NOW & THEN
29 FEBRUARY
1528: Patrick Hamilton, student of Paris, Louvain, St Andrews, Marburg, Abbot of Fearn, burned at St Andrews for heresy, the first Reformation martyr in Scotland.
1832: New Grenada, in South America, proclaimed constitution providing for republic form of government.
1872: Young revolutionary attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria.
1880: The cutting of the ninemile St Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland was completed – the work of engineer Louis Favre – linking the Swiss and Italian railways.
1892: Britain and United States signed treaty on Bering Sea seal fishery.
1892: World première of Brandon Thomas’s farce Charley’s Aunt in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
1916: German order for sinking armed merchantmen at sight went into effect in First World War.
1920: Czechoslovak Constitution was adopted.
1928: United States Colonel Harry L Stimson arrived in Manila to take over as Governorgeneral of Philippines.
1932: Britain abandoned free trade after nearly a century as the Import Duties Act imposed tariff of 10 per cent.
1944: American troops invaded the Admiralty Islands in Pacific.
1948: Stern Gang mined rail track north of Rehoboth and derailed the Cairo-to-haifa train, killing 27 British soldiers and injuring 35.
1952: Edgar Faure’s ministry fell in France, and Antoine Pinay formed cabinet.
1956: Pakistan became an Islamic republic.
1960: Hugh Hefner opened his first Playboy Club in Chicago, introducing the Bunny girls, scantily-clad waitresses dressed as fur-tailed bunnies.
1960: The Moroccan port of Agadir was devastated by an earthquake which left 12,000 dead.
1968: The discovery of the first “pulsar” (pulsating radio source) was announced by Doctor Jocelyn Burnell of Cambridge.
1984: John Francome rode his 1,000th National Hunt winner at Worcester, the second jockey to do so after Stan Mellor.
1988: At the Xvth Winter Olympics at Calgary, the Soviet Union topped the medals table with
11 golds, nine silvers and nine bronzes.
1988: Lisa Dluchik of Swindon celebrated her first birthday – she had been born in 1984. Her mother was also born on this day, in 1956, so she officially celebrated her eighth birthday. The odds of a mother and daughter sharing a Leap Year birthday are estimated at two million to one.
1992: One woman was injured when an IRA bomb exploded outside the offices of the Crown Prosecution Service in High Holborn, London.
1996: Faucett Flight 251 crashed in the Andes, killing 123 people.
2004: Jean-bertrand Aristide was removed as president of Haiti following a coup.
2012: James Murdoch stepped down as executive chairman of News International to focus on international business.
2012: North Korea agreed to suspend uranium enrichment, as well as nuclear and long-range missile tests, in return for food aid from the United States.