On this day: Weekly pension | Fidel Castro

EVENTS, birthdays and anniversaries for 1 January

Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. Picture: Getty

Ne’erday

National days of Cuba, Sudan and Haiti.

1651: Charles II was crowned King of Scots at Scone. It was the last coronation in Scotland.

1660: Samuel Pepys wrote the first words in his diary, using a system of shorthand. He kept diaries for ten years.

1760: Carron Ironworks near Falkirk was started by Roebuck & Garbett of Birmingham and Cadell of Cockenzie. The small naval guns known as carronades were among the company’s products.

1783: Glasgow Chamber of Commerce was founded, the first in Britain.

1833: Britain proclaimed sovereignty over the Falklands.

1863: American president Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring slaves free.

1904: The first motor vehicle registration number in Britain, A1, was secured for his Napier car by Earl Russell.

1909: Thousands of Britons over 70 went to post offices to draw their first weekly pension of five shillings (25p).

1913: Film censorship came into operation in UK.

1919: Britain’s worst peacetime naval disaster this century happened when the naval yacht Iolaire, carrying 260 Lewis men returning from war service, and 24 crew, struck a reef on approach to Stornoway Harbour at 2am. Within 20 yards of the shore, 205 died as the overloaded vessel foundered.

1923: Most of the Scottish railways merged into the LMS and LNER. The Caledonian Railway followed suit later in the year.

1947: Britain’s coal industry nationalised.

1951: Steel industry nationalised.

1958: The European Economic Community came into being, the Treaty of Rome having been signed on 25 November, 1957, by the Six.

1959: Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba.

1961: Birth control pill was first used in Britain.

1964: The first Top Of The Pops was aired, with Jimmy Savile as its presenter.

1970: The age of majority in Britain was reduced from 21 to 18.

1973: Britain, Ireland and Denmark became EEC members.

1981: Greece became the tenth member of the EEC.

1995: Frederick West, awaiting trial for 12 murders in and near Gloucester, hanged himself in his prison cell in Birmingham.

2011: Estonia officially adopted the euro currency and became the 17th eurozone country.

BIRTHDAYS

Famke Janssen, actress, 49; Alister Campbell, rugby player, 55; Robin Orr Blair, Lord Lyon King of Arms, 74; Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler), funk musician, 56; John Fuller, poet, novelist and critic, 77; Frank Langella, actor, 76; Paul Lawrie, golfer, 45; Sir Albert McQuarrie, MP 1979-87, 96; Ronan Rafferty, golfer, 50.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1735 Paul Revere, American patriot and folk hero of the War of Independence; 1854 Sir James Frazer, Glasgow-born anthropologist; 1879 EM Forster, novelist; 1895 J Edgar Hoover, FBI founder; 1912 Kim Philby, Soviet agent who worked for British Intelligence; 1919 JD Salinger, author; 1925 Idi Amin, Uganda dictator; 1928 Iain Crichton Smith, Glasgow-born poet.

Deaths: 1766 James Stuart, the “Old Pretender” and father of Prince Charles Edward Stuart; 1972 Maurice Chevalier, actor and singer; 1986 L Ron Hubbard, writer and propounder of Scientology; 1996 Hamish Imlach, folk singer.