NOW & THEN
21 MAY
1502: The South Atlantic island of St Helena was discovered by Portuguese explorer Joao de Nova.
1840: New Zealand was declared a colony of Britain.
1884: The Statue of Liberty was finished, work having been begun by Auguste Bartholdi in about 1874 in Paris.
1894: The 35-mile Manchester Ship Canal was formally opened by Queen Victoria.
1904: The football federation Fifa was founded in Paris to improve international control of the game.
1916: Daylight saving, advocated by builder William Willett, was introduced in Britain.
1927: Charles Lindbergh, United States airmail pilot, became the first to fly the Atlantic solo from New York to Paris, in 33 hours in a single-engined monoplane Spirit of St Louis, to win a prize of $25,000. Because of the weight of fuel he had no parachute, wireless, or window panes.
1944: Allied forces broke through Hitler Line in Italy.
1964: United States disclosed that its planes were making reconnaissance flights over central Laos to gain information on Communist forces.
1967: Department store fire in Brussels killed 332.
1966: Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) beat Henry Cooper to retain world heavyweight boxing title.
1982: British troops landed at Port San Carlos on Argentineheld Falkland Islands. Destroyer HMS Ardent sunk with loss of 22 lives.
1983: Five people were injured and several arrested when demonstrators protesting against Nazi storm-troopers’ reunion in Bad Hersfeld, West Germany, clashed with neoNazis and riot police.
1988: Soviet Communist Party dismissed party leaders in southern republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, where 32 people had died in ethnic turmoil since the beginning of the year.
1989: Students occupying Tiananmen Square in Peking rejected government ultimatum to leave.
1992: Peace returned to Bangkok after four days in which police and soldiers fought with pro-democracy protesters.
1994: Dundee United beat Rangers 1-0 to win the Scottish Cup.
1995: Iran indicated that the sixyear “death sentence” on author Salman Rushdie could be lifted.
1998: In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics were hit by a butyric acid attacker.
2003: An earthquake hit northern Algeria, killing more than 2,000 people.
2005: The tallest rollercoaster in the world, Kingda Ka, opened at Six Flags Great Adventure, in New Jersey, United States.
2006: The Republic of Montenegro held a referendum proposing independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. The Montenegrin people chose independence with a majority of 55 per cent.
2011: The Rapture was predicted to take place.
2016: Hibernian defeated Rangers 3-2 in the Scottish Cup final, ending a 114-year wait since the Edinburgh club previously won the trophy in 1902.