On this day: Burns Night | Egyptian Revolution

Egyptian demonstrators clash with police in central Cairo on this day in 2011. Picture: Getty

25 January is Burns Night

1533: King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn were secretly married by the Bishop of Lichfield – and become the parents of the future Queen Elizabeth I of England.

1817: First issue of The Scotsman was published by its founders, Charles Maclaren, William Ritchie and John MacDiarmid.

1919: League of Nations was founded.

1924: First Winter Olympics inaugurated at Chamonix in the French Alps.

1944: Battle for Cassino began in Italy.

1968: Great train robber Charles Wilson captured in Montreal three years after escaping from Winson Green Prison.

1971: Idi Amin became president of Uganda, deposing Milton Obote while he was absent abroad.

1971: Charles Manson and others were found guilty of multiple murders in the US.

1981: The Gang of Four – Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and William Rodgers – announced the Limehouse Declaration, which called for a classless crusade for social justice. They were expelled from the Labour Party for forming a Council for Social Democracy.

1986: Voyager 2, sweeping to within 51,000 miles (81,000 kilometres) of Uranus, discovered a tenth ring, and a 15th moon.

1990: Forty-six people died in the worst storms in southern Britain since the hurricane of October, 1987. Gusts of up to 110 mph caused road and rail chaos.

1991: Saddam Hussein unleashed environmental disaster when he ordered the release of millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea from a Kuwaiti storage plant.

1995: Government ministers ordered a rethink of plans to axe most of the Anglo-Scottish night trains.

2003: A group of people left London for Baghdad, Iraq, to serve as human shields to prevent the US-led coalition troops from bombing certain locations.

2004: Opportunity rover landed on the surface of Mars.

2008: Scottish & Newcastle, Britain’s biggest brewer and maker of Newcastle Brown Ale and Fosters, was taken over by Carlsberg and Heineken for £7.8bn.

2011: Revolution began in Egypt, with a series of street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labour strikes and violent clashes in Cairo, Alexandria, and throughout other cities in the country.

2012: First Minister Alex Salmond set out the question he intended to ask voters in a referendum on Scottish independence. He said Scots would be asked: “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?” in a ballot he said would be held in 2014.

BIRTHDAYS

Alicia Keys, singer, 33; Sir Tom Arnold, theatre producer and former MP, 67; Emma Freud, broadcaster, 52; David Ginola, footballer, 47; Christine Lakin, actress, 35; Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel laureate biologist, 65; Tom Paulin, poet, academic and critic, 65; Robinho, Brazilian footballer, 30; Angela Thorne, actress, 75; Xavi, footballer, 34.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1759 Robert Burns, poet, born in Alloway, Ayrshire; 1796 William McGillivray, Old Aberdeen-born naturalist; 1874 W Somerset Maugham, novelist and dramatist; 1882 Virginia Woolf, novelist and playwright; 1938 Etta James, American singer.

Deaths: 1855 Dorothy Wordsworth, writer; 1829 William Shield, composer; 1947 Al Capone, gangster; 1979 Robertson Hare, actor; 1990 Ava Gardner, actress.