On this day: Human Genome Project completed
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.
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Hide Ad1752: 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.
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Hide Ad1970: 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
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Hide AdPeter 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.