25 JANUARY Burns Night in Scotland. 1327: Edward III acceded to the English throne. 1533: The Bishop of Lichfield secretly married King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, the second of his six wives. 1540: Birth of St Edmund Campion, English scholar and the first Jesuit martyr. He went to Rome and returned to England as a missionary. He was accused of spying, and was hanged, drawn and quartered on Tower Hill. He was canonized in 1970. 1627: Birth of the Honourable Robert Boyle, one of the pioneers of modern chemistry and physics. 1759: Birth of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. His birthday is celebrated as ‘Burns Night’ by Scotsmen all over the world. 1874: Birth of William Somerset Maugham, English novelist and short story writer. 1878: The first torpedo was fired in war as a Russian torpedo boat sank a Turkish steamer. 1882: First meeting of the London Chamber of Commerce. 1882: Birth of Virginia Woolf, English novelist who was a leading member of the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. 1891: Birth of English actress and centenarian Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, who died in 1992. 1895: The first hockey international was held at Rhyl, Wales. Wales lost 3-0 to the Irish. 1899: In Chelmsford, England, the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company began manufacture of the first radio sets. 1899: Birth of Paul Henri Spaak, Belgian prime minister, founding father of the EEC, and first president of the UN General Assembly. 1917: The Virgin Islands (formerly the Danish West Indies) were sold to the US for $25 million. 1919: Founding of The League of Nations, forerunner of the United Nations. 1924: Start of the first Winter Olympics at Chamonix, France. 1928: Birth of Eduard Shevardnadze, Soviet foreign minister who brought a new spirit of pragmatism and co-operation to the Soviet Union’s dealings with the West during perestroika. 1938: Intense sunspot activity caused the aurora borealis to be visible as far south as London’s West End and most of western Europe. 1944: Due to the shortage of ordained priests in the Far East towards the end of the Second World War, the Reverend Florence Tim-Oi Lee of Macao became the first Anglican woman priest. 1953: Empress of Canada caught fire in the Liverpool Gladstone Dock. 1950: American Alger Hiss was convicted and sentenced to five years for perjury. He had concealed his membership of the Communist Party, but there was no evidence of him spying against the US. 1955: The USSR proclaimed the end of belligerency with Germany, ten years after the end of World War II. 1971: A period of unprecedented barbarism began as Idi Amin deposed Milton Obote and became President of Uganda. 1981: ‘The Gang of Four’ (Roy Jenkins, Dr David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers) split from the British Labour party to form the Social Democrats. 1981: Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s 67-year-old widow, was dragged shouting from a Peking court after being found guilty of ‘counter-revolutionary’ crimes during the Cultural Revolution. 1985: Bernard Goetz, who shot four black youths trying to mug him in a New York subway, was told he would only face a charge of possessing an illegal weapon. Some considered him a hero, others a criminal. 1989: Actor John Cleese won damages for libel at the High Court over an article in the Daily Mirror, which claimed he had become like Basil Fawlty. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.317 / Virus Database: 176 - Release Date: 22/01/02