Now & Then
MAY 15
1567: Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, at Holyroodhouse. 1602: Bartholomew Gosnold, navigator, discovered America’s Cape Cod.
1718: The world’s first machinegun was patented by James Puckle, a London lawyer. A unique refinement was that it fired round bullets for Christians and square bullets for Turks.
1800: George III had two escapes from assassination in one day in London. The first was in Hyde Park when a bullet intended for him hit a man standing alongside, the second was at Drury Lane Theatre when, as the audience cheered him, two bullets missed his head and hit the panel behind. Assailant James Hatfield was found to be insane. 1858: The present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden (the third on the site) was opened.
1903: Edward VII inaugurated the first London electric tram.
1928: The Flying Doctor service began in Queensland, Australia. 1929: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave its first awards in Los Angeles for outstanding achievement by actors, directors, writers, etc. These were later to become known as Oscars.
1936: Amy Johnson arrived in England after a record-breaking 12-day, 15-hour flight from London to Cape Town and back.
1940: Nylon stockings went on sale in America. In the first eight hours, 72,000 pairs were sold in New York City alone.
1940: The Netherlands surrendered to Germany.
1941: Britain’s first jet-propelled aircraft, designed by Frank Whittle, flew for the first time at RAF Cranwell.
1948: New state of Israel was attacked by Egyptian planes and invaded in the north and east by troops from Lebanon and Transjordan.
1957: Britain dropped her first hydrogen bomb over Christmas Island in the South Pacific.
1982: SAS commandos raided Pebble Island base on the edge of Falklands archipelago, destroying Argentine aircraft.
1988: Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency in the war-torn northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigre. 1988: Soviet Union began withdrawing troops from Afghanistan after more than eight years of occupation.
1990: Thousands of Soviet soldiers tried to break into Latvia’s parliament in an antiindependence demonstration. 1991: After a six-year ban for English football in Europe, Manchester United beat Barcelona to win the European Cup Winners Cup.
1991: Edith Cresson became France’s first female prime minister. 1993: Siege at a Paris nursery school ended when commandos shot dead a gunman holding six children and their teacher hostage. 1997: The United States government acknowledged the existence of the “Secret War” in Laos and dedicated the Laos Memorial in honour of Hmong and other “Secret War” veterans. 2008: California became the second US state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalise same-sex marriage after the state’s own Supreme Court ruled a previous ban unconstitutional.