NOW & THEN
608: St Boniface began his reign as catholic pope.
1514: Thomas Wolsey was appointed Archbishop of York.
1595: Edinburgh High School riot, in which John Macmorrane, a bailie, was shot and killed by William Sinclair, one of the pupils occupying the school.
1812: French forces, under Napoleon Bonaparte, reached the Kremlin in Moscow.
1830: The opening of Liverpool and Manchester Railway by the Duke of Wellington was marred by the first railway fatality when William Huskisson, MP, was run down by Stephenson’s locomotive Rocket.
1835: HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, reached the Galapagos Islands.
1870: In the Netherlands, the First Chamber abolished capital punishment.
1882: British General Wolseley occupied Cairo.
1916: Tanks were first used in battle by the British Army at Flers in the Somme offensive.
1917: Russia was proclaimed a republic by Alexander Kerensky.
1923: Governor Walton of Oklahoma declared a state of siege due to a reign of terror by the Ku Klux Klan.
1930: The US team defeated England in the first international bridge match, held in London.
1931: Twelve-thousand Royal Navy sailors on 15 ships in the Atlantic Fleet went on strike at Invergordon in protest over cuts in servicemen’s pay.
1935: Nuremberg laws were set up, under which Jews were outlawed and the Swastika became the flag of Germany.
1938: Prime minister Neville Chamberlain visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden over Czechoslovak crisis.
1940: The Battle of Britain ended with a reported victory for Britain: 1,733 German planes were said to have been destroyed, against 915 declared lost by the RAF.
1949: Konrad Adenauer was elected West German Chancellor.
1960: Traffic wardens were introduced in London.
1972: Former White House aides, Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, were charged with conspiracy over the Watergate break-in.
1978: Muhammad Ali regained the world heavyweight boxing title for a second time, by beating Leon Spinks in New Orleans.
1985: Europe defeated Ameri
ca’s golfers at The Belfry, to win the Ryder Cup.
1992: The European Parliament celebrated its 40th anniversary.
1994: United States warships gathered off the coast of Haiti, as president Bill Clinton warned that the US would invade unless the island’s military rulers quit.
2000: The 27th Olympic Games opened in Sydney, Australia.
2001: Ian Duncan Smith elected leader of the Conservative Party to succeed William Hague.
2008: Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest US investment bank, filed for bankruptcy protection, amid the collapse of the US mortgage market.
2008: The last episode of BBC school drama Grange Hill was broadcast on BBC1. The show had run since 1978.
2013: Japan switched off its last working nuclear reactor.