NOW & THEN
29 JULY
1030: St Olaf, King of Norway, was killed in battle. Several churches in Shetland and Orkney were dedicated to him.
1565: Mary, Queen of Scots, married her cousin Lord Darnley, in the Old Abbey Chapel at Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh.
1567: James VI was crowned King of Scotland at the church of the Holy Rude in Stirling, following the abdication of Mary Queen of Scots five days earlier.
1588: The Spanish Armada was sighted off Cornwall. It was defeated by the English fleet under Howard and Drake, the battle beginning off Plymouth.
1783: Skaptar volcano in Iceland erupted, killing 9,000 people.
1900: Umberto I, King of Italy from 1878, was assassinated at Monza by anarchists.
1907: Sir Robert Baden-powell formed the Boy Scouts.
1914: The first transcontinental phone link was made between New York and San Francisco.
1920: The Mexican rebel Pancho Villa surrendered.
1921: All-india Congress decided to boycott Prince of Wales’s visit to India.
1921: Adolf Hitler was elected president of National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
1928: Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie, the movie in which Mickey and Minnie Mouse made their debuts, was released.
1930: Airship R300 made the first passenger-carrying flight from the UK to Canada.
1943: One million inhabitants of Hamburg fled the city to escape bombing by the Allies.
1945: BBC Light Programme began broadcasting.
1945: Having just delivered the Atomic Bomb across the Pacific, the cruiser USS Indianapolis was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine.
1948: King George VI opened the 14th Olympic Games at Wembley. They were to become known as the wettest ever held.
1949: The BBC televised the first regular weather forecast.
1954: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein, was published in London by George Allen & Unwin.
1965: Princess Margaret attended the premiere of the Beatles movie Help! at the London Pavilion theatre.
1968: Pope Paul VI declared that any artificial form of birth control was prohibited.
1981: The Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer were married at St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
1986: South Africa’s president PW Botha rejected British foreign secretary’s plea for unconditional release of Nelson Mandela.
1988: The South African government banned the antiapartheid film Cry Freedom.
1992: Chris Boardman became the first British cyclist for 84 years to win an individual Olympic gold medal when he won the 4,000 metres pursuit on his revolutionary “superbike” in Barcelona.
2009: A tornado hit Stornoway, causing widespread damage.
2010: A very rare broadsword to commemorate the carrying of Robert the Bruce’s heart on crusade fetched £10,800 at auction. Sally Gunnell OBE, Olympic, world, Commonwealth and European champion athlete and broadcaster, 53; Fernando Alonso, world motor racing champion 2005-6, 38; Stephen Dorff, actor, 46; Joe Johnson, snooker player, 67; Diane Keen, actress, 73; Andi Peters, TV presenter, 49; Nellie Kim, multi gold medal-winning Olympic gymnast, 62; David Warner, British actor, 78;
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1801 George Bradshaw, cartographer, printer and publisher (Bradshaws railway timetables); 1883 Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator; 1905 Dag Hammarskjöld, secretarygeneral of United Nations 19531961; 1913 Lord Grimond, Liberal politician; 1926 Baron Kilpatrick of Kincraig CBE, pharmacologist, president, General Medical Council 1989-1995.
Deaths: 1833 William Wilberforce, anti-slave trade philanthropist; 1856 Robert Schumann, composer; 1890 Vincent Van Gogh, painter; 1970 Sir John Barbirolli, conductor; 1974 ‘Mama Cass’ Elliot, singer (The Mamas and Papas); 1983 David Niven, actor; 2015 Sir Peter O’sullevan KBE, horse racing commentator, journalist.