NOW & THEN
APRIL 13
1668: John Dryden was appointed the first Poet Laureate and remained in the role for 31 years.
1741: The Royal Military Academy was established at Woolwich. It is now at Sandhurst.
1742: First performance of Handel’s Messiah, which he wrote in three weeks, in Dublin.
1829: The Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in Britain.
1868: British forces, under Sir Robert Napier, took Magdala, Abyssinia.
1891: Chilean vessel Blanco Encalada became the first warship to be sunk by a torpedo.
1912: The Royal Flying Corps was instituted by Royal Charter.
1919: The Amritsar massacre took place in the Punjab, in which Brig-gen Reginald Dyer’s troops shot 380 demonstrators and wounded more than 1,200.
1935: The London to Australia airline service was inaugurated by Imperial Airways and Qantas. It cost £195 for the 12-day journey to Brisbane.
1936: In his debut for Luton Town against Bristol Rovers, Joe Payne scored ten goals.
1937: British aircraft carrier Ark Royal was launched from Birkenhead.
1951: The Stone of Destiny, removed from beneath the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey on the previous Christmas Eve by Scottish nationalists, was returned to Westminster after being found at Arbroath Abbey.
1970: An explosion blew a faulty oxygen tank on Apollo 13 on a Moon mission, leaving the crew short of air and fuel and 205,000 miles from base. They transferred to the tiny lunar module and had just enough power to get back to Earth’s atmosphere.
1975: Fighting broke out between Muslims and Christians in Beirut, Lebanon.
1980: Severiano Ballesteros became the youngest winner of the Masters, in Augusta, United States, four days after his 23rd birthday.
1992: Neil Kinnock followed his general election defeat by stepping down as Labour leader.
1992: The Great Chicago Flood occurred.
1997: Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win the Masters tournament.
2008: Children’s television presenter Mark Speight, who had gone missing a week earlier, was found dead near London’s Paddington Station.
2009: Record producer Phil Spector was found guilty of second degree murder over the 2003 shooting of Lana Clarkson in his home in California.
2009: Citi Field baseball park, in the New York City borough of Queens, opened to almost 44,000 people in a game lost by the New York Mets 6-5 to the San Diego Padres.
2011: It was revealed that actress Catherine Zeta-jones had been treated for manic depression over the stress of her husband Michael Douglas’s battle against cancer.
2014: The seaside city of Valparaiso in Chile was declared a catastrophe zone and 10,000 people were evacuated after a raging hilltop fire, which rained hot ash over entire neighbourhoods, killed at least 16 people and destroyed more than 500 homes.
BIRTHDAYS
Lou Bega, singer, 46; Peabo Bryson, American singer, 70; Stephen Byers, former Labour MP, 68; Peter Davison, British actor, 70; Andy Goram, Scottish footballer and cricketer, 57; Al Green, American soul singer, 75; Maurice Johnston, footballer, 58; Garry Kasparov, Russian former world chess champion, 58; Jonjo O’neill, ex-jockey and racehorse trainer, 69; Rick Schroder, American actor, 51; Christopher Strauli, British actor, 75; John Swinney, MSP, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for education and skills, 57; Marjorie Yates, British actress (Shameless), 80.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1892 Sir Arthur Harris, wartime bomber commander; 1911 Emilio Coia, Scotsman cartoonist; 1922 John Braine, novelist; 1924 Stanley Donen, US director; 1939 Seamus Heaney, Irish poet; 1941 Dame Margaret Price, opera singer; 1949 Frank Doran, MP.
Deaths: 2001 Jimmy Logan, entertainer 2004 Caron Keating, TV presenter; 2006 Dame Muriel Spark, novelist; 2015 Ronnie Carroll, singer; 2015 Günter Grass, German novelist and poet; 2018 Miloš Forman, Czech-american film director.