NOW & THEN
3 JULY
1187: At the Battle of Horns of Hattin, Saladin destroyed Jerusalems’s Crusader army.
1582: James Crichton of Eliock, a graduate of St Andrews University, a tutor of King James VI and the original “Admirable Crichton”, died in a brawl in Mantua.
1661: Portugal gave Tangier and Bombay to King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland.
1778: British forces massacred 360 settlers – men, women and children – in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.
1806: The first cultivated strawberry was exhibited by Michael Keens of Isleworth at a Royal Horticultural Society show.
1816: The French frigate Méduse ran aground off Cap Blanc in calm seas. “Gross incompetence” was blamed for the loss of 150 lives.
1844: The last known pair of great auks were killed on the island of Eldey, off Iceland, while incubating an egg.
1863: The Battle of Gettysburg, the longest battle in the American Civil War, ended with victory for the Union.
1871: Jesse James robbed a bank in Iowa of 45,000 dollars.
1883: When the SS Daphne capsized after launch, 124 workers were drowned in the Clyde’s worst accident of its type.
1884: Dow Jones published its first stock average.
1886: Karl Benz drove his first car in Germany.
1898: Captain Joshua Slocum arrived back on Rhode Island in his 37ft Spray, having completed the first solo circumnavigation.
1912: Board of Trade inquiry into the Titanic disaster found Captain Edward J Smith, who went down with the White Star liner after it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage, guilty of negligence.
1928: The world’s first television transmission in colour was made by John Logie Baird, at the Baird Studios in London.
1938: The LNER Mallard reached 126mph on the Stoke Bank stretch of line between Grantham and Peterborough, heading south – the world record for a steam locomotive.
1950: United States and North Korean troops clashed for the first time in the Korean War.
1954: Food rationing ended in Britain. Smithfield market opened at midnight instead of 6am to cope with the demand for beef.
1967: News at Ten appeared on UK television for the first time.
1976: Israel launched the rescue of 103 Air France crew and passengers who had been held for a week at Entebbe Airport in Uganda by pro-palestinian hijackers.
1987: Klaus Barbie, the former SS officer known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’, was jailed for life for war crimes against humanity in France.
1996: John Major, the prime minister, announced that the Stone of Destiny would be returned to Scotland, seven centuries after it was taken to England by Edward I.
2002: The FTSE 100 went into freefall, plummeting 154.2 points to close at 4392.6, its lowest close in five years and wiping more than £37 billion off the value of the UK’S biggest companies.