NOW & THEN
20 JULY
1304: King Edward I of England took Stirling Castle, the last rebel stronghold of the Wars of Scottish Independence.
1651: At the The Battle of Inverkeithing, the Royalist force supporting Charles II failed to stop the advance of Oliver Cromwell’s army towards Perth.
1712: The Riot Act came into effect in Britain.
1773: Scottish settlers arrived in Pictou, Nova Scotia.
1837: London’s first railway station, Euston, opened.
1871: British Colombia joined the Confederation of Canada.
1881: Sioux Indian chief Sitting Bull surrendered to US federal troops.
1885: Professional football was legalised by the Football Association.
1890: Gibbons Stamp Monthly began publication.
1914: Armed resistance against British rule began in Ulster.
1917: Finland declared independence from Russia.
1933: Half a million people took part in an anti-semitic march in London.
1938: Finland was awarded the 1940 Olympic Games after Japan withdrew as hosts.
1940: Singles-record charts were first published in America, by Billboard. I’ll Never Smile Again by Tommy Dorsey was the first No 1.
1944: An assassination attempt on Hitler was made by a German staff officer, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, at Rastenberg, East Prussia. He and 1,000 others implicated in the plot were executed.
1945: US flag raised over Berlin as US troops prepared to take part in occupation government.
1951: Jordan’s King Abdullah was assassinated in Jerusalem.
1952: Czech athlete Emil Zatopek set a new Olympic record of 29:17.0 for the 10,000 metres.
1956: Great Britain refused to lend money to Egypt to help build the Aswan Dam.
1957: At a meeting in Bradford, prime minister Harold Macmillan said: “Let’s be frank about it. Most of our people have never had it so good.”
1967: Race riots rook place in Memphis, Tennessee.
1969: Eagle, the lunar module of Apollo 11, landed on the Moon, on the Sea of Tranquillity.
1974: Turkey invaded Cyprus. 1976: Viking 1, the American unmanned spacecraft, touched down on Mars after an 11-month journey and began sending back clear pictures.
1982: IRA bombs killed ten soldiers and seven army horses at Hyde Park and Regents Park, London. Fifty-three were injured.
1989: The government of Burma placed author Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
1994: OJ Simpson offered $500,000 to anyone who could produce evidence to identify his wife’s killer.
2005: Canada legalised samesex marriages, the fourth country in the world to do so.
2012: A gunman opened fire at the premiere of the movie The Dark Knight at a cinema in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring 59 others.