On this day: Human Genome Project completed

On this day in 2003 scientists declared that the mapping of human DNA under the Human Genome Project was complete. Picture: Getty

1685: Dramatist Thomas Otway, penniless and reduced to begging, received a guinea from a sympathetic passer-by. He rushed off to buy bread, and choked to death on the first bite.

1752: Colin Campbell of Glenure, the “Red Fox”, was shot in Appin. Campbell had been a notorious persecutor of Jacobites after Culloden.

1828: Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language was published.

1865: Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th president, was shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, dying the next day.

1890: Delegates to Washington Conference of American States created what was to become the Pan American Union.

1912: Stuntman Frederick Law jumped from Brooklyn Bridge as part of the action in the famous film adventures of Pearl White.

1914: Driver and fireman of Edinburgh to Aberdeen express were killed in collision with the engine of a goods train at Burntisland station. Twelve passengers were injured.

1929: Monaco Grand Prix was first staged, 78 laps round the narrow streets of Monte Carlo, at an average 49.83mph.

1931: The Highway Code was first issued, as safety guide for pedestrians.

1970: US Apollo 13 spacecraft headed back to Earth after Moon mission that was aborted because of mechanical problems.

1972: First quintuplets in Scotland, born to Linda Bostock, of Armadale, West Lothian.

1983: Cordless telephones went on sale in Britain.

1985: Robin Knox-Johnston and four crew arrived at Plymouth after a record crossing of the Atlantic in catamaran British Airways I, in ten days, 18 minutes and 40 seconds.

1994: US fighter jets shot down two of their own helicopters by mistake over northern Iraq, killing 26 people, including two British officers.

1999: Nato mistakenly bombed a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees – Yugoslav officials said 75 people were killed.

2003: The Human Genome Project is completed, director Francis Collins announces, with 99 per cent of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99 per cent.

2010: More than 2,500 people were killed in a 6.9 earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai, China.

2014: Almost 300 schoolgirls were abducted by the militant group Boko Haram in the village of Chibok in Nigeria. They threatened to sell them as slaves.

BIRTHDAYS

Peter Capaldi, actor, film director, screenwriter, 57; Julie Christie, actress, 75; Ritchie Blackmore, rock guitarist (Deep Purple), 70; Barbara Bonney, soprano, 59; Adrien Brody, actor, 42; Robert Carlyle OBE, Glasgow-born actor, 54; Bradford Dillman, actor, 85; Sarah Michelle Gellar, actress (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), 38; Paddy Hopkirk, rally driver, 82; Julian Lloyd Webber, cellist, 64; Loretta Lynn, country singer, 83; Baroness Warnock DBE, philosopher and writer, 91; Georgina Chapman, fashion designer and actress, 39.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1527 Ortelius, cartographer; 1629 Christian Huygens, Dutch astronomer who invented the pendulum; 1868 Peter Behrens, architect and industrial designer; 1889 Arnold Toynbee, historian; 1904 Sir John Gielgud, actor and director; 1925 Rod Steiger, actor.

Deaths: 1759 George Frederick Handel, composer; 1779 John MacCodrum, Gaelic satirical poet of North Uist; 1986 Simone de Beauvoir, existentialist writer; 1998 Dorothy Squires, singer; 2001 Jim Baxter, footballer; 2013 Sir Colin Davis CBE, conductor and composer.