On this day: Halle Berry wins Oscar for Best Actress
Annunciation Day, the old legal New Year until 1599.
Lady Day.
National day of Greece.
1306: Robert de Brus, Earl of Carrick and Lord of Annandale, was crowned King of Scots at Scone by the Countess of Buchan.
1802: The Treaty of Amiens was signed with France, Spain and Holland, returning most of Britain’s possessions taken during the French Revolutionary Wars.
1807: Slave trade in Britain was abolished.
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Hide Ad1810: The Commercial Bank of Scotland was officially founded in Edinburgh by John Pitcairn, Lord Cockburn and others.
1821: Greek patriots began revolt against domination of Ottoman Empire, an uprising that lasted 12 years and won Greek independence.
1876: First Scotland versus Wales football international was played in Glasgow: Scotland won 4-0.
1897: The Scottish Trades Union Congress was founded.
1925: Greece was formally declared a republic.
1940: The Mosquito, Britain’s two-seater fighter bomber, made its maiden flight.
1941: Yugoslavia joined Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Alliance.
1949: Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet won five Oscars – the first British film to win an Academy award.
1957: Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed Treaty of Rome and established the European Economic Community.
1969: Pakistan’s president, Ayub Khan, turned power over to military after 11 years of leadership.
1975: Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal was assassinated in palace in Riyadh by nephew with history of mental illness. Faisal’s brother, Crown Prince Khaled, succeeded to throne.
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Hide Ad1980: Doctor Robert Runcie enthroned as the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury.
1982: Former Labour deputy leader Roy Jenkins took traditional Conservative seat at Glasgow Hillhead for the SDP in sensational by-election victory.
1987: More than 80 Afghan guerrillas and civilians were killed when Afghan air force jets attacked camps close to Pakistani border.
1989: Heads of Egypt, Jordan and Palestine Liberation Organisation met to co-ordinate Middle East peace strategy.
1989: The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race had two women as coxes for the first time in its 135 years. Oxford won.
1992: Aldershot Football Club collapsed with debts of £1.2 million – the first Football League club to fold during a season since Accrington Stanley in 1962.
1993: The Warrington IRA bomb atrocity claimed a second young victim when 12-year-old Tim Parry died in hospital.
1993: Barbara Harmer, 39, became civil aviation’s first woman supersonic pilot when she flew as first officer on the Concorde.
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Hide Ad1994: Five members of a British Army climbing expedition, missing for four weeks in the jungles of Borneo, were found alive.
1996: The European Union’s Veterinarian Committee banned the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease.
2002: Halle Berry made became the first black woman to win an Oscar – for Best Actress.
2006: A gunman killed six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle’.
2010: Sherlock, a Collie cross-breed, who lived to be Scotland’s oldest dog, died at the age of 21.
BIRTHDAYS
Sarah Jessica Parker, actress, 50; Bonnie Bedelia, A actress, 67; Melanie Blatt, pop singer (All Saints), 40; Humphrey Burton CBE, writer and broadcaster, 84; Marcia Cross, actress (Desperate Housewives), 53; Cathy Dennis, singer and songwriter, 46; Robert Fox, theatre, film and television producer, 62; Aretha Franklin, soul singer, 73; Paul Michael Glaser, actor (Starsky and Hutch) 72; John Jeffrey, Scottish rugby player and broadcaster, 56; Sir Elton John CBE, singer and songwriter, 68; Barry Kyle, theatre director, 68; Alyson Michalka, actress and singer, 26; Richard O’Brien, actor and writer (Rocky Horror Show), 73.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1867 Arturo Toscanini, conductor; 1881 Béla Bartók, composer; 1882 Haydn Wood, composer; 1906 AJP Taylor, historian and broadcaster; 1908 Sir David Lean, film director; 1914 Denis Peploe, artist; 1915 Dorothy Squires, singer; 1929 David Hicks, interior decorator and designer; 1932 Lord Walker of Worcester MBE, MP 1961-92, secretary of state for energy 1983-87.
Deaths: 1902 Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald, crofter’s son who rose through ranks of Gordon Highlanders and became known as “Fighting Mac” for his war exploits; 1904 Frédéric Mistral, poet; 1918 Claude Debussy, composer; 1937 John Drinkwater, poet and playwright; 2002 Kenneth Wolstenholme, football commentator.