On this day: Vivien Leigh won Best Actress Oscar

On this day in 1940, Vivien Leigh, pictured with Clark Gable, won a Best Actress Oscar for her role in Gone With the Wind. Picture: Getty

St David’s Day – national day of Wales.

1498: Vasco da Gama discovered Mozambique on the south-east African coast.

1682: The Advocates’ Library (since 1925 the National Library of Scotland) opened by its founder, Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate.

1711: The first edition of the Spectator magazine was published.

1780: Pennsylvania became first American state to abolish slavery.

1810: Sweden appointed world’s first Ombudsman, Lars Mannerheim.

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte landed in France, forcing King Louis XVIII to flee.

1912: Suffragettes smashed nearly every shop window in Oxford and Regent Streets, London. More than 120 arrested, including Emmeline Pankhurst.

1932: Charles Lindbergh, 20-month-old son of the famous American aviator, was snatched from the nursery of his home in New Jersey. His body was found four miles away on 12 May. The ransom note was traced to Bruno Hauptmann, who died in the electric chair.

1940: Vivien Leigh won Best Actress Oscar for her role as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind.

1946: The Bank of England passed to public ownership by Act of Parliament.

1947: The International Monetary Fund began operations.

1954: The US tested a hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll.

1961: US president John F Kennedy established the Peace Corps.

1963: John Profumo, secretary of state for war, resigned on the disclosure of his affair with Christine Keeler, said to be the mistress also of a Soviet naval attache.

1974: Seven of president Richard Nixon’s aides were indicted after the Watergate burglary.

1979: Referendum on the Scottish Devolution Bill. Six regions voted for the proposals, six against. The result was: Yes 1,230,937 (32.85 per cent); No 1,153,503 (30.78 per cent). Just over 36 per cent did not vote.

2001: Scotland’s first cases of foot-and-mouth disease for 40 years confirmed in Dumfries and Galloway.

2013: The Liberal Democrats won the Eastleigh by-election, with the UK Independence Party pushing the Conservatives into third place.

BIRTHDAYS

Roger Daltrey CBE, actor and singer (The Who), 70; Catherine Bach, actress, 60; Harry Belafonte, singer and actor, 87; Dirk Benedict, actor, 69; Sir David Broome CBE, showjumper, 74; David Scott Cowper, solo yachtsman, 72; Mike d’Abo, rock singer, 70; Paul Le Guen, French football coach, 50; Ron Howard, director, producer and actor, 60; Nik Kershaw, singer, 56; Rear-Admiral Timothy Laurence, chief executive, Defence Estates, 59; Mike Read, disc jockey, 63; Brian Waites, golfer, 74.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1810 Frédéric Chopin, composer and pianist; 1812 Augustus Pugin, Gothic revival architect; 1896 Oskar Kokoscha, Expressionist artist; 1904 Glenn Miller, band leader; 1910 David Niven, actor; 1922 Michael Flanders, writer and entertainer; 1923 Andrew Faulds, MP and actor.

Deaths: AD625 St Ernan or Ernoc, patron saint of Kilmarnock; 1546: George Wishart, Protestant martyr (burned at the stake at St Andrews); 1912 George Grossmith, singer, actor and co-author of Diary of a Nobody; 1980 William Ralph “Dixie” Dean, footballer.