Born on this Day 12th March
1626 John Aubrey
1710 Thomas Arne
1890 Vaslav Nijinsky
1917 Googie Withers
1940 Al Jarreau
1946 Liza Minelli
1948 James Taylor
1956 Steve Harris
1965 Coleen Nolan
1969 Graham Coxon
1975 Kelle Bryan
1979 Pete Doherty
1985 Bradley Wright-Phillips
1986 Danny Jones
1988 Elly Jackson

Died on this Day
1945 Anne Frank
1955 Charlie(Bird) Parker
1999 Lord Yehudi Menuhin

Music

1958 Buddy Holly appeared on stage in Croydon.

1964 Peter & Gordon’s ‘A World Without Love’, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, entered the UK charts.

1964 The Beatles played their first live American show in Washington.

1969 George and Patti Harrison were arrested and charged with possession of 120 marijuana joints at their home.

Sport

1881 Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world’s first black international football player and captain.

1984 Exeter City football club which was bottom of the Third Division appointed chaplain Richard Chewter to take care of the squad’s spiritual well-being. The manager Gerry Francis said “We certainly need all the help from above we can get”.

1988 British chess Grandmaster Nigel Short beat Jan Timman, the Dutch player ranked third in the world, in the Max Euwe memorial tournament in Amsterdam.

1992 Cricket’s World Cup, England beat South Africa by 3 wickets, with New Zealand beating India by 4 wickets to becaome only the second team in the tournament’s history to win a clear 6 games in a row.

People & Showbiz

1969 Paul McCartney married US photographer Linda Eastman.

1986 The fattest cat in the world, the 46lb(21.3kg) Himmy, died at the age of 10 years 4 months. The cat, a local celebrity in Queensland, Australia, had a 33 inch(84cm) waist when it died and for the last few months of its life had to transported around in a wheelbarrow.

General Events

1930 Mahatma Gandhi leads a 200-mile march known as Dandi March to the sea in defiance of British opposition, to protest the British monopoly on salt.

1968 The island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean gained independence, having been a British colony since 1810.

1983 It was reported that a priest in Groningen had officiated at the marriage of two Dutch women.

1984 The wife of Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe received an apology from publisher Heinemann Educational Books over an allegation claiming she was guilty of hypocrisy in holding office at the Equal Opportunities Commission.

1989 Customers at The Gateway supermarket in Ludgershall, Wiltshire, were warned to check their milk after a 2 pint carton was injected with mercury.

1989 Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes began his 425 mile unsupported trek to the North Pole after leaving base camp at Ward Hunt Island off the north of Canada.

1991 The National Audit office said in a report that health authorities could save between £10 and £30 million a year by simply managing telephone services more efficiently.

1991 The Housing Mortgage Corporation forecast an increase of 66% in house prices over 5 years as the housing market recovered from the slump caused by falling inflation and interest rates.

1994 The Church of England ordains its first female priests.

1995 It was announced that the Ministry of Defence had wasted millions of pounds on new equipment that was no longer needed after the end of the Cold War. The Defence Procurement Minister, Roger Freeman, said the worst case was the cancellation of the Royal Navy’s four new Upholder-class diesel-electric submarines, built at a cost of about £900 million. The Navy now only has nuclear-powered submarines.