NOW & THEN
MAY9
1671: Colonel Thomas Blood, an Irish adventurer better known as Captain Blood, tried to steal the crown jewels.
1788: Britain passed parliamentary motion for abolishing slave trade.
1901: Australia’s first federal parliament met in Melbourne.
1911: The Great Lafayette, illusionist, nine members of his company, a lion and a horse were burned to death on stage at the Empire Palace Theatre, Edinburgh. An illusion went wrong and scenery was set alight, but the safety curtain was lowered and the audience escaped.
1918: John Maclean, schoolmaster, labour leader and first Soviet Consul in Britain, tried in the High Court in Edinburgh for sedition.
1927: The Duke of York (later King George VI) opened Australian Parliament House in Canberra, which replaced Melbourne as capital.
1930: John Masefield was appointed Poet Laureate.
1932: Piccadilly Circus, London, was first lit by electricity.
1933: Hitler ordered the burning of more than 25,000 books; “un-german” books were thrown on to a mighty bonfire outside Berlin University.
1949: The first self-service launderette was opened in Britain, in Queensway, London.
1955: West Germany was admitted as a member of Nato.
1957: A blaze at Bell’s Brae, Edinburgh, destroyed the threestorey premises of William Mutrie & Sons, one of Britain’s biggest theatrical costumiers; about 90,000 costumes were lost.
1967: India’s vice-president Zakir Hussain was named president of India, becoming the first Muslim to hold that office.
1974: Impeachment proceedings began in United States against president Richard Nixon.
1978: Bullet-riddled body of Italy’s former prime minister Aldo Moro was found in parked car in central Rome, 54 days after his abduction.
1991: English Heritage and National Trust unveiled £10 million plan for 1,400-acre archaeological park around Stonehenge involving road closure and development of military land.
1992: The first of nine IRA firebombs was found at the Metrocentre shopping complex in Gateshead.
2001: In Ghana 129 football fans died in what became known as the Accra Sports Stadium Disaster. The deaths are caused by a stampede (caused by the firing of tear gas by police personnel at the stadium) that followed a controversial decision by the referee.
2002: The 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem came to an end when the Palestinians inside agreed to have 13 suspected terrorists among them deported to several different countries.
2004: Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov was killed in a land mine bomb blast under a VIP stage during a Second World War memorial victory parade in Grozny, Chechnya.
2010: Scientists revealed that laboratory mice display humanlike facial expressions when they are in pain.
Births: 1800 John Brown, antislavery crusader; 1860 Sir James M Barrie, playwright and novelist (Kirriemuir); 1870 Harry Vardon, golfer; 1873 Howard Carter, Egyptologist who discovered tomb of Tutankhamun; 1874 Lilian Baylis, theatre manager; 1920 Richard Adams, British author (Watership Down); 1930 Joan Sims, actress; 1936 Albert Finney, British actor.
Deaths: 1492: Lorenzo the Magnificent, Medici ruler of Florence; 1850 Joseph Gaylussac, chemist and physicist; 986 Sherpa Tensing Norgay, mountaineer who, on 29 May, 1953 reached the summit of Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hilary; 2012 Vidal Sassoon CBE, hairdresser; 2014 Mary Stewart (Lady Stewart), novelist.