NOW & THEN
13 OCTOBER
AD54: Roman emperor Claudius I died after eating poisoned mushrooms as a result of a plot inspired by his wife, Agrippina. He was succeeded by Nero.
1501: Maximilian of Austria and Louis XII of France signed the Treaty of Trente.
1659: General John Lambert drove out the English Rump parliament.
1775: The first US Navy was formed.
1812: At the Battle of Queenston Heights, British forces defeated US forces attempting to invade Canada.
1870: Ten-year-old Gustav Mahler gave his first public piano concert.
1884: Greenwich was adopted as the universal time meridian of longitude from which standard times throughout the world are calculated.
1924: Ramsay Macdonald made the first election broadcast on the BBC, on behalf of the Labour Party.
1924: Mecca fell without a struggle to Saudi forces led by Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia.
1943: Italy declared war on Germany – its former Axis partner.
1950: The movie All About Eve, starring Bette Davis, premiered. It would win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1951.
1952: Egypt reached agreement with Sudan on Nile waters.
1963: The term “Beatlemania” was coined when the Beatles performed at the London Palladium.
1969: Soviet Union sent a third spacecraft into orbit in as many days. At that point there were seven cosmonauts in space.
1972: The bank rate was abolished, to be called instead the minimum lending rate.
1988: The Queen sued the Sun newspaper for breach of copyright after it printed one of her private photographs.
1988: The government’s long legal battle to prevent any mention in the British media of Spycatcher, the memoirs of the former MI5 officer Peter Wright, failed when the House of Lords ruled unanimously against it.
1992: A political storm erupted as British Coal announced it was closing 27 pits, mothballing three others and cutting 30,000 jobs.
1993: More than 400 English football hooligans were arrested in Rotterdam as England lost 2-0 to Holland.
1994: Peace moved a step closer in Northern Ireland as Loyalist paramilitary groups followed the IRA and announced a ceasefire.
1996: Damon Hill became world motor racing champion when he won the Japanese Grand Prix. His late father, Graham, had won the title in 1962 and 1968.
1999: The United States Senate rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-test Ban Treaty.
2008: The government announced it was to pump billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into three British banks in one of the country’s biggest nationalisations. Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS were to have a total of £37 billion injected into them.
2010: The Copiapó mining accident in Chile came to an end, as all 33 miners arrived at the surface after surviving for 69 days.
BIRTHDAYS
Edwina Currie, former MP 1983-97 and novelist, 75; Pippa Guard, Edinburgh-born actress, 69; Robert Lamm, musician, singer-songwriter (Chicago), 77; David Haye, heavyweight world boxing champion, 41; Nana Mouskouri, singer, 87; Marie Osmond, pop singer, screenwriter and actress, 62; Paul Simon, singer and composer, 80; Ian Thorpe, Olympic swimmer, 39; Kate Walsh, actress, 54; Sammy Hagar, musician (Van Halen), 74; Michael R Clifford, astronaut, 69; Desmond Wilson, actor and author, 75; Paul Potts, singer, 51; Beverly Johnson, supermodel, 69; Chris Farlowe, singer, 81.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1713 Allan Ramsey, Edinburgh-born artist; 1797 William Motherwell, Glasgow-born poet, antiquarian and journalist; 1853 Lillie Langtry, actress and mistress of Edward VII; 1862 Mary Kingsley, scientific writer and explorer; 1925 Baroness Thatcher, prime minister 1979-90; 1925 Lenny Bruce, comedia. Deaths: 1812 Major-general Sir Isaac Brock KB, hero of 1812 war against USA; 1822 Canova, sculptor; 1905 Sir Henry Irving, first actor to receive a knighthood; 2016 Dario Fo, Italian playwright, actor and Nobel laureate.