NOW & THEN
6 JULY
1560: Scotland and England signed the Treaty of Edinburgh, which formally ended the Siege of Leith and replaced the Auld Alliance with France with a new Anglo-scottish accord.
1685: King James II defeated the Duke of Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the final battle in the Monmouth Rebellion.
1699: Dundee-born pirate Captain William Kidd was captured in Boston, USA. He was hanged at Tilbury on the River Thames in 1701.
1776: The American Declaration of Independence was announced on the front page of the PA Evening Gazette.
1875: Institute of Bankers in Scotland formed – the first such body in the world.
1885: Louis Pasteur successfully treated a subject with antirabies vaccine.
1917: TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) captured the port of Aqaba from the Turks.
1919: The first transatlantic flight by an airship, from East Fortune, East Lothian to Mineola, New York took 108 hours.
1923: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed.
1934: Britain’s Fred Perry defeated Jack Crawford 6-3, 6-0, 7-5 to win the Wimbledon men’s singles title.
1942: Ann Frank’s family went into hiding in Amsterdam.
1945: Nicaragua became the first country to ratify the Charter of the United Nations.
1946: The Young Conservatives’ political organisation was founded.
1947: The AK47 assault rifle went into production in the Soviet Union.
1950: The frontier between East Germany and Poland was declared to be the Oder-neisse Line.
1957: John Lennon and Paul Mccartney met for the first time when Lennon’s pop group, the Quarrymen, performed at a church dinner.
1964: Malawi, formerly Nyasaland, became an independent state within the Commonwealth, having been a British protectorate since 1891.
1964: The Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night, premiered at the Pavilion Theatre in London.
1967: Civil war began in Nigeria, with fighting between federal troops and men from Biafra province.
1968: Billie Jean King became
Wimbledon Women’s Singles champion in the first year of open tennis.
1988: 167 workers died in the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion in the North Sea.
1989: Time and date digits were in sequence at 01.23.45 6-7-89. It would not happen again for 100 years.
1989: Collett’s bookshop in Charing Cross Road, London, was fire-bombed in protest at the sale of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.
1991: United Nations nuclear inspection team arrived in Iraq to test president Saddam Hussein’s promise of full co-operation, while the second team witnessed destruction of Iraq’s last known long-range missiles.
2006: The Nathula Pass between India and China, sealed during the Sino-indian War, reopened for trade after 44 years.
BIRTHDAYS
Dalai Lama, exiled Tibetan leader, 86; George W Bush, 43rd US president (2001-9), 75; Nanci Griffith, US singer, 68; John Makepeace OBE, British designer, 82; Lady Mary Peters DBE, Olympic pentathlon champion, 82; Sir Jonathon Porritt CBE, 2nd Baronet, British environmentalist and writer, 71; Geoffrey Rush, Australian actor, 70; Jennifer Saunders, British actress and writer, 63; Eva Green, actress, 41; 50 Cent, US rapper, 46; Sylvester Stallone, actor, 75; Kate Nash, British singer-songwriter, 34;Valerie Brisco-hooks, triple Olympic gold medal-winning athlete, 61;
ANNIVERSARIES
Births:1921 Nancy Reagan, actress, former US First Lady; 1925 Bill Haley, US rock’n’roll musician; 1927 Janet Leigh, actress; 1936 Dave Allen, Irish comedian; 1939 Jet Harris, MBE, musician (The Shadows); 1947 Richard Beckinsale, actor. Deaths: 1971 Louis Armstrong, jazz trumpeter and singer; 1998 Roy Rogers, US singer and cowboy actor; 2003 Kathleen Raine, poet; 2003 Buddy Ebsen, US actor; 2006 Tom Weir MBE, Scottish climber, author and broadcaster (Weir’s Way); 2020 Ennio Morricone, composer.