NOW & THEN
1568: The trial of Mary, Queen of Scots began at the Conference of York.
1789: During the French Revolution, the women of Paris staged their March to Versailles to confront Louis XVI over his refusal to promulgate the decrees on the abolition of feudalism, demand bread and have the king and his court moved to Paris.
1793: Christianity disestablished in France, making the republic a secular state.
1796: Spain declared war on Britain.
1813: The Americans defeated the British at the Battle of Thames in Canada.
1830: The world’s first bathing costume was put on sale in a shop in London. Made of linen, muslin and light worsted, it covered the wearer from neck to ankles.
1895: The first time trial for racing cyclists was held over a 50-mile course near London.
1900: Golfer Harry Vardon, from Jersey, won the US Open at Wheaton, Illinois. Eight Scottish players finished in the top ten.
1910: In a coup d’etat organised by the Portuguese Republican Party, the country’s constitutional monarchy was overthrown and a republic was established.
1917: Sir Arthur Lee gave his mansion of Chequers in the Chiltern Hills outside London to the nation for use as a country home for British prime ministers.
1927: The Labour Party voted to nationalise coal mines at a party conference in Blackpool.
1930: Lord Thomson declared the R101 “as safe as houses”, as he embarked on the maiden flight from Cardington to India of the world’s biggest airship. Nearing Beauvais in France at 2am, the airship went into a dive, hit a hill and was torn apart by exploding hydrogen. Only six of the 54 crew and passengers survived; Lord Thomson died.
1936: The Jarrow march of unemployed shipyard workers from Jarrow to London began, led by a Labour MP, Ellen Wilkinson.
1954: Britain, US, Italy and Yugoslavia agreed that the Free Territory of Trieste should be divided into Italian and Yugoslav zones.
1962: The Beatles’ first single, Love Me Do, was released.
1969: Monty Python’s Flying Circus debuted o n TV .
1972: The Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of
England combined to form the United Reformed Church.
1974: The IRA Guildford pub bombings, in which five people died and 65 were injured, took place.
1991: Film star Elizabeth Taylor was married for the eighth time, to Larry Fortensky, whom she met at an alcohol clinic.
1995: Irish poet Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1999: The Ladbroke Grove rail crash in London killed 31 people.
2000: Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Yugoslavia, was toppled by a popular uprising.
2001: Robert Stevens became the first victim in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
2010: A major fire destroyed most of Hastings Pier in East Sussex, a day after redevelopment plans were invited.