NOW & THEN
1298: Battle of Falkirk, in which English troops under King Edward I defeated the Scots under Sir William Wallace.
1484: Scottish forces led by James III of Scotland defeated a 500-man raiding party led by his brother, Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany and James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas.
1793: Alexander Mackenzie, Lewis-born explorer, reached Pacific “from Canada by land” – first crossing of North America.
1812: The Battle of Salamanca took place in west Spain, a Duke of Wellington victory over the French in the Peninsular War. 1913: Edinburgh Zoo opened. 1921: Truce agreed between Sinn Fein forces fighting for Irish independence and British government.
1934: “Public enemy No 1” John Dillinger was fatally wounded by FBI agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre.
1940: Dutch prime minister Dirk Jan de Geer met with Adolf Hitler seeking a separate peace deal with Germany. Having stated that the war could never be won, he was ousted from office by Queen Wilhelmina.
1950: King Leopold returned to Belgium after six years in exile.
1962: The first US Venus probe, Mariner I, failed at lift-off.
1963: Sonny Liston knocked out Floyd Patterson in the first round to win the world heavyweight title.
1965: Edward Heath succeeded Alec Douglas-home as leader of the Conservative Party.
1968: Israeli airliner bound for Israel from Rome with 48 people on board was hijacked and diverted to Algeria.
1969: Singer Aretha Franklin was arrested in Detroit for disturbing the peace.
1971: Last United States infantry units were pulled out of South Vietnam’s northern border area.
1973: Soviet space probe began six-month journey towards Mars.
1984: Seve Ballesteros scored 276 to win the Open Championship at St Andrews.
1986: House of Commons voted for the abolition of corporal punishment in state schools.
1990: More than 800 young people were arrested at an “acid house” party in Yorkshire.
1991: John Major introduced his Citizen’s Charter, its 70 proposals including British Rail privatisation, an end to Post Office monopoly and other ideas to improve the standards and accountability of public services.
1993: John Major was defeated in the Commons as more than a dozen Tory rebels voted against him over the Maastricht Treaty.
2003: Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, died in a shootout with American troops in Mosul, northern Iraq.
2005: Jean Charles de Menezes shot dead by police in London after they mistakenly thought he was a suicide bomber.
2008: Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted men, was arrested in Serbia after more than a decade on the run.
2011: Norway suffered a twin terror attack, when a car bomb exploded in Oslos, followed by a gun massacare at a youth camp on the nearby island of Utoya. Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik was convicted after admitting both attacks.