On this day: Mary Queen of Scots married Dauphin of France | First printed book published in Gaelic

1558: Mary Queen of Scots married the Dauphin of France. She was 16.

1567: First printed book published in Gaelic, a prayer book, translated from English by Bishop John Carswell of the Isles.

1633: Privy Council gave warrant to Sir John Hepburn to raise regiment of 1,200 men. The corps ultimately became the First Regiment of Foot, The Royal Scots.

1792: La Marseillaise was composed by Claude Rouget de l’Isle, a captain of engineers in exchange for a bottle of wine.

1800: The United States Library of Congress, the largest in the world, was founded on Capitol Hill in Washington DC.

1898: Spain declared war on United States after receiving US ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.

1900: The Daily Express, founded by C Arthur Pearson, was first published.

1916: Republican insurrection known as the Easter Rising occurred in Dublin on Easter Monday.

1927: English Table Tennis Association was formed.

1963: Wedding of Princess Alexandra to Angus Ogilvy.

1967: Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when parachute straps of his spacecraft became tangled during landing.

1970: China launched its first satellite.

1986: Pre-dawn bomb blast damaged British Airways office and other stores in Lumley Street, off Oxford Street, London.

1990: United States space shuttle Discovery launched with giant Hubble telescope on board.

1993: An IRA bomb devastated a huge area of the City of London. One man was killed.

1995: The government agreed to the first face-to-face meeting for more than 20 years to discuss peace in Northern Ireland.

1996: Janet Johnston became the first legally sanctioned person granted the first right-to-die in Scotland.

2004: The United States lifted economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

2005: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was inaugurated as Pope Benedict XVI.

2011: More than 470 inmates escaped from prison in southern Afghanistan

BIRTHDAYS

Gabby Logan, TV presenter, 40; Jean-Paul Gaultier, fashion designer, 61; Chris Kelly, British broadcaster, writer and producer, 73; Shirley Maclaine, American actress, 79; Karen Murden, British actress, 43; Michael O’Keefe, American actor, 58; Bridget Riley CBE, British artist, 82; Peter Spence, British screenwriter and journalist, 69; Barbra Streisand, singer and actress, 71; Sachin Tendulkar, Indian Test cricketer, 40; John Williams, Australian classical guitarist, 72.

NNIVERSARIES

Births: 1815 Anthony Trollope, novelist and inventor of pillar box; 1825 RM Ballantyne, Edinburgh-born novelist; 1882 Lord Dowding, RAF commander in Battle of Britain; 1889 Sir Stafford Cripps, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer; 1906 William Joyce (alias Lord Haw-Haw), traitor and Nazi collaborator; 1924 Sir Clement Freud, writer, broadcaster, MP 1973-1987;

Deaths: 1731 Daniel Defoe, author; 1942 Lucy Montgomery, Canadian novelist (Anne of Green Gables); 1974 Bud Abbott, straight man of the Abbott and Costello comedy duo 1986 Duchess of Windsor (Wallis Simpson), wife of the former King Edward VIII.