On this day: Diana & Charles divorce | Scottish Parliament

The terms of the divorce of Princess Diana and Prince Charles were revealed on this day in 1996. Picture: Reuters

EVENTS, birthdays and anniversaries for 12 July

Orangemen’s Day in Northern Ireland

1191: Acre captured by the Crusaders.

1543: England’s King Henry VIII married Catherine Parr, his sixth and last wife. She outlived him and married again after his death.

1794: Nelson lost the sight of his right eye during an attempt to reduce the French garrison at Calvi.

1799: Political associations were banned in Britain.

1902: Australia’s parliament gave women the vote.

1920: President Woodrow Wilson opened the Panama Canal.

1925: The first veteran car rally was held, at Munich.

1941: British-Soviet mutual aid pact was signed.

1948: Six RAF De Havilland Vampires of Number 54 Squadron landed in Labrador to become the first jet-powered aircraft to fly across the Atlantic.

1960: France agreed to independence of Dahomey, Niger, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central Africa and the Congo.

1967: Chinese Communist mobs in Hong Kong wrecked government building and attacked police in most violent of four days of anti-British rioting.

1977: United States president Jimmy Carter went on record as favouring development of neutron bomb, which would kill people but not destroy real estate.

1990: Boris Yeltsin resigned from Communist Party during the 28th meeting of the party Congress.

1992: Nigel Mansell won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone to create a British record of 28 Grand Prix victories.

1993: Four journalists working for western news agencies were murdered in Somalia.

1994: A massive terrorist attack was foiled when police found a lorry containing more than two tons of home-made explosives at the port of Heysham, Lancashire.

1996: Buckingham Palace said that the Prince and Princess of Wales had agreed terms for a divorce under which Diana would lose the title HRH.

1999: The new Scottish Parliament met for the first time in its temporary home on The Mound, in Edinburgh.

2007: The Dounreay nuclear plant, at Caithness, was fined £15,000 for health and safety failings.

2010: Police and Orangemen came under attack as a Twelfth of July parade was escorted through a notorious flashpoint in Belfast.

BIRTHDAYS

Annabel Croft, tennis player and television presenter, 47; Roy Barraclough MBE, actor, 78; Leah Bracknell, actress, 49; Bill Cosby, actor and comedian, 76; Anna Friel, actress, 37; Gareth Gates, singer, 29; Cheryl Ladd, actress, 62; Christine McVie (born Christine Perfect), rock singer, 70; Frank Windsor, actor, 86; Guy Woolfenden OBE, composer and conductor, 76.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 100BC Julius Caesar, Roman emperor; 1730 Josiah Wedgwood, pottery designer; 1872 Lord Birkenhead, statesman and law reformer; 1884 Amadeo Modigliani, Italian artist; 1895 Oscar Hammerstein, songwriter and librettist; 1928 Kathy Staff, actress (Norah Batty in Last of the Summer Wine); 1928.

Deaths: 1450 Jack Cade, rebel leader; 1536 Desiderius Erasmus, scholar; 1712 Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector 1658-59; 1850 Robert Stevenson, Edinburgh-born civil engineer; 1910 Charles Rolls, co-founder of Rolls Royce (air crash); 1926 Gertrude Bell, traveller; 1982 Kenneth Moore, actor; 1999 Bill Owen, actor; 2009 Donald MacCormick, broadcaster.