NOW & THEN
22 APRIL
1662: The Royal Society was constituted by Royal Charter from Charles II.
1796: France’s Napoleon Bonaparte defeated Piedmont army at Mondovi.
1822: Turkish fleet captured island of Chios off Greece and massacred Christian inhabitants or sold them as slaves.
1838: The 703-tonne Sirius, built by R Menzies & Sons, Leith, and carrying 90 passengers, reached Sandy Hook, New York, to become the first to cross the Atlantic entirely under steam. Shortage of fuel forced the crew to burn spars and furniture to complete the 18-day voyage.
1884: A major earthquake hit Colchester and East Anglia, damaging 1,200 buildings and killing four people.
1915: Germany first used poison gas on Western Front at Ypres.
1918: The Penny Post was abolished.
1931: Treaty of friendship between Egypt and Iraq – first pact between Egypt and an Arab state.
1943: The printing of British £1,000 notes was discontinued.
1947: Photo-finish camera used for the first time at Epsom.
1951: Aneurin Bevan resigned as minister of Labour over plan by Clement Attlee’s government to introduce health charges.
1967: Martial law was declared in Greece after the army effected a coup.
1969: Robin Knox-johnston arrived at Falmouth to complete the first non-stop solo circumnavigation, in 312 days.
1972: John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook, in the 35-foot Britannia II, arrived in Australia, to become the first to row across the Pacific, having left San Francisco on 26 April, 1971.
1977: As political violence escalated in Pakistan, at least ten people were killed when police fired on anti–government demonstrators in Karachi.
1988: Israeli warplanes blasted Palestinian guerrilla bases south of Beirut, Lebanon.
1989: Archaeologists said they had unearthed a 2,000-year-old mummy in a gold-covered coffin in the Egyptian oasis Fayoum. She was wrapped in linen and had a child beside her.
1990: American hostage Robert Polhill released by pro-iranian Shia group in Beirut.
1992: More than 200 died and 1,500 were injured when a gas blast ripped through underground sewers in Guadalajara, Mexico.
1997: Chilean troops stormed the Japanese ambassador’s house in Lima and freed 72 hostages who had been held for 126 days by a Marxist rebel group. All 14 guerrillas died in the assault.
2004: Two fuel trains collided in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing 150 people.
2005: Japan’s prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, apologised for Japan’s war records.
2006: 243 people were injured in pro-democracy protest in Nepal after Nepali security forces opened fire on protesters against King Gyanendra.
2014: The World Health Organisation reported that the outbreak of the Ebola virus which began in west Africa in March had killed more than 140 people.