NOW & THEN
1203: The siege of constantinople began during the fourth Crusade, when the city was attacked by Crusaders aboard a Venetian fleet.
1419: The dauphin was crowned king of France.
1453: The Hundred Years’ War ended after the defeat of the English at Castillon.
1585: Secret service agents discovered Anthony Babington’s plot to murder Elizabeth I.
1603: Sir Walter Raleigh was arrested by the forces of King James VI and charged with assisting Spain in trying to put Arabella Stuart on the throne.
1652: The Great Fire of Glasgow razed almost one-third of the city.
1695: Bank of Scotland was established.
1717: Handel’s Water Music was performed for the first time on the River Thames in London.
1762: Catherine II became Tsar of Russia following the murder of Peter III.
1790: The first sewing machine was patented by cabinetmaker Thomas Smith in London which had most of the technical features of machines patented later by Elias Howe and Isaac Singer.
1791: Members of the French National Guard opened fire on a crowd of radicals in Paris, killing around 50 people.
1832: Scottish Reform Bill became law.
1841 : The first issue of Punch magazine published in London.
1850: Harvard University took the first photo of a star – Vega.
1863: British troops defeated the Maoris at Koheroa in the New Zealand wars between Maoris and British colonials.
1893: Arthur Shrewsbury of England became the first cricketer to score 1,000 runs in Test cricket in an Ashes match against Australia at Lord’s.
1912: The International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) was formed in Sweden.
1917: The Royal Family changed its name from the House of Saxe-coburg-gotha to the House of Windsor during the First World War.
1936: Spanish Civil War started as General Francisco Franco led army forces in revolt against Spain’s government.
1944: The largest convoy of the Second World War embarked from Halifax, Nova Scotia, under Royal Canadian Navy protection.
1945: The Potsdam Conference involving Allied leaders Harry S Truman, Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill began.
1955: Disneyland was opened in California.
1959: Paleoanthropologist Dr Mary Leakey discovered the 600,000-year-old skull of an early human ancestor, who lived in Africa.
1975: Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 made the first US/USSR link-up in space.
1979: Sebastian Coe set a new world record of 3m 49 secs for running the mile in Oslo.
1988: Florence Griffith Joyner set a new world record of 10.49 secs for the women’s 100 metres.
1996: TWA flight 800, bound for Paris, exploded off the coast of Long Island, killing all 230 aboard.
1998: The remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his family were buried in St Petersburg.