On this day: 227 died in Quintinshill train crash

Events, birthdays and anniversaries for 22 May
On this day in 1915, 227 people died when three trains were involved in a collision at Quintinshill, near Gretna Green. Picture: GettyOn this day in 1915, 227 people died when three trains were involved in a collision at Quintinshill, near Gretna Green. Picture: Getty
On this day in 1915, 227 people died when three trains were involved in a collision at Quintinshill, near Gretna Green. Picture: Getty

1455: In the War of the Roses, the Lancastrians defeated the Yorkists at the Battle of St Albans.

1891: The first motion picture show in public was given to 147 members of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, visiting Thomas Edison’s laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey.

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1897: London’s Blackwall Tunnel under the Thames was officially opened by the Prince of Wales.

1906: Wilbur Wright patented his aeroplane.

1914: Britain acquired control of oil properties in Persian Gulf from Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

1915: 227 died in a train disaster at Quintinshill, near Gretna Green. A troop train, carrying the Seventh Royal Scots from Leith to Liverpool, hit a stationary local train and the night express from Euston then ploughed into the wreckage. Two signalmen were later jailed.

1918: German planes raided Paris.

1921: Paavo Nurmi, athletics legend, broke the world 10,000 metre record by 18 seconds.

1923: Stanley Baldwin began the first of his three terms as Conservative Prime Minister.

1939: Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini signed “Pact of Steel,” a ten-year political and military alliance.

1944: Battle of Anzio started.

1946: Karl Hermann Frank, Nazi ruler in Czechoslovakia, was hanged in Prague for ordering the massacre of 82 children taken from the Czech village of Lidice on 10 June, 1942 after it was destroyed and all 196 men over 16 shot dead in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. All the women were sent to concentration camps.

1962: A team of American climbers reached the summit of Mount Everest having climbed what was thought to be the impassable Western Ridge.

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1970: The English cricket tour of South Africa was cancelled as a protest at apartheid policy.

1972: Ceylon became the Republic of Sri Lanka within the Commonwealth.

1972: Richard Nixon arrived in Moscow, the first visit of a US President.

1975: Rhodesia was expelled from Olympic competition because of its racial policies.

1981: Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe jailed for life for attacks on women, including 13 murders and seven assaults.

1989: India test-fired successfully its first medium-range surface-to-surface missile to cross threshold of ballistic missile capability.

1990: North and South Yemen merged.

1991: Importation to Britain of American pit bull terriers and Japanese tosas was banned in clampdown on aggressive dogs.

1993: Britain’s inflation rate fell to 1.3 per cent – the lowest since 1964.

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1995: An SFA tribunal ordered Celtic owner Fergus McCann to pay Kilmarnock £200,000 for taking Tommy Burns and Billy Stark from Rugby Park to be his club’s management team.

2003: Annika Sörenstam became the first woman to play the PGA Tour in 58 years.

2011: A tornado struck the US city of Joplin, Missouri, killing more than 150 people. It was the single deadliest US tornado since modern records began in 1950.

BIRTHDAYS

Morrissey, singer, 55; Charles Aznavour, singer, 90; Richard Benjamin, actor, 76; Cheryl Campbell, actress, 65; Sir Menzies Campbell, QC, MP, leader, Liberal Democratic Party 2006-7, and former athlete, 73; Naomi Campbell, model, 44; Ann Cusack, actress, 53; Novak Djokovic, Serbian tennis champion, 27; Alison Eastwood, actress and designer, 42; Anthony Holden, journalist and broadcaster, 67; Howard Kendall, football manager, 68; Katie Price (Jordan), model and television star, 36; Bernie Taupin, songwriter, 64; Denise Welch, actress and television presenter, 56; Dale Winton, broadcaster, 59.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1783 William Sturgeon, scientist who built first practical electromagnet; 1813 Richard Wagner, composer; 1849 Sir Aston Webb, architect; 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edinburgh-born novelist and creator of Sherlock Holmes; 1874 Daniel Malan, South African politician responsible for country’s apartheid policy; 1880 Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, mining magnate, philanthropist; 1907 Lord Olivier, actor; 1922 Len Shackleton, footballer; 1930 Kenny Ball, jazz trumpeter; 1938 Susan Strasberg, actress; 1946 George Best, footballer.

Deaths: AD312 Constantine the Great, Roman emperor; 1849 Maria Edgeworth, novelist; 1885 Victor Hugo, poet and novelist; 1925 Sir John French, commander of British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium; 1939 Ernst Toller, revolutionary, playwright and poet (suicide); 1972 Cecil Day Lewis, Poet Laureate 1967-1972; 1972 Dame Margaret Rutherford, actress; 1990 Max Wall, actor and comedian; 1993 Denis Peploe, artist; 1998 John Derek, film producer and actor.