NOW & THEN
19 JULY
1333: Battle of Halidon Hill at Berwick, in which Scots were crushed by Edward III of England and Edward Balliol.
1545: The Mary Rose, flagship of Henry VIII’S battle fleet, sank in the Solent with the loss of 700 lives.
1553: Mary Tudor proclaimed Queen, while 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey, a Protestant, was deposed after only nine days and sent to the Tower.
1588: “There’s plenty of time to finish this game and thrash the Spaniards too,” Sir Francis Drake was said to have commented on Plymouth Hoe as he played bowls while the Spanish Armada approached.
1692: Five people hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, bringing the total to 20.
1821: Coronation of King George IV at Westminster Abbey.
1836: Charles Darwin’s ship, HMS Beagle, reached Ascension Island.
1837: Brunel’s 236ft Great Western was launched at Patterson’s Yard, Bristol.
1843: Brunel’s steamship SS Great Britain was launched, the world’s largest ship and the first ocean-going vessel with an iron hull or screw propeller.
1877: Spencer Gore became the first Wimbledon men’s singles champion, defeating William Marshall 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 in the final.
1912: A meteorite, estimated to be 190kg of mass, exploded over Holsbrook, Arizona, causing approximately 16,000 pieces of debris to rain down on the town.
1918: German armies retreated across the River Marne in France during the First World War.
1919: Ex-servicemen rioted during Peace Day celebrations in Luton and burned down the town hall.
1940: Adolf Hitler ordered Britain to surrender.
1941: British prime minister Winston Churchill launched his ‘V for Victory’ campaign during the Second World War.
1961: Trans-world Airlines showed the first in-flight movie.
1969: Apollo 11 went into moon orbit.
1983: People searching a clay pit in Surrey discovered fossils of a previously unknown species of carnivorous dinosaur.
1984: Lynn Rippelmeyer became the first woman to captain a Boeing 747 aircraft on a transatlantic flight.
1985: The Val di Stava dam collapsed killing 268 people in Val di Stava, Italy.
1992: John Smith became leader of the Labour party.
1990: NUM sued Arthur Scargill over missing Soviet money given during miners’ strike of 1984-5.
1995: Prince of Wales gave up flying, despite being cleared of blame for crashing an aircraft he was piloting as it landed on Islay.
2001: Novelist and former MP, Lord Archer, was jailed for four years at the Old Bailey for perverting the course of justice and committing perjury during his 1987 libel trial against the Daily Star, which had accused him of sleeping with a prostitute.
2002: A public inquiry ruled that GP Harold Shipman, serving life for murdering 15 patients, altogether killed 215 patients in Hyde, near Manchester, and might have been responsible for 45 more.