NOW & THEN
11 JULY
988: The city of Dublin was founded on the banks of the river Liffey.
1040: Lady Godiva rode naked on horseback through the streets of Coventry to force her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to reduce taxes.
1533: Lady Jane Grey began her brief reign as the Queen of England.
1579: The first Bible to be printed in Scotland was published.
1645: Oliver Cromwell’s army defeated Royalists at Langport.
1900: Metro, the Paris underground railway and the work of Fulgence Bienvenüe, was opened.
1915: British and South African troops marched into German south-west Africa.
1918: The Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic was formed.
1919: President Woodrow Wilson delivered the Treaty of Versailles to the US senate.
1923: Hailstones weighing up to 2lb killed 23 people and many cattle in Rostov, Russia.
1925: The USSR’S news agency TASS was formed.
1938: The “Yankee Clipper” completed the first passenger flight over the Atlantic.
1938: Howard Hughes flew around the world in 91 hours.
1940: Battle of Britain began following attacks on shipping convoys in the English Channel by Nazi forces.
1942: Heinrich Himmler ordered the sterilisation of all Jewish women in Ravensbruck camp.
1950: Soap rationing in Britain, started during the war, ended.
1951: Randolph Turpin became the first British boxer to win the world middleweight championship when he defeated American Sugar Ray Robinson at Earls Court, London.
1951: Armistice talks began in Kaesong to end the Korean conflict.
1958: Parking meters introduced in England – in Mayfair, London.
1962: Telstar I, the world’s first television telecommunications satellite, was launched in America.
1962: The US performed an atmospheric nuclear test on Christmas Island.
1996: The US launched Orbiter I to the moon.
1972: A herd of stampeding elephants killed 24 people in Chandka Forest, India.
1973: The Bahamas declared independence from UK and adopted its constitution.
1976: Four mercenaries –three British and one American – were executed by firing squad in Angola.
1976: Thousands of people were exposed to dioxin which escaped in the Seveso Disaster, an accident at a chemical factory in the Lombardy region of Italy.
1978: President Moktar of Mauritania fled in a bloodless coup.
1980: The Alexandra Palace in London burned down.
1985: Two explosions sank the Greenpeace campaign ship Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland, New Zealand.
1989: Rangers manager Graeme Souness caused a stir when he signed former Celtic player Maurice Johnson, who became the Ibrox club’s first well-known Roman Catholic player.
2011: The last edition of the News of the World was published in the wake of phonehacking allegations.
BIRTHDAYS
VIRGINIA WADE OBE Wimbledon champion 1977 and commentator, 74
Winnie Ewing, MEP 1975-99 and MSP 1999-03, 90; Sir Thomas Farmer CBE, founder of Kwik-fit, 79; John Motson OBE, sports commentator, 74; John Simm, actor, 49; Doctor Gavin Strang, MP (1970-2010), 76; Neil Tennant, singer (Pet Shop Boys), 65; Arlo Guthrie, American folk singer, 72; Jason Orange, singer-songwriter (Take That), 49; Mavis Staples, R&B and gospel singer (The Staple Sisters) and civil rights activist, 80; David Dinkins, first African-american mayor of New York, 92; Imelda May, Irish musician singer-songwriter, 45; Chiwetel Ejiofor CBE, actor, director, writer, 42.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1509 John Calvin (born Jean Cauvin), theologian; 1802 Robert Chambers, bookseller and publisher; 1856 Nikola Tesla, inventor of alternating current electricity supply system; 1871 Marcel Proust, writer; 1917 Reg Smythe, cartoonist (“Andy Capp”); 1943 Arthur Ashe, tennis champion. Deaths: 138AD Hadrian, Roman Emperor; 1099 El Cid, Spanish patriot; 1851 Louis Daguerre, French inventor and photographer; 1989 Mel Blanc cartoon voice; Omar Sharif, Egyptian film actor and international bridge player.