NOW & THEN 20 JUNE
1522: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V visited England and signed Treaty of Windsor with King Henry VIII, calling for invasion of France.
1586: Colonists sailed from Roanoke Island, present-day North Caroline, ending first settlement by English in America.
1605: Russia’s Tsar Theodore II was assassinated in palace revolution.
1756: Night of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Some 156 British prisoners were put into a cell 20ft square on a hot June night when Suraja Dowla, Nawab of Bengal, captured Fort William. Only 23 survived.
1789: The French Revolution began and so the country entered a period of radical social and political upheaval that had a major impact on France and indeed all of Europe.
1841: Samuel Morse patented telegraph.
1862: Congress prohibited slavery in United States territories.
1885: Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City from France.
1887: The second Tay Bridge, the longest railway bridge in Britain, was opened.
1923: General “Pancho” Villa, Mexican guerrilla leader and revolutionary, was assassinated at Parral (Chihuahua).
1927: Greyhound racing began at White City Stadium in London.
1944: United States troops took Saipan Island in Pacific from Japanese.
1949: “Gorgeous Gussie” Moran, American tennis player, caused a sensation at Wimbledon, wearing lace-trimmed panties under a short skirt, designed by Teddy Tinling.
1960: Nan Winton became the first woman to read the national news on BBC television.
1966: First black British police officer went on duty in Coventry.
1969: The discovery of highgrade crude oil deposits in the North Sea was announced, ten years after the first natural gas was found.
1973: Juan Peron returned as president of Argentina after almost 20 years of exile.
1987: Basque separatists claimed responsibility after explosion in Barcelona department store garage killed 12 people.
1988: Bomb planted by Sikh extremists exploded in middle of crowd outside television shop in Kurukshetra, India, killing 15 people.
1989: China’s premier, Li Peng, defended army’s attack on prodemocracy demonstrators.
1990: The Agra diamond was sold for a record £4,070,000 at Christie’s.
1990: Scotland bowed out of World Cup after 1-0 defeat by Brazil.
2003: The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates several online collaborative wiki projects including Wikipedia, was founded in St Petersburg, Florida.
2008: An NHS region in Scotland announced plans to offer smokers cash incentives of £50 to quit the habit.
2010: It was revealed that the cost to Britain of the country’s commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq had soared to more than £20 billion over the past decade.