion designer, 78; Baroness Young of Old Scone, life peer, 71
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1889 Sir Adrian Boult, conductor and musical director; 1893 Mary Pickford, silent film actress; 1898 Yip Harburg, US songwriter; 1912 Sonja Henie, skater and film actress; 1918 Betty Ford, former First Lady of the United States; 1919 Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia 196479; 1930 Eric Porter, actor; 1930 Dame Dorothy Tutin, actress; 1938 Kofi Annan, UN secretarygeneral 1997-2007; 1944 Hywel Bennett, British actor.
Deaths: 1614 El Greco, artist; 1861 Elisha Graves Otis, inventor of the safety-lift; 1950 Vaslav Nijinsky, ballet dancer; 1973 Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist; 2000 Claire Trevor, actress; 2009 Lennie Bennett, British comedian; 2010 Malcolm Mclaren, musician, impresario, clothes designer; 2013 Baroness Thatcher, prime minister 19799; 2017.