NOW & THEN
MAY 12
1679: Reverend James Kirkwood, the father of public libraries in Scotland, became minister of Minto.
1725: The Black Watch was commissioned under General Wade as the Independent Companies to police the Highlands.
1888: Britain established protectorate over North Borneo and Brunei.
1915: Forces of South Africa’s Louis Botha occupied Windhoek, capital of German Southwest Africa.
1926: The General Strike in Britain ended after nine days.
1932: The kidnapped baby son of aviator Charles Lindbergh was found dead.
1935: Alcoholics Anonymous was founded by William Wilson in Ohio.
1937: The Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth took place in Westminster Abbey.
1938: Japanese warships captured Chinese island of Amoy.
1940: First Victoria Crosses awarded to airmen in Second World War went posthumously to Flying Officer Donald Garland (pilot) and Sergeant Thomas Gray (observer) for a successful bombing attack, by 12 Squadron Fairey Battles, on the bridge at Maastricht.
1949: The USSR lifted its blockade of Berlin after 11 months.
1951: The first H-bomb test on Eniwetok Atoll in the mid-pacific proved it was possible to destroy a city more than 100 times the size of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1962: South African General Law Amendment Bill imposed death penalty for sabotage.
1965: West Germany established diplomatic relations with Israel, and Arab states broke off relations with Bonn government.
1969: The voting age in Britain was lowered to 18.
1982: The QE2 sailed to join the Falklands Task Force.
1988: World Health Organisation said more than 34,000 Aids cases had been reported worldwide.
1990: At a Baltic summit, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania revived a 1934 political alliance, hoping a united front would crack Soviet resistance to the republics’ attempts to break away from the Soviet Union.
1990: A 1,000-tonne oil slick leaked from the Liberian tanker Rose Bay, which was in collision with a trawler in the Channel.
1991: In Monte Carlo, Ayrton Senna won his fourth successive Grand Prix.
1992: The Queen made her first speech to the European parliament in Strasbourg.
2003: Clare Short, international development secretary, quit the Cabinet and accused prime minister, Tony Blair, of endangering Labour’s achievements with “obsessive” pursuit of a place in history.
2009: The number of people out of work in the UK rose 244,000 to 2.22 million in the first three months of the year – biggest quarterly rise since 1981.
2009: A rare blue diamond sold for a record 10.5million Swiss francs (£6.2million) at auction in Geneva. At 7.03 carats, it was smaller than a penny piece.
Burt Bacharach, US pianist and composer,92; Gabrielbyrne, Irish actor, 70; Bruce Boxleitner, US actor, 70; Andrew Coltart, Dumfries-born golfer, 50; Emilio Estevez, actor, 58; Susan Hampshire OBE, British actress, 83; Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, QC and broadcaster, 70; Dame Jenni Murray DBE, British broadcaster, 70; Lord Patten, MP 1979-92, governor of Hong Kong 1992-7, 76; Dr Miriam Stoppard, OBE, British author, 83; Dame Joan Stringer DBE, ex-principal and vice-chancellor, Napier University, 72; Catherine Tate, British actress, 52; Steve Winwood, British rock singer, 72
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1820 Florence Nightingale, the “Lady with the Lamp” in the Crimea, hospital and nursing reformer; 1828 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet and painter; 1903 Wilfrid Hyde White, actor; 1912 Katharine Hepburn, actress; Tony Hancock, comedian; 1942 Ian Dury, pop singer, songwriter and actor. Deaths: 1957 Erich von Stroheim, silent films director; 11994 John Smith, Labour Party leader 1992-4; 2001 Perry Como, singer; 2001 Simon Raven, author; 2018 Baroness Jowell DBE, Labour MP 1992-2015.