On This Day

[Raistlin]

Events

1801 The first parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland assembled.

1848 The Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-US War.

1852 Britain's first men's public flushing toilets opened on Fleet Street, London.

1878 Greece declared war on Turkey.

1943 The German army surrendered to the Soviet army at Stalingrad.

1960 In USA, sit-ins began in Greensboro, North Carolina, to protest against segregated lunch counters.

1960 The Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded to organize civil rights campaigning.

1972 The British Embassy in Dublin was burned down by protesters angered by the 'Bloody Sunday' shootings in Londonderry.

1986 Women in Liechtenstein went to the polls for the first time.

1989 The USSR's military occupation of Afghanistan ended after nine years.

1990 President de Klerk ended the 30-year ban on the ANC in South Africa.

1991 A protest against the Gulf War was held in London's Hyde Park, attended by more than 40,000 people.

1995 The leaders of Israel, the PLO, Jordan and Egypt met at a one-day emergency summit in Cairo, Egypt where they affirmed their commitment to a Middle East peace process threatened by extremists on both sides. Israel and the PLO agreed to resume their stalled talks.

1996 President Clinton met with Gerry Adams to discuss the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Births

1650 Nell Gwyn, English actress and mistress of Charles II

1754 Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, French statesman and diplomat

1882 James Joyce, Irish author

1927 Elaine Stritch, US actress

1927 Stan Getz, US jazz saxophonist

1946 Farrah Fawcett, US TV actress

Deaths

1769 Pope Clement XIII

1907 Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev, Russian chemist

1970 Bertrand Russell, English philosopher

1979 Sid Vicious, British punk singer

1987 Alistair Maclean, Scottish novelist

1995 Fred Perry, English lawn-tennis player

1995 Donald Pleasence, English character actor

[Raistlin]

Births

1809 Felix Mendelssohn, German composer

1874 Gertrude Stein, US author

1898 Alvar Aalto, Finnish architect

1907 James Michener, US novelist

1909 Simone Weil, French writer

1928 Frankie Vaughan, English singer

Deaths

1399 John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster

1762 Richard 'Beau' Nash, British dandy and gambler

1924 Woodrow Wilson, 28th US president

1959 Buddy Holly, US singer and guitarist

1969 Boris Karloff, US film actor

1989 John Cassavetes, US film actor and director

Events

1488 The Portuguese navigator Bartholomeu Diaz landed at Mossal Bay in the Cape, the first European known to have landed on the southern extremity of Africa.

1913 The 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, authorizing the power to impose and collect income tax, was ratified.

1919 The League of Nations held its first meeting in Paris, with US President Wilson chairing.

1959 Buddy Holly dies in plane crash.

1966 The first rocket-assisted controlled landing on the Moon was made by the Soviet space vehicle Luna IX.

1969 At the Palestinian National Congress in Cairo, Yassir Arafat was appointed leader of the PLO.

1989 South African politician P W Botha unwillingly resigned both party leadership and the presidency after suffering a stroke.

1995 British Prime Minister Major, in an attempt to unify his fractured party, promises that Britain will not back a proposed single European currency before 1997.

[Raistlin]

Births

1881 Fernand Léger, French painter

1900 Jacques Prévert, French poet and novelist

1902 Charles Lindbergh, US aviator

1918 Ida Lupino, English actress

1920 Norman Wisdom, English comedian

1948 Alice Cooper, US pop singer

Deaths

211 Lucius Septimius Severus, Roman emperor

1615 Giambattista della Porta, Italian natural philosopher

1925 Robert Koldewey, German archaeologist

1925 Oliver Heaviside, English physicist

1983 Karen Carpenter, US singer

1987 Liberace, US entertainer

1995 Patricia Highsmith, US crime novelist

Events

1861 Seven secessionist southern states formed the Confederate States of America, in Montgomery, Alabama.

1904 The Russo-Japanese War began after Japan laid seige to Port Arthur.

1928 Black US entertainer Josephine Baker's provocative performance in Munich drew protests from members of the Nazi party.

1945 Allied leaders Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at Yalta, in the Crimea.

1968 The world's largest hovercraft was launched at Cowes, Isle of Wight.

1985 Reagan administration's defence budget called for a tripling of the expenditure on the 'Star Wars' research programme.

1987 The US Stars and Stripes won the America's Cup back from Australia.

1993 Russian scientists unfurled a giant mirror in orbit and flashed a beam of sunlight across Europe during the night; observers saw it only as an instantaneous flash.

1997 Two Israeli troop-carrying helicopters collided on their way to Lebanon, killing all 73 soldiers and airmen aboard; it was the worst disaster in Israeli air force history.

1997 President Milosevic of Serbia apparently surrendered to the will of his people, ordering his government to recognize opposition victories in local elections held in Nov 1996.

[Raistlin]

Events

1782 The Spanish captured Minorca from the British.

1885 Congo State was established under Leopold II of Belgium, as a personal possession.

1924 The BBC time signals, or 'pips', from Greenwich Observatory were heard for the first time; they are broadcast every hour.

1940 Glenn Miller recorded 'Tuxedo Junction' with his orchestra.

1961 The first issue of the Sunday Telegraph was published.

1967 Due to a Musicians' Union ban, the Rolling Stones were not allowed to play their hit 'Let's Spend the Night Together' when they appeared on an ITV show.

