NOW & THEN
3MAY
1788: The first daily evening newspaper, the Star and Evening Advertiser, was published in London.
1814: France’s King Louis XVIII returned to Paris after forced Napoleon Bonaparte was forced into exile on the island of Elba.
1815: The metronome was patented by Johann Maelzel.
1841: New Zealand was formally proclaimed a British colony.
1898: Bread riots erupted in Milan, Italy, and were crushed with heavy loss of life.
1903: First electric train ran through the Mersey railway tunnel between Liverpool and Birkenhead.
1917: British troops launched fresh attacks at Arras, France, to break Hindenburg Line.
1934: Author HG Wells predicted there would be a major world war by 1940.
1939: Battleship Prince of Wales was launched at Cammell Laird’s shipyard, Birkenhead.
1945: Allied troops entered Hamburg, Germany.
1951: The Festival of Britain was opened by King George VI; it was built on a bomb site near Waterloo Station and ended on 30 September.
1960: The European Free Trade Association came into force.
1968: The first British heart transplant was carried out by a team led by Doctor Donald Ross on a 45-year-old man at the National Heart Hospital, London.
1972: Turkish guerrillas hijacked Turkish plane and landed in Sofia, Bulgaria.
1979: Margaret Thatcher led the Conservative Party to victory in the general election.
1988: Amnesty International accused Afghan and Soviet forces of killing refugees trying to flee war in Afghanistan into neighbouring Pakistan.
1989: Chile’s right-wing military government abandoned plans for democratic reforms.
1990: President Bush scrapped plans for newer, more powerful battlefield nuclear weapons in Europe and called for Nato summit to rewrite alliance’s political and military strategy.
1991: Hundreds of Iraqi troops withdrew from an allied security zone in northern Iraq.
1992: A curfew in Los Angeles was lifted as calm was restored after five days of rioting.
2002: Wendy Alexander, Labour’s minister for enterprise, transport and lifelong learning, resigned suddenly from the Scottish Executive, returning to the back benches.
2003: SNP leader John Swinney was battling to save his political career after his party lost eight seats in the Scottish Parliament elections. The Scottish Socialists gained five seats.
2006: Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
2007: The SNP secured a historic victory in the Holyrood elections, ending Labour’s 50-year domination of Scotland’s political map. It gave the SNP 47 MSPS with Labour on 46.
2007: Madeleine Mccann went missing from an apartment in the Algarve region of Portugal while on holiday with her parents and twin siblings. No trace has ever been found of her.
BIRTHDAYS
David Ball, Soft Cell star, 60; Rob Brydon MBE, Welsh actor and comic, 54; Kathy Cook MBE, athlete, 59; Christopher Cross, US singer-songwriter, 68; Peter Duncan, former Blue Peter presenter, 65; Ben Elton, British comic and writer, 60; Ken Hom OBE, TV chef, 70; Mary Hopkin, British singer, 69; Gordon Hunter, Scottish footballer, 52; Peter Oosterhuis, British golfer and commentator, 71; Sandi Toksvig OBE, broadcaster, 61; Lawrence Tynes, Greenock-born American Football Super Bowl winner 2008, 41; Frankie Valli, Italian-american musician, 85; Charlie Brooks, actress, 38
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian statesman and political philosopher; 1844: Richard D’oyly Carte, impresario; 1860 John Scott Haldane, Edinburghborn scientist; 1919 Pete Seeger, singer/ songwriter; 1928 James Brown, singer, “Godfather of Soul”. Deaths: 1679 Archbishop James Sharp, of St Andrews (murdered at Magus Muir); 1691 Sir George Mackenzie, “Bloody Mackenzie”, prosecutor of the Covenanters; 1998 Hughie Green, entertainer; 1999 Oliver Reed, actor; 2002 Baroness Castle of Blackburn, politician.