NOW & THEN
23 APRIL
St George’s Day – national day of England.
1349: The Order of the Garter, Britain’s senior chivalric order limited to 24 knights, was founded by King Edward III.
1533: Catholic Church declared marriage of Catherine of Aragon to England’s King Henry VIII valid.
1795: Warren Hastings, former British governor-general of India, acquitted of high treason.
1867: Queen Victoria and Emperor Napoleon III of France turned down proposals for a Channel Tunnel.
1904: United States acquired property of French Panama Canal Company.
1924: The Empire Exhibition opened at Wembley Stadium.
1945: Allied troops reached River Po in Italy.
1945: US and Soviet forces met at Torgau in eastern Germany.
1950: First children’s newsreel was shown on television.
1965: The Pennine Way was opened, covering 250 miles from Edale in Derbyshire to Kirk Yetholm in the Borders.
1967: Russian Soyuz 1 was launched, and after completing 17 orbits crashed on re-entry, killing Vladimir Komarov.
1968: The 5p and 10p decimal coins were issued in Britain.
1972: Two US Apollo 16 astronauts blasted off from Moon for journey back to Earth.
1975: South Vietnam’s cabinet resigned as panic gripped Saigon and US President Gerald Ford declared Vietnam war over.
1983: Cliff Thorburn scored the first televised maximum break of 147 in the World Snooker Championships at the Crucible, Sheffield.
1984: The US announced the discovery of the Aids virus.
1985: Princess Anne made her flat racing debut at Epsom.
1990: Great train robber Charles Wilson was shot dead at his Marbella home in Spain.
1991: Michael Heseltine, the environment secretary, announced successor to the poll tax – the council tax based on bands of property values.
1992: Princess Anne’s marriage to Captain Mark Phillips ended when she was granted an uncontested divorce.
1993: A public outcry forced the Isle of Man government to abandon plans to remove birching from the statute book.
1993: The World Health Organisation declared tuberculosis a global emergency, saying TB could kill 30 million people by 2003.
1995: Up to 8,000 refugees were reported dead in Rwanda, shot by government troops or trampled to death in the panic.
2009: The gamma ray burst GRB 090423 was observed for ten seconds. The event signalled the most distant object of any kind and also the oldest known object in the universe.
2014: Fire raged through the Rio de Janeiro favela of Pavaopavaozinho as riots broke out when residents blamed police for the deaths of three residents, including Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira, a popular dancer on Brazil’s largest TV channel.
2018: A third child was born to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in London. Prince Louis Arthur Charles became fifth in line to the throne.