On this day: Battle of Baugé | French Resistance | Lumière brothers
22 march
The earliest date on which Easter can fall.
1421: Scottish and French troops under the Earl of Buchan defeated English forces at Bauge in Anjou.
1622: About 35 Virginians were killed in first massacre by native people of European colonists in North America.
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Hide Ad1794: United States Congress passed law prohibiting American ships from supplying slaves to other countries.
1888: The Football League was formed at a meeting in Fleet Street, London, with 12 clubs.
1895: Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrated celluloid cinematograph film in Paris.
1917: US became first nation to recognise new provisional government in Russia.
1926: First road markings came into operation at Hyde Park Corner, London. There were seven accidents on first day as drivers tried to follow the painted signals.
1942: Britain began Morse code broadcasts to the French Resistance.
1945: Arab League founded in Cairo.
1946: Jordan became a kingdom independent of British protection.
1964: Anti-Muslim violence broke out in India.
1972: More than 70 people were injured in Belfast when bomb exploded in car park near city’s largest hotel.
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Hide Ad1988: Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze retreated from pledge to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
1990: Vaclav Havel said Czechoslovakia sold tonnes of Semtex explosives to Libya.
1991: UN mission to Iraq found Allied bombing had destroyed power plants, oil refineries and water treatment plants, with “near apocalyptic results”.
1994: People in Strathclyde voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to reject government plans to take water out of local authority control in Scotland.
1997: Tara Lipinski, age 14 years and ten months, became the youngest champion women’s World Figure Skating Champion.
2002: Seven Scottish judges made it illegal for a man to have sex with a woman without her consent.
2006: ETA, the armed Basque separatist group, declared a permanent ceasefire.
2006: Three Christian Peacemaker Team hostages were freed by British forces in Baghdad after 118 days of captivity.
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Hide Ad2009: Mount Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska, began erupting after a prolonged period of unrest.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1599 Sir Anthony van Dyck, artist; 1868 Hamish MacCunn, composer; 1887 Chico Marx, silent film comedian; 1910 Nicholas Monsarrat, author; 1923 Marcel Marceau, mime artist; 1950 Jocky Wilson, Fife-born darts player; 1950 Mary Tamm, actress.
Deaths: 1832 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet; 1896 Thomas Hughes, reformer who wrote Tom Brown’s Schooldays; 1958 Mike Todd, film producer; 2010 Sir James Black, pharmacologist and Nobel prize-winner.
BIRTHDAYS
George Benson, singer and guitarist, 70; Des Browne, defence secretary, 2006-8, 61; Lord (Andrew) Lloyd-Webber, composer, 65; Matthew Modine, actor, 54; Alan Opie, baritone, 68; William Shatner, actor (Star Trek’s Captain Kirk), 82; Stephen Sondheim, songwriter, 83; Leslie Thomas OBE, novelist, 82; Rob Wainwright, former Scotland rugby captain, farmer, 48; Roger Whittaker, Anglo-Kenyan singer and songwriter, 77; Reese Witherspoon, actress, 37