NOW & THEN
18 MAY
1642: Montreal in Canada was founded.
1736: Witchcraft statutes were repealed in England.
1804: Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of the French.
1827: The Red Barn murder took place at Polstead, Suffolk, when Maria Marten was slain by one of her lovers, William Corder. He buried her beneath the barn floor, and she lay there until her stepmother dreamed of the actual happenings and her father dug up the floor and discovered Maria’s body. Corder was hanged before a crowd of 7,000.
1830: Edwin Budding, of Stroud, Gloucestershire signed an agreement for the manufacture of his invention, the lawn mower. The first customer was Regent’s Park Zoo, London.
1843: The Disruption, when more than 400 ministers and many elders left the Established Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland.
1912: First automatic telephone exchange opened in Britain at Epsom.
1921: The first reconnaissance party on Mount Everest began operations, led by Colonel Howard Bury.
1936: Jasmine Bligh and Elizabeth Cowell became the BBC’S first women announcers.
1953: Jacqueline Cochrane, piloting a North American F- 86 Sabre, became the first woman to fly faster than sound.
1955: The first Wimpy Bar opened in London, beginning the fast- food invasion.
1960: Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7- 3 at Hampden Park, Glasgow, to win European Cup for the fifth year in succession.
1969: Apollo 10 was launched with Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan.
1972: Four bomb- disposal experts parachuted into Atlantic from RAF plane and boarded liner QE2 after bomb threat for ransom.
1974: India exploded its first nuclear bomb.
1980: Mount St Helens volcano in the American state of Washington, erupted, killing 57 people and creating a cloud of ash 2,500 miles long and 1,000 miles wide.
1982: Rev Sun Myung Moon, Unification Church founder and Washington Times owner, was found guilty of income tax fraud.
1991: Helen Sharman became
Britain’s first woman in space when she was sent into orbit aboard Soyuz spacecraft to spend a week on space station Mir with two Soviet cosmonauts.
1992: An inquest jury returned “unlawful killing” verdicts on nine British soldiers killed by American “friendly fire” in the Gulf War.
1993: The Danes reversed their previous rejection of the Maastricht Treaty, 56.8 per cent voting in favour of it in a second referendum.
2014: Around 300 landslides triggered by unprecedented rain, causing the Balkan regions worst flooding since records began, killed more than 30 people and caused more than 10,000 to flee their homes in Bosnia. Thousands more evacuated in neighbouring Croatia and Serbia.
BIRTHDAYS
Holly Aird, British actress, 50; Rodger Davis, Australian golfer, 68; John Higgins MBE, Scottish snooker champion, 44; Miriam Margolyes OBE, British actress, 78; Norbert ( Nobby) Stiles MBE, English footballer, 77; Rick Wakeman, British rock musician and composer, 70; Toyah Willcox, singer and actress, 61; Chow YunFat, actor, 64; Jessica Watson, Australian round- the- world yachtswoman, 26
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1785 Christopher North, pseudonym of John Wilson, philosopher; 1868 Nicholas II, last Tsar of Russia; 1872 Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl, philosopher and mathematician; 1897 Frank Capra, writer and film director; 1909 Fred Perry, Wimbledon tennis champion; 1919 Dame Margot Fonteyn, prima ballerina; 1929 Norman St John- Stevas, Baron St John of Fawsley, author, barrister and former MP.
Deaths: 1692 Elias Ashmole, antiquarian; 1807 John Douglas, Scottish scholar and bishop of Salisbury; 1817 Sir Oswald Brierly, marine painter; 1911 Gustav Mahler, composer, conductor; 1949 James Adams, historian; 1981 William Saroyan, author; 1990 Jill Ireland, actress; 2012 Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau, German baritone.