1974 Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of US newspaper tycoon William R Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

1982 Laker Airways collapsed with debts of $270 million.

1983 Expelled from Bolivia, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie flew to France to be tried for crimes against humanity.

1989 Satellite station Sky TV was launched in Britain.

1994 A Serbian mortar attack on a crowded market-place in Sarajevo killed 68 people and wounded over 200.

1997 The jury in the three-month civil trial of OJ Simpson reached a verdict on the sixth day of deliberations, finding Simpson liable for the double killings, and awarding initial damages of $8.5 million/£5.3 million against him.

Births

1788 Robert Peel, British politician

1900 Adlai Stevenson, US politician and ambassador

1906 John Carradine, US film actor

1914 William Burroughs, US novelist

1945 Bob Marley, Jamaican reggae singer

1946 Charlotte Rampling, British actress

Deaths

1679 Joost van den Vondel, Dutch poet and dramatist

1881 Thomas Carlyle, English author and historian

1941 A B 'Banjo' Paterson, Australian poet and journalist

1946 George Aliss, English actor

1972 Marianne Moore, US poet

1993 Joseph Mankiewicz, US director and author

[Raistlin]

Events

1508 Maximilian I assumed the title of Holy Roman Emperor.

1778 France and American Colonists signed an offensive and defensive alliance and also a commercial treaty.

1778 Britain declared war on France.

1840 The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by Great Britain and the Maori chiefs of New Zealand, granting British sovereignty.

1918 Women over 30 were granted the right to vote in Britain.

1958 An aeroplane carrying the Manchester United football team crashed on take-off at Munich, killing seven players.

1964 Britain and France reached an agreement on the construction of a Channel Tunnel.

1968 The 10th Winter Olympic games opened in Grenoble, France.

1991 Debris from Salyut 7, a Soviet space station abandoned in 1986, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere; it was believed that most of it landed in the Atlantic Ocean.

1995 The US space shuttle Discovery made a successful rendezvous with the Russian orbiting space station Mir, the first such successful operation since the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking.

1996 Cedric Brown, the controversial 'fat cat' chief executive of British Gas, announced that he was to leave the company.

Births

1564 Christopher Marlowe, English dramatist

1665 Anne, Queen of England

1911 Ronald Reagan, 40th US president

1920 Zsa Zsa Gabor, Hungarian actress

1932 François Truffaut, French film director

1966 Rick Astley, British pop singer

Deaths

1685 King Charles II

1783 Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, English landscape gardener

1793 Carlo Goldoni, Italian dramatist

1804 Joseph Priestley, English chemist

1918 Gustav Klimt, Austrian painter

1988 Marghanita Laski, English author

1993 Arthur Ashe, US tennis player

1994 Joseph Cotten, US actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1301 Edward Caernarvon (later King Edward II) became the first Prince of Wales.

1792 Austria and Prussia formed an alliance against France.

1800 Napoleon Bonaparte is elected as First Consul by the French republic.

1845 The Portland Vase, a Roman cameo glass vase dating to the 1st century BC, was smashed by a drunken visitor to the British Museum.

1863 HMS Orpheus was wrecked off the New Zealand coast, with the loss of 185 lives.

1947 The main group of the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to about 150 BC-AD 68, was found in caves on the W side of the Jordan River.

1965 US aircraft bombed North Vietnam, following attacks on US areas in South Vietnam; the attack lead to the regular US bombing of North Vietnam.

1971 A referendum in Switzerland approved the introduction of female suffrage.

1974 Grenada became a fully independent state within the Commonwealth.

1990 The Central Committee of Communist Party in USSR voted to end the Party's monopoly on political power.

1991 British prime minister John Major and his senior cabinet ministers escaped an apparent assassination attempt when the IRA fired three mortar shells at 10 Downing Street from a parked van.

1995 Prime Minister Major, answering MPs' questions in the British House of Commons, called Labour Party leader Tony Blair a 'dimwit'. Blair was seeking clarification on Major's statement that before joining the single currency, he would require 'other criteria' than those outlined in the Maastricht treaty. Major responded, 'Frankly, only a dimwit would ask me that'.

1995 A Turkish pilot was forced to eject from his crashing F-16 fighter plane after being pursued by two Greek Mirage F1 jets over the Aegean Sea. The incident threatened to aggravate the already tense relations between Greece and Turkey.

1996 189 were feared dead as a Boeing 757 crashed in the Bermuda Triangle.

1997 The IRA declared that it was highly unlikely to announce a new cease-fire in advance of the British general election.

1997 Swiss banks were ordered to hand over records of deposits made in New York City during World War II. New York officials suspected that some of the assets deposited by Jews in the Nazi era might have been channelled to New York.

