Now & Then
MAY 18
1642: Montreal in Canada was founded.
1736: Witchcraft statutes were repealed in England.
1804: Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of the French. 1830: Edwin Budding, of Stroud, Gloucestershire signed an agreement for the manufacture of his invention, the lawn mower. The first customer was Regent’s Park Zoo, London.
1843: The Disruption, when more than 400 ministers and many elders left the Established Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland.
1882: The fourth Eddystone Lighthouse was opened.
1912: First automatic telephone exchange opened in Britain at Epsom.
1921: The first reconnaissance party on Mount Everest began operations, led by Colonel Howard Bury.
1936: Jasmine Bligh and Elizabeth Cowell became the BBC’S first women announcers.
1944: Monte Cassino Monastery in Italy was taken from Germans by Polish troops after bitter fighting. 1953: Jacqueline Cochrane, piloting a North American F-86 Sabre, became the first woman to fly faster than sound.
1955: The first Wimpy Bar opened in London, beginning the fast-food invasion.
1960: Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 at Hampden Park, Glasgow, to win the European Cup for the fifth year in succession. 1967: United Nations agreed to Egyptian demand to withdraw UN forces from Gaza Strip.
1969: Apollo 10 was launched with Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan.
1972: Four bomb-disposal experts parachuted into Atlantic from RAF plane and boarded liner QE2 after bomb threat for ransom.
1974: India exploded its first nuclear bomb.
1980: Mount St Helens volcano in the American state of Washington, erupted, killing 57 people and creating a cloud of ash 2,500 miles long and 1,000 miles wide.
1982: Rev Sun Myung Moon, Unification Church founder, was found guilty of income tax fraud. 1990: A treaty was signed in Bonn to introduce economic and monetary union between East and West Germany from 1 July, 1990. 1991: Helen Sharman became Britain’s first woman in space when she was sent into orbit aboard Soyuz spacecraft to spend a week on space station Mir.
1992: An inquest jury returned “unlawful killing” verdicts on nine British soldiers killed by American “friendly fire” in the Gulf War. 1993: The Danes reversed their previous rejection of the Maastricht Treaty, 56.8 per cent voting in favour of it in a second referendum.
2006: The post-loktantra Andolan government passed a landmark bill curtailing the power of the monarchy and making Nepal a secular country.
2009: The LTTE were defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides.
2014: Around 300 landslides triggered by unprecedented rain, causing the Balkan regions worst flooding since records began, killed more than 30 people and caused more than 10,000 to flee their homes in Bosnia
BIRTHDAYS
Holly Aird, British actress, 55; John Higgins MBE, Scottish snooker champion, 49; Professor Malcolm Longair CBE, Professor of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge, Astronomer Royal for Scotland 1980-90, 83; Miriam Margolyes OBE, British actress, 83; Rick Wakeman, British rock musician (Yes) and composer, 75; Toyah Willcox, singer and actress, 66; Chow Yun-fat, actor, 69; Jessica Watson, Australian round-theworld yachtswoman, 31.