On this day: Glasgow whisky warehouse fire

On this day in 1960, 19 firemen and salvage workers died in the bonded whisky warehouse fire in Glasgows Cheapside Street

1642: The Scots Guards were commissioned.

1800: Act of Union with Britain passed in Ireland’s parliament.

1854: Britain declared (Crimean) war on Russia.

1910: The first seaplane, designed by Henri Fabre of France, had its maiden flight near Marseilles.

1912: Women’s Enfranchisement Bill was defeated by 14 votes on its second reading.

1917: The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was founded in Britain.

1930: Constantinople changed its name to Istanbul, and Angora to Ankara.

1939: Madrid’s surrender to General Francisco Franco ended Spanish Civil War.

1955: The lowest cricket Test score was recorded – 26 by New Zealand against England at Eden Park, Auckland.

1960: Nineteen Glasgow firemen and salvage workers died when walls of Cheapside whisky bond blew out soon after they started fighting a blaze which later spread to a tobacco warehouse, an ice cream factory and Harland & Wolff’s engine works.

1964: Radio Caroline began transmissions from a ship in the North Sea.

1977: Breakfast TV in Britain started as an experiment on Yorkshire TV.

1979: Radiation leak at Three Mile Island nuclear station, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States.

1989: Syrian gunners and Christian army units duelled with artillery and rockets in and around Beirut.

1989: In the USSR’s first democratic party elections, many Communist candidates chosen by the government were ousted.

1990: Five people were arrested in British-American operation at Heathrow, to stop export of 40 nuclear trigger devices for Iraq.

1991: Patricia Scotland, 35, was appointed Britain’s first black woman Queen’s Counsel.

1995: Tom Hanks won Best Actor Oscar for Forrest Gump, thereby becoming the first actor since Spencer Tracy in 1937-38 to win in successive years.

2003: A British soldier was killed in a “friendly fire” incident in Iraq when the tank he was in was attacked by American jets.

2005: The 2005 Sumatran earthquake rocked Indonesia. At magnitude 8.7, it was the second strongest earthquake since 1965.

BIRTHDAYS

Lady Gaga, singer/songwriter, 28; Rosemary Ashe, soprano, 61; Laurie Brett, Scottish actress, 45; Sir Richard Eyre CBE, theatre, film and television director, 71; John Fogerty, musician (Creedence Clearwater Revival), 69; Professor Peter Hennessy, historian, 67; Nasser Hussein, former England cricket captain, 46; Lord Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party 1983-92, 72; Mike Newell, film director, 72; Sir Michael Parkinson, broadcaster, 79; Julia Stiles, actress, 33; Richard Stilgoe OBE, entertainer and lyricist, 71; Lacey Turner, British soap actress (EastEnders), 26; Dianne Wiest, actress, 66.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1515 St Teresa of Avila; 1483 Raphael, painter; 1820 Sir William Howard Russell, war correspondent; 1868 Maxim Gorky, novelist; 1902 Dame Flora Robson, actress; 1921 Sir Dirk Bogarde, actor and author.

Deaths: 1881 Modest Mussorgsky, composer; 1941 Virginia Woolf, writer (suicide); 1943 Sergei Rakhmaninov, composer and piano virtuoso; 1969 Dwight D Eisenhower (Ike), army commander and 34th United States president; 1985 Marc Chagall, painter.