Births

1478 Thomas More, English politician

1700 Philippe Buache, French cartographer

1812 Charles Dickens, English novelist

1870 Alfred Adler, Austrian psychoanalyst

1885 Sinclair Lewis, US novelist

1906 Pu Yi, last Emperor of China from 1908-1912 under the name of Xuantong

1937 Peter Jay, British writer and broadcaster

Deaths

1779 William Boyce, English organist and composer

1873 Sheridan Le Fanu, Irish writer

1894 Adolphe Sax, Belgian inventor of the saxophone

1959 Daniel Malan, South African statesman

1960 Igor Vasilevich Kuchatov, Russian nuclear physicist

1990 Jimmy Van Heusen, US composer

1994 Witold Lutoslawski, Polish composer and conductor

[Raistlin]

Births

1819 John Ruskin, English writer, artist, and art critic

1820 William Sherman, US general

1828 Jules Verne, French novelist

1920 Lana Turner, US film actress

1925 jack Lemmon, US film actor

1931 James Dean, US film actor

Deaths 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, beheaded

1894 R B Ballantyne, Scottish writer

1921 Peter Alexeivich Kropotkin, Russian anarchist

1926 William Bateson, English biologist

1935 Max Liebermann, German painter and etcher

1990 Del Shannon, US pop singer

Events

1725 Catherine I succeeded her husband, Peter the Great, to become empress of Russia.

1740 The 'Great Frost' of London ended (began 25 Dec 1739).

1920 Odessa was taken by Bolshevik forces.

1924 The gas chamber was used in the USA for the first time, in the Nevada State Prison.

1955 Georgi Malenkov is forced to resign as Soviet premier by Khrushchev.

1969 The Boeing 747, the world's largest commercial plane, made its first flight.

1972 A concert by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention was cancelled at the Albert Hall, London, because some of their lyrics were considered obscene.

1974 After 85 days in space, the US Skylab station returned to earth.

1993 All 132 persons aboard an Iran Air passenger jet were killed minutes after take-off when the plane collided with a military aircraft.

1995 A Turkish pilot was forced to eject from his crashing F-16 fighter plane after being pursued by two Greek Mirage F1 jets over the Aegean Sea. The incident threatened to aggravate the already tense relations between Greece and Turkey.

1997 At the Las Vegas Hilton, the WBC heavyweight championship contest between Oliver McCall and Lennox Lewis was stopped after McCall burst into tears and refused to either fight or return to his corner.

1997 A gunman went on the rampage in a rural new Zealand hamlet, killing six people and seriously wounding five others; it was the fifth mass slaughter in the 1990s to shock New Zealand.

[Raistlin]

Births

1700 Daniel Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician

1865 Mrs Patrick Campbell, English actress

1885 Alban Berg, Austrian composer

1891 Ronald Colman, English film actor

1941 Carole King, US singer and songwriter

1945 Mia Farrow, US film actress

Deaths

1555 John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester

1811 Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal

1881 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Russian novelist

1977 Sergei Vladimirovich Ilyushin, Russian aircraft designer

1981 Bill Haley, US rock musician

1984 Yuri Andropov, Russian leader

1994 Howard Temin, US virologist

1995 William Fulbright, US Democratic politician

Events

1801 The Holy Roman Empire came to an end with the signing of the Peace of Luneville between Austria and France.

1830 Explorer Charles Sturt discovered the source of the Murray river in Australia.

1872 Lieutenant Dawson's expedition in search of Dr Livingstone began.

1921 In India, the central parliament established under the Government of India Act of 1919 was opened.

1942 Soap rationing began in Britain.

1949 US film actor Robert Mitchum was sentenced to two months in prison for smoking marijuana.

1972 The British government declared a state of emergency due to the miners' strike, which was in its third month.

1991 The republic of Lithuania held a plebiscite on independence which showed overwhelming support for secession from the USSR.

1995 Prime Minister Major's cabinet approved public-sector pay increases for the 1995-96 fiscal year, limiting annual pay rises among most of Britain's 1.3 million civil servants to between 1.5% and 3.2%, while allowing the salaries of senior civil servants to increase by as much as 27%.

1996 The IRA detonated an enormous bomb in London's Docklands, effectively bringing an end to the cease-fire and signalling the start of a new bombing campaign on mainland Britain.

[Raistlin]

Births

1894 Harold Macmillan, British politician and publisher

1898 Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist and poet

1930 Robert Wagner, US actor

1890 Boris Pasternak, Russian novelist

1950 Mark Spitz, US swimmer

1955 Greg Norman, Australian golfer

Deaths

1482 Luca della Robbia, Italian sculptor

1837 Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, Russian author

1923 Wilhelm Konrad von Röntgen, German physicist

1932 Edgar Wallace, English thriller writer

1966 Billy Rose, US producer and lyricist

1966 Sophie Tucker, US singer

Events

1258 The Mongols took and destroyed Baghdad.

1354 A street battle between Oxford University students and townspeople resulted in several deaths and many injuries.

1763 Canada was ceded to Britain by the Peace of Paris.

1774 Andrew Becker demonstrated his practical diving suit in the River Thames.

1840 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, both aged 20, were married in St James' Palace, London.

1905 Assassination of Grand Duke Sergei by a bomb in Moscow.

1931 New Delhi became the capital of India.

1942 The first gold disc sprayed with gold by the record company RCA Victor was presented to Glenn Miller for 'Chattanooga Choo Choo'.

1989 Jamaican-born Tony Robinson became Nottingham's first black sheriff.

1993 In Italy, the first of a series of ministerial resignations occurred as a corruption scandal shook the government.

1997 A furious crowd of anti-government demonstrators seized control of the southern Albanian port of Vlora, after five days of increasingly tense demonstrations.

