On this day: St Andrews university | Clive of India | Clay beats Liston

Events, anniversaries and birthdays for 25 February

25 FEBRUARY

1412: Bishop Henry Wardlaw formally incorporated masters and students at the centre of higher education at St Andrews as a “university”, although it was not officially inaugurated until 4 February, 1414, when Pope Benedict XIII’s Bull of Foundation was promulgated.

1570: Queen Elizabeth I of England was excommunicated by Pope Pius V.

1760: Robert Clive left India to return to England.

1791: Bank of United States founded.

1862: Greenbacks, American bank notes, were first issued during the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln.

1932: Adolf Hitler, who was born in Austria, was granted German citizenship.

1948: Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.

1955: HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s largest aircraft carrier, was completed.

1956: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev went before Communist Party congress in Moscow and denounced late dictator Joseph Stalin.

1958: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was set up under the presidency of Lord Russell.

1964: Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) won the world heavyweight boxing championship, when Sonny Liston retired in the seventh round.

1972: Miners voted to accept new pay deal, thus lifting threat of continuing power cuts for the country.

1976: United States vetoed United Nations resolution deploring Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem.

1982: European Court of Human Rights ruled that British parents could refuse to allow children to be beaten at school.

1986: Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos resigned, brought down by a “people’s power” uprising, military revolt, and American pressure.

1990: Lithuanian elections gave Sajudis, popular front seeking independence from USSR, first 72 out of 90 seats.

1991: Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved after 36 years at a meeting in Budapest.

1993: ICI and British Gas announced they were cutting more than 7,000 jobs.

1994: A Jewish settler shot dead 43 Palestinians at a mosque in Israel’s West Bank.

2009: A Turkish Airlines plane crashed on landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol international airport, killing nine people and injuring more than 80.

2009: Conservative leader David Cameron’s eldest son Ivan died in hospital. The six-year-old, who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy, had required round-the-clock care.

BIRTHDAYS

Sir Tom Courtenay, actor, 76; Ed Balls, Labour MP and shadow chancellor, 46; Elkie Brooks, singer, 67; Lord Gill, Lord Justice-Clerk, 71; Lord Puttnam CBE, film producer, 72; James William Stuart Whitemore Sempill, 21st Lord Sempill, 64; Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, principal and vice-chancellor, Edinburgh University 1994-2002, president, Royal Society of Edinburgh 2002-05, 72.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1841 Pierre Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist painter; 1845 Sir George Reid, Scots-born Australian statesman; 1914 John Arlott, poet, cricket writer and commentator; 1917 1943 George Harrison, Beatle, composer and film producer.

Deaths: 1601 Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex (executed for treason); 1723 Sir Christopher Wren, architect; 1805 William Buchan, Scots-born author of medical book Domestic Medicine.