NOW & THEN
30 JUNE
1643: Royalists beat the parliamentary armies at the Battle of Atherton Moor.
1837: An act of parliament abolished punishment by pillory.
1859: Charles Blondin made the first crossing of the Niagara Falls on a tightrope, 1,100ft long and 160ft above the falls.
1893: The Excelsior Diamond, tinted blue and white and weighing 995 carats, was discovered at the Jagersfontein Mine in South Africa. At the time, it was the world’s largest-known diamond.
1894: London’s Tower Bridge was opened.
1910: Finland was absorbed as part of Russia.
1914: Mahatma Gandhi was arrested for the first time after campaigning for Indian rights in South Africa.
1934: Hitler’s rival, Ernst Röhm, and hundreds of influential Nazis were murdered by the SS in the Night of the Long Knives.
1936: The German Zeppelin Hindenburg set out on its Atlantic crossing, reaching Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 2 July.
1936: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind was published.
1937: The first emergency telephone service in the world opened in London, using 999.
1957: 128 lives were lost when two airliners – a United DC-7 and a TWA – collided over the Grand Canyon.
1957: The lion was stamped on British eggs for the first time.
1960: Lionel Bart’s musical, Oliver!, based on Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist, opened in London. It ran for 2,618 performances.
1960: Zaire, formerly Belgian Congo, declared independence from Belgium.
1970: Brazil defeated Italy 4-1 in Mexico City to win the World Cup for the third time.
1974: Soviet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Canada, defected to the west.
1980: The sixpence ceased to be legal tender.
1991: Owing to rain, tennis was played on the middle Sunday of the Wimbledon championships for the first time.
1992: Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher joined the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher.
1992: A total solar eclipse, lasting five minutes and 21 seconds, was seen in Uruguay.
1992: South African ANC president Nelson Mandela met with UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-ghali at Dakar.
1994: Argentine football star Diego Maradona was banned from the World Cup after failing a drugs test.
1997: The UK transferred sovereignty over Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China.
2003: MPS voted for a complete ban on hunting in England and Wales.
2007: Britain was on its highest terror alert after a burning car was driven into the passenger terminal at Glasgow Airport, a day after the discovery of two car bombs in the West End of London.
2011: Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers went on strike to protect their pensions.
BIRTHDAYS
Rupert Graves, actor, 57; Tony Hatch, composer, 81; James Loughran CBE, Glasgowborn conductor, 89; Jack Mcconnell, Baron Mcconnell of Glenscorrodale, Scotland’s first minister 2002-7, 60; Andrew Murray, golfer, 64; Mike Tyson, former world heavyweight boxing champion, 54; Michael Phelps, multi Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer, 35; James Martin, TV chef, 48; Gary Pallister, English footballer, 55; Ralf Schumacher, Formula One racing driver, 45; Andy Knowles, drummer/keyboard player (Franz Ferdinand), 39; MJK Smith OBE, England cricket captain, 87
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1891 Sir Stanley Spencer, artist; 1891 Howard Hawks, film director; 1917 Lena Horne, US singer; 1917 Susan Hayward, actress; 1922 Mollie Hunter, Longniddry-born writer; 1930 James Loughran, Glasgow-born conductor.
Deaths: 1973 Nancy Mitford, writer; 1984 Lillian Hellman, US writer; 2005 Christopher Fry, playwright; 2012 Yitzhak Shamir, 7th prime minister of Israel; 2014 Leonard Starr, comic book artist (Little Orphan Annie); 2017 Barry Norman CBE, film critic and broadcaster.
Due to a production error, we ran the 29 July Now & Then yesterday – our apologies