NOW & THEN
29 APRIL
1376: Sir Peter de la Mare took his place as first Speaker in the House of Commons.
1429: Joan of Arc entered Orleans, France, and won victory over the English.
1842: Corn Law Bill was given Royal assent.
1909: In a revolutionary Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, introduced a “supertax” of sixpence in the pound for anyone earning more than £5,000 a year to pay for oldage pensions and rearmament. He also doubled death duties.
1918: Germany’s main offensive on Western Front in First World War ended.
1930: Actress Peggy O’neil became the first person to be interviewed on television, from the Ideal Home Exhibition in Southampton.
1933: Players’ football shirts were first numbered, in the English FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium the numbers running from one to 22, with Manchester City having the higher set of numbers.
1935: Glass reflectors, or ‘cat’s eyes’, invented by Percy Shaw, were first used on British roads.
1945: Allied troops in Germany liberated 32,000 victims of Nazis in concentration camp at Dachau.
1946: British-united States committee advised against partition of Palestine.
1947: The first London performance of the musical Oklahoma! was staged.
1961: The World Wildlife Fund was founded.
1965: Australia decided to send troops to South Vietnam.
1973: Israel decided to expand civil rights of its 336,000 Arab citizens to reward Israeli Arab community for loyalty.
1975: United States taskforce evacuated foreigners and Vietnamese by helicopter from Saigon.
1990: Wrecking cranes tore down the section of the Berlin Wall surrounding the Brandenburg Gate, the wall’s most famous section.
1990: Stephen Hendry, aged 21, became the youngest world snooker champion by beating Jimmy White 18-12 in the Embassy Championship.
1991: A cyclone travelling at 145mph drove a tidal wave 20ft high into the port of Chittagong in Bangladesh, killing more than 100,000 and making millions homeless. 1992: Rioting began in Los Angeles after the acquittal of four policemen seen beating up a black man, Rodney King, on an amateur video film.
1995: Tony Blair won a victory in his battle to ‘modernise’ the Labour Party when it voted to ditch its Clause 4 commitment to nationalisation.
2009: Gordon Brown’s government suffered a surprise defeat in the Commons on its policy of restricting the right of former Gurkhas to settle in the UK. MPS voted 267 to 246 in favour of a Lib Dem motion that all Gurkhas be offered an equal right of residence.
2011: One million people gathered in London to watch the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton who became the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge following the ceremony. André Agassi, US tennis champion, 49; Willie Nelson, US Country singer, 86; Sir Daniel Day-lewis, actor, 62; Anita Dobson, British actress, 70; Adrian Maguire, Irish jockey and trainer, 48; Michelle Pfeiffer, US actress, 61; Lloyd Quinan, Scottish broadcaster and former politician, 62; Jerry Seinfeld, comedian, 65; Uma Thurman, US film actress, 49; Kate Mulgrew, US actress, 64
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1769 Duke of Wellington, soldier and statesman; 1863 William Randolph Hearst, newspaper proprietor; 1879 Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor; 1895 Sir Malcolm Sargent, conductor; 1899 Duke Ellington, jazz musician and composer; 1901 Hirohito, Emperor of Japan; 1914 Deryck Guyler, actor; 1928 Professor Heinz Wolff, Germanbritish scientist and broadcaster; 1929 Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the Liberal Party 1967-76; .
Deaths: 1937 Wallace Carothers, chemist and developer of nylon; 1980 Sir Alfred Hitchcock, film director; 1988 Andrew Cruickshank, actor; 1999 Elspeth March, actress; 2014 Bob Hoskins, British actor; 2015 Calvin Peete, golfer; 2018 Michael Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn, speaker of the House of Commons 2000-09.