NOW & THEN
16 JULY
AD622: Traditional starting day of the Islamic Era, when a persecuted Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina.
1328: David II, the son of Robert the Bruce, married Joan, the sister of Edward III. He was four years old, she was seven.
1429: Joan of Arc and the French army marched into Reims.
1439: Kissing was banned in England to prevent the spread of germs.
1661: Europe’s first banknotes were issued by the Bank of Stockholm.
1809: The city of La Paz, Bolivia, declared independence from the Spanish crown and formed the first independent government in South America.
1832: Thirty-one Shetland “sixerns”, with a total of 105 crewmen, were lost in a storm. It is still remembered as “The Bad Day”.
1918: Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family were executed by a Bolshevik firing squad at Ekaterinburg, Siberia.
1920: China joined the League of Nations.
1926: National Geographic took its first natural-colour undersea photographs.
1945: First atomic bomb was exploded over the desert in New Mexico, United States, during the Second World War, heralding the start of the atomic age.
1950: Uruguay defeated Brazil 2-1 to win the football World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, before an estimated attendance of 210,000, a record attendance for a sporting event.
1956: The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, promoted as “The Greatest Show on Earth”, gave its last performance under a canvas tent.
1965: The seven-mile Mont Blanc road tunnel was opened, linking France with Italy.
1969: US Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, with Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins, to attempt the first manned landing on Moon.
1970: The ninth Commonwealth Games opened in Edinburgh.
1979: Saddam Hussein succeeded president Al-bakr as president of Iraq.
1980 Ronald Reagan was nominated as US presidential candidate by Republicans in Detroit.
1983: Twenty people were killed in Britain’s worst helicopter disaster when a Sikorsky-s61 came
down off the Isles of Scilly.
1991: British Airways chairman Lord King stopped his annual £40,000 donation to the Conservative Party, saying government policy had harmed the airline.
1994: A fragment of the Shoemaker-levy 9 comet caused a mark the size of the Earth when it collided with the planet Jupiter at 138,000mph.
1994: The Three Tenors – Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras – performed together in Los Angeles.
1996: Relatives of the 16 children killed in the Dunblane massacre appealed for tough gun controls when they met MPS at Westminster at the start of a campaign for early legislation.
2009: US space agency Nasa admitted it had deleted the only high-resolution images of the first moonwalk in 1969.
BIRTHDAYS
Stewart Copeland, US rock musician (the Police), 69; Phoebe Cates, US actress, 58; Michael Flatley, American step dancer and dance impresario, 63; Shirley Hughes CBE, author and illustrator of books for young children, 94; Miguel Indurain, five-times Tour de France winner, 57; Sir James Loy Macmillan CBE, Scottish composer, 62; Gareth Bale, Welsh international footballer, 32; Adam Scott, Australian golfer, 41; Margaret Court MBE, former Wimbledon tennis champion, 79; Sergio Busquets, Spanish footballer, 33; Dennis Priestley, English darts player, 71.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1872 Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer; 1901 Fritz Mahler, composer; 1911 Ginger Rogers, US actress; 1907 Barbara Stanwyck, US actress; 1941 Desmond Dekker, Jamaican reggae singer-songwriter.
Deaths: 1999 John F Kennedy Jr, American lawyer, journalist and magazine publisher; 2003 Carol Shields, novelist (The Stone Diaries); 2008 Jo Stafford, singer; 2012 Jon Lord, musician (Deep Purple, Whitesnake Flower Pot Men); 2017 George Romero, film director (Night of the Living Dead).