On this day: Italy invaded Greece

Greek soldiers practice throwing hand grenades after Mussolinis Italy invaded. Picture: Getty

28 OCTOBER

1562: Battle of Corrichie, with defeat and death of the Earl of Huntly in arms against Queen Mary.

1636: Harvard University, named after English-born minister, John Harvard, was founded at Cambridge in Massachusetts.

1880: Doctor Henry Faulds, a Scots medical missionary working in Tokyo, published a letter in Nature which produced the first evidence that fingerprints taken directly from suspected persons and prints left at the scene of a crime could be used as medico-legal proof of guilt or innocence.

1886: The Statue of Liberty was dedicated by president Grover Cleveland as a monument to democracy to mark the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. France paid for the statue, the US for the pedestal.

1893: The Royal Navy’s first destroyer, HMS Havock, went on trials.

1914: George Eastman announced the invention of a colour photograph process to be marketed by his Eastman Kodak Co.

1939: An explosion of coaldust at the Valleyfield Colliery, near Rosyth, Fife, killed 35 miners.

1940: Italy invaded Greece.

1958: The Queen’s speech at the state opening of parliament was televised for the first time.

1962: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev said he had ordered withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.

1965: Parliament passed a bill abolishing the death penalty for murder.

1971: The House of Commons voted in favour of Britain entering the Common Market by a majority of 112.

1988: Prince Charles shocked modern architects by referring to the British Library as looking like an academy for secret police and the National Theatre as resembling a nuclear power station in the middle of London.

1990: General Norman Schwarzkopf gave a warning that the Gulf conflict could be as bloody as Vietnam. A special Soviet envoy failed to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw Iraqi forces peaceably from Kuwait.

2003: The Church of Scotland ended centuries of male domination by appointing Dr Alison Elliot as the first female Moderator of the General Assembly.

BIRTHDAYS

Julia Roberts, actress, 47; Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and philanthropist, 59; Sandy Clark, Scottish football coach and former player, 58; David Dimbleby, broadcaster, 76; Sir Ewen Fergusson, British ambassador to France 1987-92, Scotland rugby player, 82; Matt Smith, actor (Doctor Who), 32; Dame Cleo Laine DBE, singer, 87; Alastair McDonald, Scottish radio and television presenter, folk singer, 73; Dame Joan Ann Plowright, the Baroness Olivier, DBE, actress, 85; Joaquin Phoenix, actor, 40; Charlie Daniels, country music singer and fiddler, 78; Kevin MacDonald, Glasgow-born film director, 47; Hank Marvin, Shadows guitarist, 73; Curtis Lee, singer, 73; Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One chief, 84.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1697 Canaletto, Italian painter; 1794 Robert Liston, Linlithgow-born surgeon, carried out the first operation with the aid of an anaesthetic in Britain; 1925 Ian Hamilton Finlay CBE, Scottish poet, artist and gardener.

Deaths: 1704 John Locke, philosopher; 1840 John Thomson, Edinburgh-born landscape painter; 1910 John Adams-Acton, Brodick-born sculptor;1998 Ted Hughes, author, Poet Laureate 1984-98; 2010 Gerard Kelly, actor.