NOW & THEN
10 FEBRUARY
1306: Stabbing of the Red Comyn by Robert the Bruce in Greyfriars’ Church, Dumfries.
1355: St Scholastica’s Day riots in Oxford lasted for three days after six university men were slain in pub quarrel.
1495: A bull from Pope Alexander VI confirmed the foundation of the University of Aberdeen.
1495: Sir William Stanley, King Henry VII’S Lord Chamberlain, was executed.
1763: France ceded Canada to Britain as Treaty of Paris was signed, ending French and Indian War.
1794: The 4th Duke of Gordon was authorised to raise the Gordon Highlanders.
1828: Simon Bolivar, South American revolutionary, became ruler of Colombia.
1840: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married in the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace. Both were aged 20.
1846: British forces under Hugh Gough defeated Sikhs at Sobrahan, India.
1863: Tom Thumb, of Barnum’s circus, married. He was 2ft 11in and his bride Lavinia was three inches shorter.
1913: A relief party found the bodies of Captain Scott and two companions in a snow-covered tent in the Antarctic wastes.
1942: The first “gold” disc was presented to Glenn Miller, for Chattanooga Choo Choo.
1944: Pay As You Earn income tax was introduced.
1955: MPS voted by a majority of 31 to keep the death penalty.
1964: A magistrate declared the book Fanny Hill obscene, and ordered the confiscation of all copies.
1969: United States, Britain and France rejected restrictions on travel to West Berlin, and reminded Soviets of their responsibility to ensure free access.
1972: Rockall was formally incorporated into Scotland. The uninhabited rock, about 290 miles out in the Atlantic, had been annexed by a boarding party from HMS Vidal in 1955.
1989: Pregnant and sick people warned not to eat soft cheese because of the danger of listeria bacteria.
1996: The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov for the first time.
1998: Voters in Maine repealed a gay rights law passed in 1997 to become the first US state to abandon such a law.
2003: France and Belgium broke the Nato procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq.
2005: North Korea announced that it possessed nuclear weapons.
2009: The former bosses of RBS and HBOS – the two biggest UK casualties of the banking crisis – apologised “profoundly and unreservedly” for their banks’ failure.
2009: United States and Russian communications satellites collided in space in the first such reported accident. A satellite owned by the American company Iridium hit a defunct Russian satellite at high speed 485 miles over Siberia, Nasa said.
BIRTHDAYS
Michael Apted, British film director, 79; Laura Dern, US actress, 53; Roberta Flack, US rock singer, 83; Keeley Hawes, English actress, 44; Greg Norman, Australian golfer, 65; Peter Purves, British TV presenter, 81; Gail Rebuck, Baroness Rebuck, DBE, British publisher, 68; Mark Spitz, US Olympic swimming champion, 70; Billy Thomson, Scottish football goalkeeper and coach, 62; Holly Willoughby, English TV presenter, 39; Boris Avrukh, chess grandmaster, 42
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1890 Boris Pasternak, Soviet author; 1893 Jimmy “Schnozzle” Durante, US comic; 1894 Harold Macmillan, first Earl of Stockton, prime minister 195763; 1898 Bertolt Brecht, German playwright; 1910 Joyce Grenfell, actress and comedienne; 1914 Larry Adler, musician and writer; 1940 Hamish Imlach, folk singer.
Deaths: 1837 Alexander Pushkin, Soviet novelist; 1868 Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope; 1912 Lord Lister, surgeon and pioneer of antiseptic surgery; 1923 Wilhelm von Röntgen, German physicist who discovered X-rays; 2005 Arthur Miller, playwright; 2014 Shirley Temple Black, US child film star and diplomat.