[Raistlin]

Births

1800 Henry Fox Talbot, British photographic pioneer

1847 Thomas Edison, US inventor

1908 Vivian Fuchs, British Antarctic explorer

1909 Joseph Mankiewicz, US film writer and director

1934 Mary Quant, English fashion designer

1936 Burt Reynolds, US film actor

Deaths

1799 Lazaro Spallanzani, Italian physiologist and chemist

1879 Honoré Daumier, French caricaturist

1940 John Buchan, Canadian statesman and novelist

1948 Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, Russian film director

1963 Silvia Plath, US poet

1976 Lee J Cobb, US actor

Events

1858 Bernadette Soubirous, a peasant girl, allegedly had a vision of the Virgin Mary in a grotto in Lourdes, France.

1878 The first weekly weather report was published by the Meteorological Office.

1945 The Yalta Conference ended, at which the Allied leaders planned the final defeat of Germany and agreed on the establishment of the United Nations.

1975 Margaret Thatcher became the first woman leader of a British political party.

1990 After more than 27 years in prison, ANC president Nelson Mandela walked to freedom from a prison near Cape Town, South Africa.

1992 President Bush announced that the USA will phase out CFCs by 1995.

1993 Queen Elizabeth II of Britain and the Prince of Wales both volunteer to pay income tax and capital gains tax on their private income; the Queen also took over civil list payments to junior members of the royal family.

1997 The UK's National Lottery handed out a bonanza of £137 million to 23 major museums and galleries ranging from the Tate Gallery in London to a new National Museum of Football in Preston.

[Raistlin]

Births

1567 Thomas Campion, English composer and poet

1809 Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president

1809 Charles Darwin, English scientist

1828 George Meredith, English novelist

1870 Marie Lloyd, English music-hall star

1923 Franco Zeffirelli, Italian film director

Deaths

1804 Immanuel Kant, German philosopher

1894 Hans Guido von Bülow, German pianist and conductor

1929 Lillie Langtry, English actress

1984 Tom Keating, English painter and art forger

1985 Henry Hathaway, US filmmaker

Events

1554 Lady Jane Grey, queen of England for nine days, was executed on Tower Green for high treason.

1797 Over 1,000 French troops, led by Irish-American general William Tate, made an unsuccessful attempt to invade Britain, on the Welsh coast.

1818 Independence was proclaimed by Chile.

1831 Rubber galoshes first went on sale, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

1851 Prospector Edward Hargreaves made a discovery at Summerhill Creek, New South Wales, which set off a gold rush in Australia.

1912 China became a republic following the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty.

1941 German General Erwin Rommel arrived in Tripoli, Libya, to take control of German reinforcements and stiffen Italian resistance to the British.

1973 The first group of US prisoners of war were released from North Vietnam.

1979 Dr Bakhtiar fled Iran; a Revolutionary Council loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini was created, with Mehdi Bazargan as Premier-designate.

1993 The South African government and the ANC reached an agreement on a transitional 'government of national unity' in which both parties would be partners for five years.

1994 The 17th Olympic Winter Games opened in Lillehammer, Norway.

1997 A British soldier was shot dead by a sniper in South Armagh as the IRA continued its escalation of violence in Northern Ireland. The soldier was the second to die since the ending of the IRA ceasefire one year earlier.

1997 Hwang Jang Yop, a close adviser of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, and one of the regime's leading ideologues, fled to the South Korean embassy in Peking requesting asylum.

[Raistlin]

Events

1689 William of Orange and Mary ascended the throne of Great Britain as joint sovereigns.

1692 The massacre of the Macdonalds at Glencoe in Scotland was carried out by their traditional enemies, the Campbells.

1793 Britain, Prussia, Austria, Holland, Spain, and Sardinia formed an alliance against France.

1867 Strauss's waltz the 'Blue Danube' was first played publicly, in Vienna.

1886 The James Younger gang made its first 'hit', robbing $60,000 from a bank in Missouri, USA.

1909 Kiamil Pasha, grand vizier of Turkey, was forced to resign by the Turkish nationalists.

1917 Dutch spy Mata Hari was arrested by the French.

1960 The French tested their first atomic bomb in the Sahara.

1974 Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the USSR.

Births

1728 John Hunter, Scottish surgeon and anatomist

1873 Fyodor Chaliapin, Russian operatic bass singer

1901 Georges Simenon, Belgian novelist

1934 George Segal, US film actor

1938 Oliver Reed, British film actor

1950 Peter Gabriel, British pop musician

Deaths

1542 Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, executed

1571 Benvenuto Cellini, Italian sculptor and goldsmith

1728 Cotton Mather, US colonist and writer

1883 Richard Wagner, German composer

1958 Georges Rouault, French painter

1979 Jean Renoir, French film director

[Bizarra]

1778 - The Stars and Stripes was carried to a foreign port, in France, for the first time. It was aboard the American ship Ranger.

1803 - Moses Coats received a patent on the Apple parer.

1849 - The first photograph of a U.S. President, while in office, was taken by Matthew Brady in New York City. President James Polk was the subject of the picture.

1859 - Oregon became the 33rd member of the Union.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell filed an application for a patent for the telephone. It was officially issued on March 7, 1876.

1889 - In Los Angeles, CA, oranges began their first trip to the east.

1895 - Oscar Wilde's final play, "The Importance of Being Earnest," opened at the St. James' Theatre in London.

