NOW & THEN
15 APRIL
1638: English settlers arrived at what is now New Haven, Connecticut, in the United States.
1755: Doctor Samuel Johnson’s dictionary was published, containing 40,000 words.
1793: £5 notes were first issued by the Bank of England.
1797: Naval personnel mutinied at Spithead, in the Solent.
1811: Chang and Eng Bunker, the most famous conjoined twins, were born in Siam, joined together at the breastbone.
1852: The first screw-top bottles were patented by Francois Joseph Belzung of Paris.
1894: Thomas Edison’s “kinetoscope”, invented in 1887, was given its first public showing at 1155 Broadway, New York City.
1901: A motor hearse was used in Coventry, the first time at a British funeral.
1912: The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank with the loss of 1,513 passengers and crew on her maiden voyage. There were 732 survivors.
1923: Insulin, discovered by Sir Frederick Banting, JRR Macleod and Charles H Best, was made available for general use by diabetics.
1929: Sir James Barrie donated the copyright fee of his story Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.
1942: The island of Malta was awarded the George Cross for its heroism during German and Italian bombardment.
1955: The world’s largest hamburger chain, Mcdonald’s, was founded in Chicago by Ray Kroc.
1970: The first hand-held electronic pocket calculator was announced by Canon Business Machines of Japan.
1974: Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, 19, was kidnapped in California by members of the leftist Symbionese Liberation Army.
1989: Ninety-six supporters were crushed to death and 200 injured in Britain’s worst football disaster, at Hillsborough, Sheffield, at the start of an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
1992: The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber paid £10.25 million for Old Horseguards by Canaletto at Christie’s – saving the painting for the nation.
2010: All flights in and out of the UK and several other European countries were suspended because of ash in the air caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Up to 4,000 flights were cancelled.
2013: During the Boston Marathon, two pressure cooker bombs exploded near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 180 others.
2014: Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was ordered by a Milan court to carry out a year of community service in an old people’s home as punishment for tax fraud.
2014: The Supreme Court of India ruled that transgender people had the right to identify themselves as being of a third gender.
BIRTHDAYS
Lord Archer of Weston-supermare, author, 79; Dave Edmunds, Welsh rock guitarist, 75; Samantha Fox, British model and singer, 53; Marsha Hunt, US singer and actress, 73; Baroness Linklater of Butterstone, 76; Ed O’brien, British rock guitarist (Radiohead), 51; Seth Rogen, Canadian actor and writer, 37; Sir Robert Hill Smith, Bt MP, 61; Dame Emma Thompson, British actress, 60; Marty Wilde MBE, 1960s rock star, 80; Emma Watson, British actress, 29
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1452 Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist; 1800 Sir James Clark Ross, Arctic explorer; 1812 Théodore Rousseau, French landscape artist; 1843 Henry James, novelist; 1894 Bessie Smith, blues singer; 1901 Joe Davis, billiards and snooker champion; 1924 Rikki Fulton, actor and entertainer; .
Deaths: 1764 Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV; 1865 Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president (assassinated); 1888 Matthew Arnold, poet and educationist; 1925 John Singer Sargent, portrait painter; 1980 Jean-paul Sartre, philosopher and novelist; 1982 Arthur Lowe, actor; 1984 Tommy Cooper, comedian; 1990 Greta Garbo, actress; 1993 Leslie Charteris, author of The Saint books; 1994 John Curry, ice skater; 2008 Sir Clement Freud, writer, broadcaster, MP 1973-1987.