In the case of Scotland, use of a blue background for the Saint Andrew's Cross is said to date from at least the 15th century, with the first certain illustration of a flag depicting such appearing in Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount 's Register of Scottish Arms, circa 1542.
Dennis Johnson, a brilliant defensive player who helped propel the Seattle SuperSonics and the to N.B.A. championships, died yesterday in Austin, Tex. He was 52. The cause was a heart attack, the National Basketball Association said.
Gunsmoke's Dennis Weaver dies at age 81. Dennis Weaver, best known for his role as Chester on the long-running TV western Gunsmoke, succumbed Friday to cancer at his ranch in Colorado. He was 81. Weaver was born in 1924, in Joplin, Missouri. He married his high school sweetheart, Gerry Stowell, in 1945.