Now & Then
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MAY 14
1610: François Ravaillac, a fanatic, assassinated France’s King Henry IV, who was succeeded by Louis XIII, aged nine.
1660: Charles II proclaimed restored king at Edinburgh.
1754: The Society of St Andrews Golfers was constituted, and became (in 1834) the Royal and Ancient Golf Club.
1791: British under Lord Cornwallis overthrew Tippoo of Mysore at Seringapatam in India.
1796: Edward Jenner made his first vaccination against smallpox, and laid the foundation for modern immunology.
1912: The Royal Flying Corps was established.
1921: The British Legion was founded by Earl Haig. It became the Royal British Legion in 1971. 1940: Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War, broadcast an appeal to all men between 17 and 60 who could hold a rifle to enrol as Local Defence Volunteers (later called Home Guard) to oppose landings in Britain by German parachute troops. Some 400,000 joined in the first week.
1948: British mandate in Palestine ended, and an independent Jewish state of Israel was established with Chaim Weizmann as president and David Ben-gurion as premier; Arab Legion of Transjordan invaded Palestine and entered Jerusalem. 1951: New law removed Coloured (mixed race) people from voting registers in South Africa.
1964: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev opened Aswan Dam in Egypt.
1965: The Queen unveiled a memorial to the late president John F Kennedy at Runnymede. 1973: America’s Skylab I was launched, returning to Earth on 11 July, 1979, after 34,981 orbits, where it disintegrated on impact with the atmosphere.
1977: Soviet newspaper Pravda warned the West that any aid to China eventually would be used to start world conflict.
1988: Iraqi warplanes attacked and set ablaze five ships at an offshore oil-loading terminal belonging to Iran.
1989: Archaeologists and actors protested as bulldozers prepared to cover the remains of the Rose Theatre, London, where Shakespeare’s first plays were said to have been performed. 1990: Gordon Wilson quit as leader of Scottish National Party. 1990: Tens of thousands marched in Paris in protest against desecration of 34 Jewish graves in southern France.
1992: Police investigated largescale thefts from a Bank of England depot where worn-out bank notes are destroyed.
2004: The Constitutional Court of South Korea overturned the impeachment of president Roh Moo-hyun.
2005: The former USS America, a decommissioned supercarrier of the United States Navy, was deliberately sunk in the Atlantic Ocean after four weeks of live-fire exercises. She was the largest ship ever to be disposed of as a target in a military exercise.
2010: Labour MP Stephen Timms was stabbed in the stomach at his constituency surgery in London. 2014: An Iron Age village and a host of ancient artefacts, including tools and jewellery dating back 9,000 years, were discovered during the construction of the A75 Dunragit bypass in Wigtownshire.
BIRTHDAYS
Natalie Appleton, pop singer (All Saints), 51;Cate Blanchett, actress, 55; Sir Chay Blyth CBE, Scottish round-the-world yachtsman, 84; David Byrne, Dumbarton-born rock singer (Talking Heads), 72; Sofia Coppola, director and producer, 53; George Lucas, film director and producer (Star Wars), 80; Sir George Mathewson CBE, chairman, Royal Bank of Scotland Group 2001-06, 84; Mark Zuckerberg, American internet entrepreneur, co-founder of Facebook, 40.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1686 Gabriel Fahrenheit, physicist and inventor of mercury thermometer; 1727 Thomas Gainsborough, landscape and portrait painter; 11926 Eric Morecambe, comedian; 1943 Jack Bruce, Bishopbriggs-born rock musician (Cream).
Deaths: 1881 Mary Seacole, Jamaican nurse heroine of the Crimea War; 1919 Henry John Heinz, founder of company that bears his name; 1925 Sir Rider Haggard, novelist (King Solomon’s Mines)1998 Frank Sinatra, singer and actor; 2015 BB King, blues singer/guitarist.