Now & Then
◆ 15 APRIL
1638: English settlers arrived at what is now New Haven, Connecticut, in the United States. 1755: Doctor Samuel Johnson’s dictionary was published, containing 40,000 words.
1793: £5 notes were first issued by the Bank of England.
1811: Chang and Eng Bunker, the most famous Siamese twins, were born, joined together at the breastbone. They married two sisters and between them produced 21 children.
1845: Building of the new House of Lords was completed, after the fire of 1834. It was designed by Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. 1912: The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank with the loss of 1,513 passengers and crew on her maiden voyage. There were 732 survivors.
1923: Insulin, discovered by Sir Frederick Banting, JRR Macleod and Charles H Best, was made available for general use by diabetics.
1929: Sir James Barrie donated the copyright fee of his story Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.
1942: The island of Malta was awarded the George Cross for its heroism during German and Italian bombardment.
1955: The world’s largest hamburger chain, Mcdonald’s, was founded in Chicago by Ray Kroc, using the motto “Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value”.
1961: England defeated Scotland 9-3 at Wembley in a record-scoring football match between the countries.
1974: Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, 19, was kidnapped in California by members of the leftist Symbionese Liberation Army. She gained worldwide notoriety when she was filmed by a security camera brandishing an assault rifle and assisting her kidnappers in a robbery. She was later jailed for seven years but was freed after two by president Jimmy Carter and later pardoned by president Bill Clinton.
1982: Five Muslim fundamentalists were executed in Egypt for the assassination of president Anwar Sadat.
1989: Ninety-six supporters were crushed to death and 200 injured in Britain’s worst football disaster, at Hillsborough, Sheffield, at the start of an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. 1991: The 12 foreign ministers of the European Community agreed to lift the sanctions on South Africa imposed five years earlier.
2010: All flights in and out of the UK and several other European countries were suspended because of ash in the air caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Up to 4,000 flights were cancelled. 2013: During the Boston Marathon, two pressure cooker bombs exploded near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 180 others. 2014: Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was ordered by a Milan court to carry out a year of community service in an old people’s home as punishment for tax fraud.
2019: The 850-year-old Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was devastated by fire, most likely caused by an electrical fault during renovation work. The blaze, which raged for more than 12 hours, destroyed its spire and roof, but spared its twin medieval bell towers.
◆ BIRTHDAYS
Lord Archer of Weston-supermare, author, 84; Claudia Cardinale, Italian actress, 86; Dave Edmunds, Welsh rock guitarist, 80; Samantha Fox, British model and singer, 57; Ed O’brien, British rock guitarist (Radiohead), 56; Seth Rogen, Canadian actor and writer, 42; Dame Emma Thompson DBE, British actress, 65; Michael Tucci, American actor, 78; Marty Wilde MBE, 1960s rock star and composer, 86; Emma Watson, British actress, 34.
◆ ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1452 Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist; 1707 Leonhard Euler, mathematician; 1894 Bessie Smith, blues singer; 1901 Joe Davis, billiards and snooker champion; 1924 Rikki Fulton, actor and entertainer.
Deaths:1865 Abraham Lincoln, 16th United States president (assassinated); 1888 Matthew Arnold, poet and educationist; 1925 John Singer Sargent, portrait painter; 1980 Jean-paul Sartre, philosopher and novelist; 1982 Arthur Lowe, actor; 1984 Tommy Cooper, comedian; 1990 Greta Garbo, actress.