1899 - The U.S. Congress approved voting machines for use in federal elections.

1900 - Russia imposed tighter imperial control over Finland in response to an international petition for Finland's freedom.

1900 - In South Africa, British Gen. Roberts invaded Orange Free State with 20,000 troops.

1903 - The U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor was established.

1912 - The first diesel engine submarine was commissioned in Groton, CT.

1912 - Arizona was admitted as the 48th U.S. state.

1918 - The motion picture "Tarzan of the Apes" was released.

1920 - The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago. The first president of the organization was Maude Wood Park.

1929 - The "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" took place in Chicago, IL. Seven gangsters who were rivals of Al Capone were killed.

1932 - The U.S. won the first bobsled competition at the Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid, NY.

1940 - The first porpoise born in captivity arrived at Marineland in Florida.

1945 - Peru, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador joined the United Nations.

1946 - ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was unveiled. The device, built at the University of Pennsylvania, was the world's first general purpose electronic computer.

1954 - The TV show "Letter to Loretta" changed its name to "The Loretta Young Show." The show premiered on September 20, 1953.

1957 - Lionel Hampton’s only major musical work, "King David," made its debut at New York’s Town Hall.

1961 - Lawrencium, element 103, was first produced in Berkely, CA.

1962 - U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy gave a tour of the White House on television.

1966 - Rick Mount of Lebanon, IN, became the first high school, male athlete to be pictured on the cover of "Sports Illustrated".

1966 - Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia 76ers set a National Basketball Association (NBA) record as he reached a career high of 20,884 points after seven seasons.

1968 - The fourth Madison Square Gardens opened.

1979 - Twenty-year-old rookie, Don Maloney, of the New York Rangers, scored his first goal in the National Hockey League. It came on his first NHL shot.

1979 - Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped in Kabul by Muslim extremists. He was killed in a shootout between his abductors and police.

1980 - Walter Cronkite announced his retirement from the "CBS Evening News."

1983 - A 6-year-old boy became the first person to receive a heart and liver transplants in the same operation.

1985 - Cable News Network reporter Jeremy Levin was freed. He had been being held in Lebanon by extremists.

1989 - Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie because of his novel "The Satanic Verses."

1989 - The first satellite of the Global Positioning System was placed into orbit around Earth.

1989 - Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to the government of India. The court-ordered settlement was a result of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster.

1997 - Astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery began a series of spacewalks that were required to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope.

1998 - U.S. authorities officially announced that Eric Rudolph was a suspect in a bombing of an abortion clinic in Alabama.

2002 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Shays-Meehan bill. The bill, if passed by the U.S. Senate, would ban millions of unregulated money that goes to the national political parties.

2002 - Sylvester Stallone filed a lawsuit against Kenneth Starr. The suit alleged that Starr had given bad advice about selling Planet Hollywood stock.

2003 - In Madrid, Spain, a ceramic plate with a bullfighting motif painted by Pablo Picasso in 1949 was stolen from an art show. The plate was on sale for $12,400.

Very US orientated !

Try this..............

On This Day Over The Years

1629 Faith healer Valentine Greatrakes born, in Affane, Co.

Waterford.

1779 Captain James Cook, explorer, was murdered by natives in Owyhee (Hawaii).

1822 Postal services had to employ extra sorters as the fashion of sending messages to loved ones on this day continued to grow in popularity.

1853 The Queen Victoria sank in a storm off Howth, with the loss of 55 lives.

1895 The Importance Of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde had its premiere in London.

1929 The St Valentine’s Day Massacre took place in a Chicago warehouse.

Seven of Bugsy Moran’s gang were gunned down, probably by mobsters from Al Capone’s outfit.

1956 At the 20th Soviet Communist Party Conference, Nikita Khrushchev denounced the policies of Stalin.

1975 Sir Pelham Grenville (PG) Wodehouse, died in the United States aged 93.

1981 48 died and over 120 were injured when a fire raged through the Stardust Ballroom in Artane, Dublin, during a St Valentine’s Day dance.

Average age of the victims was just 18.

1989 The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa edict calling on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie for his blasphemous novel The Satanic Verses.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1564 Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and mathematician, was born in Pisa.

1842 The first adhesive stamp was used in the USA by the City Despatch Post, a private concern which was later acquired by the government for $1,200.

1874 The Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was born in Kilkee, Co Clare.

1882 The first shipment of frozen meat left New Zealand for England.

1879 There were disturbances in west Galway around this time over the activities of the Irish Church Missions, whose members were attempting to convert Catholics.

1901 The first British Parliament of the 20th century opened with a new member for Oldham.

His name was Winston Churchill.

1922 The first session of the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague was held.

1942 Singapore surrendered to Japan1965 Nat King Cole, US singer and pianist, died of cancer.

1971 Decimal Day: Ireland officially turned its back on the rabbit, the chicken, and the pig in its currency and went from 144p to the pound to 100 when we officially changed over to the decimal system.

1974 The battle for the strategic Golan Heights between Israeli and Syrian forces began.

1981 For the first time, English Football League matches were played on a Sunday, despite opposition from some church leaders.

1997 Ireland’s £300 million beef export trade to Russia was being threatened by the Russian media which continued to focus on Ireland’s BSE problems.

