On this day: Explosion at Cardowan Colliery

On this day in 2000, Bill Clinton became the first US president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam war (1956-1975). Picture: Getty

16 November

1700: James MacPherson, freebooter, was hanged at Banff. The town clock was said to have been advanced to forestall a messenger carrying a reprieve. He was said to have played his fiddle up to the last.

1797: Royal Navy withdrew from the Mediterranean.

1824: Hamilton Hume discovered the Murray River in Australia.

1848: A desperately ill Frederic Chopin made his final appearance at London’s Guildhall, in a charity concert.

1907: Militant suffragettes disrupted a speech by Herbert Asquith, chancellor of the Exchequer, at Nuneaton. Thirty women were carried out and treated so roughly that it brought strong protests from men.

1932: Eleven killed in firedamp explosion at Cardowan Colliery, Lanarkshire.

1937: MPs voted in favour of air raid shelters being erected in towns and cities.

1945: Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) founded.

1959: The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, the Sound of Music, was first performed on Broadway. It ran for 1,443 performances.

1965: The USSR launched Venus III, an unmanned spacecraft that successfully landed on Venus.

1967: In Cyprus, 23 Turkish Cypriots were killed in fighting.

1976: An eight-man gang was jailed for 25 years for robbing deposit boxes at the Bank of America, Mayfair, London, of £8million.

1992: Cambridge, Massachusetts, became first US town to give legal recognition to homosexual couples.

1997: After nearly 18 years of incarceration, the People’s Republic of China released Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy dissident, from jail for medical reasons.

2000: Bill Clinton became the first US president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.

2008: The Iraqi Cabinet approved a pact with the US which paved the way for the withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011.

2012: Labour snatched a seat from the Conservatives in a by-election for the first time in 15 years, taking Corby in Northamptonshire. Andy Sawford won by 7,791 votes, with the Tories second and Ukip third.

BIRTHDAYS

Frank Bruno MBE, former world heavyweight boxing champion, 52; Michael Billington OBE, author and critic, 74; Willie Carson, jockey and racing commentator, 71; Maggie Gyllenhaal, actress, 36; Marg Helgenberger, actress, 55; Professor Malcolm Jeeves CBE, president, Royal Society of Edinburgh 1996-9, Professor of Psychology, St Andrews University 1969-93, 87; Diana Krall, jazz singer and pianist, 49; Griff Rhys Jones, actor, writer and producer, 60; David Wilson-Johnson, bass-baritone, 63; Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub OBE, cardiothoracic surgeon, 78; Professor Michael Zander, QC, Professor of Law, London School of Economics 1977-98, 81.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 42BC Tiberius, Roman emperor; 1811 John Bright, Radical statesman and orator; 1839 William Frend De Morgan, artist, Pre-Raphaelite and novelist; 1896 Sir Oswald Mosley, politician, leader of British Union of Fascists; 1907 Burgess Meredith, actor.,

Deaths: 1093 Margaret, Queen of Malcolm Canmore, who was canonised a saint in the 13th century; 1272 King Henry III; 1960 Clark Gable, actor; 2006 professor Milton Friedman, Nobel-winning monetarist economist.