NOW & THEN
9 JULY
1540: Henry VIII divorced Anne of Cleves, nicknamed The Flanders Mare, and his fourth wife, after six months of marriage.
1686: League of Augsburg was formed by Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Sweden, Saxony, the Palatinate and Brandenburg against France’s King Louis XIV.
1745: Enroute from France to Scotland, Bonnie Prince Charlie looked on anxiously from his ship, Doutelle, as his other ship, Elisabeth, engaged in a fivehour battle with HMS Lion. Badly damaged and with a numbr of crewmen killed, both vessels finally withdrew.
1776: The American Declaration of Idependence was read on the parade ground at Lower Manhattan to thousands of George Washington’s troops who had moved up from Boston to help defend New York against the British.
1867: Queen’s Park Football Club was formed, the first senior club in Scotland.
1872: The first doughnut cutter was patented in America by John Blondel. A sea captain, he is said to have invented the hole so he could slip the doughnut over the handle of the ship’s wheel and enjoy his snack while steering.
1877: Wimbledon staged its first lawn tennis championship at its original site in Worple Road, London.
1882: Royal Navy bombarded Alexandria, Egypt.
1910: A stone tablet describing the fall of Jerusalem was discovered by archaeologists in Egypt.
1917: HMS Vanguard blew up in Scapa Flow with the loss of more than 800 men.
1922: Johnny Weissmuller became the first man to swim 100 metres in less than a minute.
1938: Gas masks were first issued to the civilian population of Britain in anticipation of the Second World War.
1955: Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets topped the Billboard chart.
1974: Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal party won the Canadian parliamentary election.
1977: Tom Watson won the Open Championship at Turnberry, following the classic “Duel in the Sun” with Jack Nicklaus.
1979: Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter.
1982: Margaret Thatcher began her second term of office as prime minister.
1984: York Minster was struck by lightning and the roof destroyed.
1990: Four were killed and hundreds injured when celebrations of Germany’s victory over Argentina in the World Cup final turned violent.
1991: Nineteen of the army’s 55 infantry battalions were targeted for the scrapheap. Manpower was to be cut from 156,000 to 116,000.
1992: The space shuttle Columbus 13 landed.
1997: Mike Tyson was banned from boxing for biting off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear.
2002: The African Union was established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
2007: The BBC was fined £50,000 for faking the winner of a phone-in competition on a Blue Peter programme.
2011: South Sudan became a nation in its own right, the climax of a process made possible by the 2005 peace deal that ended a long and bloody civil war.