Irish | World | Business | Weather | On this day | Week in View

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1568 The death sentence was passed on an entire country when Netherlands was condemned for heresy by the Spanish Inquisition.

During the first week of the plan to execute three million people, 800 were hanged, burned or killed by other methods.

1782 Henry Grattan, Henry Flood and Lord Charlemont preside over a Volunteer Convention at Dungannon, Co.

Down.

Among the motions passed was Grattan’s "as Irishmen, Christians and Protestants, we rejoice at the relaxation of the penal laws against Roman Catholic fellow-subjects".

1874 Ernest Shackelton, Antartic explorer, was born in Kilkea, Co.

Kildare.

1879 In this month, there were disturbances in West Galway over the missionary work of the Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics.

1887 25,000 prisoners in India were released to celebrate Queen Victoria’s jubilee.

1932 Irish general election won by Fianna Fáil party, led by Eamon de Valera.

1937 US scientist W H Corothers obtained a patent for nylon.

1959 Fidel Castro became Prime Minister of Cuba after overthrowing the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

1960 The US nuclear submarine Triton set off to circumnavigate the world underwater.

1963 The Beatles went to number one in the pop charts for the first time with Please Please Me.

1971 The Irish pound officially changed over to the decimal system.

Irish | World | Business | Weather | On this day | Week in View

[Raistlin]

Births

1653 Arcangelo Corelli, Italian composer

1766 Thomas Malthus, English economist

1902 Marian Anderson, US operatic contralto

1929 Yassir Arafat, Palestinian leader

1934 Barry Humphries, Australian actor and creator of 'Dame Edna Everidge'

1934 Alan Bates, English actor

Deaths

1405 Tamerlane the Great, Mongol leader

1673 Molière, French dramatist

1856 Heinrich Heine, German poet

1909 Geronimo, Apache leader

1980 Graham Sutherland, English painter

1982 Lee Strasburg, US actor

1982 Thelonious Monk, US jazz pianist

Events

1461 Lancastrian forces defeated the Yorkists at the Battle of St Albans.

1859 First production of Verdi's opera Un Ballo in Maschera, in Rome.

1864 The first successful submarine torpedo attack took place when the USS Housatonic was sunk by the Confederate submarine Hunley in Charleston harbour; however, the force of the explosion was so great that the submarine itself was also blown up, killing all on board.

1880 An attempt was made to assassinate the Russian tsar Alexander II with a bomb at the Winter Palace, St Petersburg.

1904 First production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly, in Milan.

1958 The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was formed in London.

1968 French skier Jean-Claude Killy won three gold medals at the Winter Olympics in Grenoble.

1972 The House of Commons voted in favour of Britain joining the Common Market.

1989 Leaders of Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania formed a new economic bloc called Arab Maghreb Union.

1995 Peru and Ecuador signed a pact ending three weeks of armed clashes over a remote stretch of their long-disputed border, but the two parties both continued to claim sovereignty over the contested territory.

1997 Zairean government forces bombed three rebel-held towns in eastern Zaire, killing at least six people.

1997 US scientists claimed that 65-million-year-old remains discovered in the Atlantic Ocean were proof that a massive asteroid impact on Earth killed off the dinosaurs, and appeared to substantiate the theories of geologists such as the Californian Walter Alvarez.

[Raistlin]

Births

1517 Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII, King of England, and Catherine of Aragon

1745 Alessandro Volta, Italian scientist and inventor of the electric Battery

1784 Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist

1894 Andrés Segovia, Spanish classical guitarist

1922 Helen Gurley Brown, US magazine editor

1929 Len Deighton, English novelist

Deaths

1455 Fra Angelico, Florentine painter

1478 George, Duke of Clarence, drowned in a butt of Malmsey on the orders of his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester

1546 Martin Luther, German founder of the Reformation

1564 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian painter and sculptor

1833 Richard Wagner, German composer

1967 Robert Oppenheimer, US physicist, inventor of the atomic bomb

Events

1678 Publication of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

1861 Victor Emmanuel proclaimed king of a united Italy at the first meeting of the Italian parliament.

1874 Benjamin Disraeli formed his ministry, with Stafford Northcote chancellor of Exchequer, 15th Earl of Derby as foreign secretary and Richard Cross as home secretary.

1876 A direct telegraph link was set up between Britain and New Zealand.

1930 US astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the planet Pluto.

1948 After 16 years in power, the Fianna Fáil party was defeated in the Irish general elections.

1965 The Gambia became an independent state within the Commonwealth.

1996 The IRA exploded a bomb on a London bus, killing one of their own members.

[Raistlin]

Events

1800 Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself First Consul of France.

1878 US inventor Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.

1897 The Women's Institute was founded in Ontario, Canada, by Adelaide Hoodless.

1906 William Kellogg established the Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake Company, selling breakfast cereals originally developed as a health food for psychiatric patients.

1959 Britain, Greece, and Turkey signed an agreement guaranteeing the independence of Cyprus.

1976 Iceland broke off diplomatic relations with Britain after negotiations failed to produce an agreement over fishing limits in the 'cod war'.

1985 The BBC broadcast the first episode of the soap opera EastEnders.

1996 The stranded oil tanker Sea Empress grounded on rocks near Milford Haven, Britain, and ruptured 12 of its cargo tanks.

