NOW & THEN
17 AUGUST
1472: The see of St Andrews was made an archbishopric by bull of Pope Sixtus IV.
1560: The Confession of the Faith and Doctrine, believed and professed by the Protestants of Scotland, was approved by parliament, establishing the Reformation.
1648: The Battle of Preston began after the Duke of Hamilton led an army of 20,000 into England in support of Charles I. They were defeated by Cromwell – 2,000 were killed, 8,000 captured. Hamilton surrendered on 25 August and was beheaded in March 1649.
1807: Work commenced on building the Bell Rock Lighthouse.
1822: King George IV began a visit to Edinburgh, co-ordinated by Sir Walter Scott.
1836: HMS Beagle, with charles Darwin on board, left South America for the last time.
1859: The first air mail (in a balloon) took off from Lafayette, Indiana.
1869: Oxford defeated Harvard in the first international boat race on the River Thames.
1891: The electric self-starter for motor vehicles was patented.
1901: The Royal Titles Act added the words “and the British Dominions beyond the Seas” to the monarch’s title.
1903: Joe Pulitzer donated $1 million to Columbia University and began the Pulitzer Prizes.
1938: Henry Armstrong won the lightweight boxing title, and became the only man in the ring’s history to hold three world titles at different weights at the same time.
1940: Adolf Hitler ordered a total blockade of Great Britain.
1943: General Patton entered Messina, completing the conquest of Sicily by the Allies.
1946: George Orwell’s Animal Farm was published in the UK.
1960: American pilot Francis Gary Powers was convicted of spying, sentenced to three years of imprisonment and seven years of hard labour by the USSR, over the U-2 incident.
1966: The satellite Pioneer 7 was launched into solar orbit.
1978: The first transatlantic balloon crossing was completed in five days by three Americans when the huge black-and-silver balloon Double Eagle II landed in Normandy, France.
1979: The movie Monty Python’s Life of Brian was released.
1980: Two-month-old Azaria Chamberlain disappeared during a family camping trip in Australia. Although her mother Lindy was convicted of her murder and spent three years in prison, it was later confirmed that the baby, whose remains have never been found, had been taken by a dingo.
1982: The first compact discs were released to the public in West Germany.
1988: Pakistan president Muhammad Zia-il-haq and US ambassador Arnold Raphael were killed in a plane crash.
1998: US president Bill Clinton admitted in taped testimony that he had an “improper physical relationship” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
1999: A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Izmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 and injuring 44,000.