On this day: Burns Night | Egyptian Revolution


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.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad1924: 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.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad1981: 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.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad1995: 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.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad2012: 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.