1997 Michael Allcock, the UK's most senior Inland Revenue official ever convicted of corruption, went to prison for five years. Allcock's corruption appeared to threaten the integrity of the entire Inland revenue.

1997 Pakistan's new government ordered a ban on what was called 'mixed' dances of men and women together on state-run TV as part of plans to promote Islamic culture.

Births

1473 Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer

1717 David Garrick, English actor and theatre manager

1743 Luigi Boccherini, Italian cellist and composer

1843 Adelina Patti, Italian soprano

1911 Merle Oberon, Tasmanian-born film actress

1924 Lee Marvin, US film actor

1960 Andrew, Duke of York, of the British royal family

Deaths

1837 Georg Büchner, German poet and dramatist

1897 Charles Blondin, French tightrope walker

1916 Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist

1951 André Gide, French novelist

1975 Luigi Dallapiccola, Italian composer

1990 Michael Powell, English documentary film-maker

1994 Derek Jarman, English avant-garde film director

1997 Deng Xiaoping, China's 'paramount leader'.

[Raistlin]

Events

1755 General Braddock lands in Virginia to take command of English forces against the French in North America.

1811 Austria declared itself bankrupt.

1938 Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary after the prime minister Neville Chamberlain decided to negotiate with Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

1947 Lord Louis Mountbatten was appointed viceroy of India, the last person to hold this office.

1962 US astronaut John Glenn orbited the Earth three times in the space capsule Friendship 7.

1979 11 members of a loyalist gang known as the 'Shankill butchers' were sentenced for 19 sectarian murders in Belfast following a sensational trial.

1985 The sale of contraceptives became legal in the Irish Republic.

1989 An army barracks at Tern Hill, Shropshire, was destroyed by an IRA bomb.

Births

1694 Voltaire, French writer and philosopher

1808 Honoré Daumier, French painter

1888 Marie Rambert, British dancer and founder of the Ballet Rambert

1898 Enzo Ferrari, Italian car manufacturer

1925 Robert Altman, US film director

1927 Sidney Poitier, US film actor

Deaths

1437 King James I of Scotland, assassinated

1677 Benedict Spinoza, Dutch philosopher

1707 Aurangzeb, last of the Mogul rulers of India

1961 Percy Grainger, Australian-born composer

1972 Walter Winchell, US journalist

1984 Mikhail Sholokhov, Russian author

1995 Robert Bolt, English dramatist and screenwriter

[Raistlin]

Events

1431 Joan of Arc's trial begins in Rouen.

1804 British engineer Richard Trevithick demonstrated the first steam engine to run on rails.

1916 In World War I the Battle of Verdun, NE France, began (it continued until 16th December).

1931 The New Statesman was first published.

1960 All private businesses in Cuba nationalized by Fidel Castro.

1972 US president Richard Nixon arrived in Beijing on a visit intended to improve US - Chinese relations.

1989 Czech writer Vaclav Havel jailed for anti-government demonstrations.

1994 The former head of CIA Soviet counter-intelligence, Aldrich Hazen Ames, was arrested with his wife on charges of having spied for the USSR.

1996 Jeanne Calment, believed to be the oldest woman in the world, celebrated her 121st birthday.

1997 The 'Bridgewater Three' walked to freedom from the Royal Courts of Justice in London, after almost 18 years in prison.

Births

1794 Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexican revolutionary and dictator

1801 John Henry Newman, English cardinal and theologian

1907 W H Auden, English poet

1924 Robert Mugabe, first prime minister of Zimbabwe

1934 Nina Simone, US singer

1937 Jilly Cooper, English novelist and journalist

Deaths

1595 Robert Southwell, English poet and Jesuit martyr

1741 Jethro Tull, English agriculturalist

1852 Nikolai Gogol, Russian novelist and dramatist

1938 George Ellery Hale, US astronomer

1965 Malcolm X, US Black Muslim leader, shot dead at a meeting

1968 Howard Walter Florey, Australian pathologist who developed penicillin

1991 Margot Fonteyn, English ballet dancer

[Raistlin]

Events

1797 Over 1,000 French troops landed at Fishguard, in South Wales, but were quickly taken prisoner.

1819 Spain ceded Florida to the USA.

1879 US storekeeper F W Woolworth opened his first 'five-and-ten-cent' store in Utica, New York.

1886 The Times newspaper published a classified personal column, the first newspaper to do so.

1889 North and South Dakota, Montana, and Washington were created US states.

1940 Five-year-old Tenzin Gyatso was enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama in Lhasa, Tibet.

1946 Dr Selman Abraham Waksman announced that he had discovered streptomycin, an antibiotic.

1987 4,000 Syrian troops entered West Beirut in an effort to end fighting between Shi'ite Muslim and Druze forces.

1993 UN Security Council decided to create a war crimes tribunal relating to former Yugoslavia - the first such tribunal since Nuremberg (1945-46).

1995 Algerian security forces quashed a revolt by militant fundamentalist Moslems at the Serkadji prison in Algiers; 96 inmates died in the uprising.

1995 Prime Minister Major and Irish Prime Minister John Bruton, at press conference in Belfast, presented a 37-page framework document intended to guide the peace negotiations over Northern Ireland.

