NOW & THEN
14 AUGUST
1040: King Duncan I was slain by his cousin, Macbeth, who succeeded him, in battle at Bothnagowan, near Elgin.
1561: Mary, Queen of Scots, set sail from Calais for Scotland.
1592: Falkland Islands were discovered by Captain John Davis, washed ashore amid storms in his ship, The Desire.
1816: Tristan da Cunha was annexed to Great Britain.
1867: Ally Sloper, Victorian Britain’s most popular comic strip, made its debut.
1880: Cologne Cathedral was completed, having been started in 1248.
1893: France became the first country to introduce motor vehicle registration plates.
1900: Capture of Peking after the landing of 2,000 United States Marines brought the end of the Boxer Uprising.
1901: Seventy people died when the steamer Islander struck an iceberg and sank off Alaska. She was carrying $3 million in gold.
1908: The first international beauty contest in Britain was held, at the Pier Hippodrome in Folkestone, Kent.
1915: German submarine sank the British transport ship Royal Edward in the Aegean Sea, with the loss of 1,000 lives.
1932: Rin Tin Tin, famous Hollywood star dog, died.
1944: The ballpoint was invented by Laslo Biro, a Hungarian refugee in Argentina.
1945: Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, ending Second World War. VJ Day was officially celebrated on the following day. The formal surrender took place aboard USS Missouri on 2 September.
1948: Don Bradman played his last innings at The Oval. After a standing ovation, he was bowled for a duck by Eric Hollies.
1962: Mont Blanc tunnel link was completed as workmen digging from French and Italian sides made contact.
1964: University of Strathclyde was constituted. It was formerly the Royal College of Science and Technology, created by the bequest by John Anderson in 1796 of the Technical Institution he had founded in Glasgow.
1967: Radio London, the pirate station, went off the air. The Marine Broadcasting Act came into force next day outlawing pirate stations.
1979: The longest lasting rainbow on record shone over North Wales from the coast of Gwynedd to Clywd, remaining for more than three hours.
1990: The world’s first car-carrying catamaran, Hoverspeed Great Britain, made its maiden commercial voyage crossing the Channel from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. The journey took two-and-a-half hours, half the normal car ferry sailing time.
1991: Frank Dunlop, the Edinburgh Festival’s director, attacked Fringe events as “a third-rate circus”.
1994: 400,000 rock fans attended Woodstock, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the famous festival.
2008: The last surviving female veteran of the First World War died. Gladys Powers, from Lewisham, south London, who served with the Women’s Auxiliary Corps and later the Women’s RAF, died aged 109 in British Columbia, Canada.