On this day: Strathnaver Clearances | Michael Jackson acquitted

Michael Jackson leaves court with his mother Katherine after being acquitted of child abuse charges on this day in 2005. Picture: AP

13 JUNE

1381: Wat Tyler led the first popular rebellion – against unpopular taxes – in English history. It has become known as the Peasants’ Revolt.

1496: Act for compulsory education in Scotland was passed.

1819: The Strathnaver Clearances began on the Sutherland estates. Families were given about half-an-hour to remove belongings before their cottages were set ablaze.

1842: Queen Victoria, accompanied by Prince Albert, travelled from Slough to Paddington on the Great Western Railway, becoming the first British monarch to use such transport.

1866: Black civil rights were first enshrined in the United States Constitution with passing of the 14th Amendment.

1900: The Boxer Rebellion began in China – an uprising by a secret society dedicated to the removal of foreign influence.

1911: Stravinsky’s Petrushka was premiered.

1917: First German daylight air raid on London killed 162 and injured 432 people.

1930: Al Capone was arrested in Miami on a perjury charge.

1944: The first V-1 flying bomb, Hitler’s “secret weapon,” hit a house in Southampton, killing three people.

1951: Princess Elizabeth laid the foundation stone of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank.

1956: Real Madrid won the first European Cup final, beating Reims 4-3 in Paris.

1969: Withdrawal of United States combat troops from South Vietnam began with pullout of unit fighting in Mekong Delta.

1975: Inflation in Britain reached 25 per cent.

1977: The Commission for Racial Equality was established.

1981: Blanks were fired at The Queen as she rode to the Trooping the Colour ceremony. Marcus Sarjeant, 17, was held and later charged with treason.

1990: The official demolition of the Berlin Wall began.

1997: A controversial £100 million plan for an 70-shop mall under the length of Princes Street, Edinburgh, was unveiled.

2000: Italy pardoned Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.

2005: A jury in Santa Maria, California acquitted pop singer Michael Jackson of molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo at his Neverland Ranch.

BIRTHDAYS

Alan Hansen, footballer and television pundit, 58; Tim Allen, actor, 60; Mark Bosnich, footballer, 39; Kathy Burke, British actress, 49; Kat Dennings, American actress, 27; David Gray, British singer, 45; Gwynne Howell, Welsh opera singer, 75; Lord King of Bridgwater, defence secretary 1989-92, 80; Malcolm McDowell, British film actor, 70; Kym Marsh, British actress and pop singer (ex-Hear’Say), 37; Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, American actresses, 27; Peter Scudamore, champion jockey and commentator, 55; Ally Sheedy, American actress, 51; Andreas Whittam Smith CBE, founder, Independent newspaper, and chairman, Board of Film Classification 1998-2002, 76.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1831 James Clerk Maxwell, physicist; 1865 William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and playwright; 1893 Dorothy L Sayers, writer, creator of amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey; 1910 Mary Whitehouse, television campaigner.

Deaths: 323BC Alexander the Great, aged 32; 1986 Benny Goodman, clarinettist known as the King of Swing; 1998 Reg Smythe, cartoonist (“Andy Capp”).