Now & Then
◆ 12 JUNE
1683: Rye House plot to assassinate King Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, was uncovered.
1837: Sir William Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone patented the first electric telegraph.
1921: Postmen delivered mail on a Sunday for the last time.
1922: Insulin, the treatment for diabetes, was patented by Frederick Banting.
1934: Political parties were banned in Bulgaria.
1937: Purge of Russian generals began.
1940: Japanese planes bombed Chungking, China.
1952: Chris Chataway ran two miles in a record eight minutes, 55.6 seconds. He was to beat this in 1953 with a time of eight minutes, 49.6 seconds.
1965: The Beatles members were each created MBE in the Birthday Honours list.
1979: Bryan Allen, a Californian racing cyclist, pedalled across the Channel from Folkestone to Cap Gris Nez in his craft Gossamer Albatross.
1984: United States secretary of state George P Shultz insisted the US government had hard evidence that Nicaragua was providing war material to rebels in El Salvador. 1987: Central African Republic’s former Emperor Jean-bédel Bokassa was sentenced to death for murder, arbitrary arrest and embezzlement of public funds. 1988: Demonstrations erupted over controversial constitutional amendment making Islam the state religion in Bangladesh.
1989: MPS voted 293 to 69 to allow TV cameras into the House of Commons.
1990: Israel’s new right-wing government vowed to spend more money on new settlements in the Occupied Lands.
1990: Prime minister Margaret Thatcher ruled out a Channel Tunnel rail link subsidy.
1991: Boris Yeltsin crushed Communist rivals in Russia’s first presidential election by taking 60 percent of the vote.
1992: At the Earth Summit in Brazil John Major pledged that Britain would step up efforts to halt global warming and curb population growth.
1994: Labour made sweeping gains from the Conservatives in the
European elections.
1995: Two men in Sussex shared a record National Lottery jackpot of £22.5 million.
2001: Robert Edward Dyer was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment for attempting to extort money from Tesco through a letter bomb campaign.
2007: Jamaican police, in a dramatic about-turn, said the Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer had died from natural causes and was not murdered. When the former England batsman was found unconscious in his hotel bedroom during the World Cup a pathologist’s report said that he had been strangled.
2009: The former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher was said to be “recovering well” in hospital after she fell at home and broke her arm.
2009: Veteran horror star Christopher Lee and golfer Nick Faldo were knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
2016: A gunman killed 49 people and injured 53 others during a shooting spree in Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
◆ BIRTHDAYS
Timothy Busfield, US actor, 66; Mark Calcavecchia, US golfer, 63; John Copley CBE, British opera producer and director, 90; John Ruaridh Grant Mackenzie, 5th Earl of Cromartie, explosives engineer, 75; Pat Jennings OBE, footballer, 78; Sophie Lawrence, British actress, 51; Cathy Tyson, British actress, 58; Bryan Habana, South African rugby union player, 40; Artem Chigvintsev, Strictly dancer, 41; David Narey MBE, Scottish footballer, 67.
◆ ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1819 Charles Kingsley, clergyman and author; 1897 Sir Anthony Eden, Conservative prime minister 1955-57; 1924 George Bush, US president 1989-93; 1928 Vic Damone, US singer; 1929 Anne Frank, diarist of life under the Nazis; 1952 Oliver Knussen CBE, Glasgow-born composer.
Deaths: 1962 John Ireland, composer; 1980 Sir Billy Butlin, holiday camp pioneer; 1982 Dame Marie Rambert, ballet producer and choreographer; 1983 Norma Shearer, actress; 2003 Gregory Peck, film actor; 2006 György Ligeti, composer.