On this day: Scottish Trades Union Congress founded | Slave trade in Britain abolished

Annunciation Day, the old legal New Year until 1599

Lady Day

National day of Greece

1306: Robert de Brus, Earl of Carrick and Lord of Annandale, was crowned King of Scots at Scone by the Countess of Buchan.

1807: Slave trade in Britain abolished.

1810: The Commercial Bank of Scotland was officially founded in Edinburgh by John Pitcairn, Lord Cockburn and others.

1815: Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia formed new alliance against Napoleon Bonaparte to maintain established order in Europe.

1821: Greek patriots began revolt against domination of Ottoman empire, an uprising that lasted 12 years and won Greek independence.

1876: First Scotland versus Wales football international was played in Glasgow: Scotland won 4-0.

1897: The Scottish Trades Union Congress was founded.

1936: The United States, Britain and France signed London Naval Convention.

1940: The Mosquito, Britain’s two-seater fighter bomber, made its maiden flight.

1949: Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet won five Oscars – the first British film to win an Academy award.

1957: Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed Treaty of Rome and established the European Economic Community.

1974: The Mousetrap moved after 8,862 performances to St Martin’s Theatre, London.

1975: Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal was assassinated in palace in Riyadh by nephew with history of mental illness. Faisal’s brother, Crown Prince Khaled, succeeded to throne.

1980: Doctor Robert Runcie enthroned as the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury.

1982: Former Labour deputy leader Roy Jenkins took traditional Conservative seat at Glasgow Hillhead for the SDP in a sensational by-election victory.

1989: The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race had two women as coxes for the first time in its 135 years. Oxford won.

1992: Aldershot Football Club collapsed with debts of £1.2 million – the first Football League club to fold during a season since Accrington Stanley in 1962.

1993: Barbara Harmer, 39, became civil aviation’s first female supersonic pilot when she flew as first officer on Concorde.

1994: Five members of a British Army climbing expedition, missing for four weeks in the jungles of Borneo, were found alive.

1996: The European Union’s Veterinarian Committee banned the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease.

BIRTHDAYS

John Jeffrey, rugby player and broadcaster, 54; Humphrey Burton CBE, writer and broadcaster, 82; Robert Fox, theatre, film and television producer, 61; Aretha Franklin, soul singer, 71; Paul Michael Glaser, actor (Starsky and Hutch) 70; Sir Elton John, singer and songwriter, 66; Richard O’Brien, actor and writer (Rocky Horror Show), 71; Sarah Jessica Parker, actress (Sex and the City), 48.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1906 AJP Taylor, historian and broadcaster; 1908 Sir David Lean, film director; 1914 Denis Peploe, artist; 1915 Dorothy Squires, singer.

Deaths: 1902 Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald, crofter’s son who rose through ranks of Gordon Highlanders and became known as “Fighting Mac” for his war exploits; 1918 Claude Debussy, composer; 2002 Kenneth Wolstenholme, football commentator.