1981: Man arrested for shooting at the Queen

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), June 13, 2009

Byline: KATIE CAMPLING

THE Queen was left shaken after she was shot at while riding past crowds on horseback.

The monarch was taking part in the Trooping the Colour ceremony on June 13, 1981, when Marcus Serjeant pointed a replica pistol directly at her on Horseguards' Parade.

Serjeant, 17, fired six blank cartridges at the Queen 15 minutes after she had left the safety of Buckingham Palace.

He was then overcome by a guardsman and police.

The shots startled the Queen's horse Burmese, but she was able to bring it back under control within a few seconds.

She was shaken by the episode, but soon recovered her composure and comforted the 19-year-old horse which had been ridden by her in birthday parades since 1969.

The shots failed to stop the procession which went on as planned.

It was not the first incident of a Royal facing danger from a crowd.

In 1974, Princess Anne was attacked by a gunman on the Mall like her ancestor Queen Victoria, who was also shot at by a man with a gun in the Mall.

The incident involving Queen Elizabeth II led to efforts to increase security for the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer the following month.

Marcus Serjeant was jailed for five years under the 1842 Treason Act, a law not used since 1966.

The former air cadet from Folkestone in Kent was found guilty of wilfully discharging at the person of Her Majesty the Queen a blank cartridge pistol with intent to alarm her.

The court was told that Serjeant had at one stage planned to kill the Queen, but had failed to obtain a suitable lethal weapon.

"I wanted to be a somebody," he said.

He served more than three years in jail before being released in October 1984.

1991: BORIS YELTSIN WINS IN FIRST RUSSIAN ELECTIONS Yeltsin became Russia's first popularly-elected president on June 13.

The 60-year-old reformer and leader of the group Democratic Russia triumphed over the Communist Party which had been in power since the 1917 Revolution.

Yeltsin achieved more than the 50% of votes required to avoid a second ballot.

His supporters claimed he had secured 60% to 70% of the vote in many of the large Russian cities and up to 90% in his native city, Sverdlovsk.

His allies, Gavriil Popov and Anatoly Sobchak - who stood in the mayoral races in Moscow and Leningrad respectively - also defeated their Communist rivals.

But the biggest shock was from the people of Leningrad who voted to change the city's name back to the Tsarist title of St Petersburg.

United States presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the election was a "historic step for the Russian people and the Soviet Union." President Yeltsin's mandate, as head of three quarters of the Soviet land mass and 150 million people, looked set to push Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev to embark on more radical reforms.

Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union, but unlike President Yeltsin he was not elected by the people.

Yeltsin resigned from the Soviet Communist Party the previous year.

He had criticised Gorbachev for not being fast enough with political reform.

Mr Gorbachev told reporters after Yeltsin's success that he was prepared to co-operate with anyone the Russians elected.

Yeltsin chose former Afghan war hero, Colonel Alexander Rutskoi, as his deputy.

His first big international engagement was a visit to Washington and President George Bush on June 20.

In August 1991, Soviet hardliners staged a coup against President Gorbachev.

Shortly afterwards, President Yeltsin emerged as a national hero because of his efforts rallying the people from the top of a tank with the aim of keeping the peace.

In early December the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus precipitated the end of the Soviet Union.

They formed the Commonwealth of Independent States.

This led to Gorbachev stepping down as Soviet leader on Christmas Day 1991 and Yeltsin then became president of independent Russia.

He pushed ahead with a radical programme of reforms, but when he met opposition from within his own Parliamentary assembly he chose to break the deadlock by closing it down and then ordering the military to storm the Moscow White House.

In the second half of the 1990s Yeltsin began to suffer from health problems and underwent heart surgery in 1995.

The unpredictable nature of his character surfaced again and he sacked his entire Government twice until parliament eventually forced him to accept limitations on his powers.

He finally stepped down on January 1, 2000 and died of heart failure in April 2007..

CAPTION(S):

SHAKEN: Queen Elizabeth II during the 1981 Trooping the Colour where she was shot at with a replica pistol VICTORY: Boris Yeltsin, who was elected president of Russia in 1991