Births

1732 George Washington, first president of the USA

1788 Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

1857 Robert Baden-Powell, English soldier and founder of the Boy Scout movement

1872 Eric Gill, English sculptor and typographer

1900 Luis Buñuel, Spanish film director

1908 John Mills, English actor

1926 Kenneth Williams, English comedy actor

Deaths

1512 Amerigo Vespucci, Italian navigator after whom America is named

1875 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, French painter

1875 Charles Lyell, English geologist

1942 Stefan Zweig, Austrian writer

1973 Elizabeth Bowen, Irish novelist

1980 Oskar Kokoschka, Austrian painter

[Raistlin]

Events

1429 Joan of Arc arrived at Chinon to meet Charles VII.

1701 Captain Kidd was hanged for piracy.

1732 First performance of Handel's Oratorio, in London.

1820 Discovery of the Cato Street conspiracy; following a tip-off, police arrested revolutionaries who planned to blow up the British Cabinet.

1836 The siege of the Alamo began, under the Mexican general Santa Anna.

1863 Lake Victoria, in Africa, was proclaimed to be the source of the River Nile by British explorers John Speke and J A Grant.

1898 Emile Zola was imprisoned for writing his open letter J'accuse, accusing the French government of anti-Semitism and of wrongly imprisoning the army officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus.

1919 Benito Mussolini founded the Italian Fascist Party.

1905 The Rotary Club is founded in Chicago.

1970 Guyana became an independent republic within the Commonwealth.

1981 Spanish Fascist army officers led by Lt Colonel Antonio Tejero attempted a coup in the Cortes (parliament).

1996 Research findings published in Britain revealed that men's sperm counts were nearly 25% lower than those of men born before 1959.

1997 British scientists confirmed that they had cloned an adult sheep from a single cell, to produce a lamb with the same original genes as its 'mother'.

Births

1633 Samuel Pepys, English civil servant and diarist

1685 George Frederick Handel, German-born British composer

1883 Victor Fleming, US film director who made The Wizard of Oz

1899 Erich Kästner, German children's author

1940 Peter Fonda, US film actor

Deaths

1792 Joshua Reynolds, English painter

1821 John Keats, English poet

1855 Karl Gauss, German mathematician and astronomer

1931 Nellie Melba, Australian opera singer

1934 Edward Elgar, English composer

1965 Stan Laurel, English-born US film comedian

1983 Adrian Boult, English conductor

1987 Andy Warhol, US Pop artist

1995 James Herriot, English writer

[Raistlin]

Births

1500 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

1786 Wilhelm Grimm, German philologist and, with his brother Jakob, compiler of fairy tales

1858 Arnold Dolmetsch, Swiss maker and restorer of musical instruments

1932 Michel Legrand, French composer of film music

1948 Dennis Waterman, English actor

1955 Alain Prost, French racing driver

Deaths

1810 Henry Cavendish, English physicist

1825 Thomas Bowdler, English editor who produced 'bowdlerized' versions of great literary works such as Shakespeare and the Old Testament

1975 Nikolai Bulganin, Soviet prime minister

1987 Memphis Slim, US blues singer

1993 Bobby Moore, English footballer

1994 Dinah Shore, US pop singer, actress, and television

Events

AD 303 Galerius Valerius Maximianus issued an edict demanding the persecution of Christians.

1582 The Gregorian Calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII; it replaced the Julian Calendar, but was not adopted in Britain until 1752.

1905 The Simplon Tunnel through the Alps was completed.

1920 Nancy Astor became the first woman to address the British Parliament.

1932 Malcolm Campbell beat his own land speed record in Bluebird at Daytona Beach, USA; he reached a speed of 408.88 kph/253.96 mph.

1938 Nylon toothbrush bristles were first produced in the USA - the first commercial use of nylon.

1946 Juan Perón was elected president of Argentina.

1986 President Marcos fled the Philippines; Corazon Aquino was sworn in as president.

1987 The first supernova (explosion of a star) was discovered; it was the first to be observed since 1604.

1991 US-led coalition in Gulf launched ground offensive against Iraqi forces.

[Raistlin]

Births

1707 Carlo Goldoni, Italian playwright

1841 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist painter

1873 Enrico Caruso, Italian operatic tenor

1890 Myra Hess, English pianist

1917 Anthony Burgess, English novelist

1941 David Puttnam, English film producer

1943 George Harrison, English pop musician and former member of the Beatles

Deaths

1601 Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, executed for high treason

1723 Christopher Wren, English architect

1899 Paul Julius von Reuter, founder of Reuters international news agency

1914 John Tenniel, English artist and illustrator

1970 Mark Rothko, US painter

1983 Tennessee Williams, US dramatist

1994 Jersey Joe Walcott, US boxer

1995 jack Clayton, English film director

Events

1308 Coronation of King Edward II of England.

1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I.

1913 English suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst went on trial for a bomb attack on the home of David Lloyd George, chancellor of the Exchequer.

1939 The first Anderson air-raid shelter was built in Islington, N London.

1955 HMS Ark Royal was completed, the largest aircraft carrier ever built in Britain.

1964 Cassius clay beat Sonny Liston after six rounds of their fight in Miami, USA, to win the World Heavyweight title; clay then announced his conversion to Islam, changing his name to Muhammad Ali.

1988 US televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was suspended after it became known that he had visited a prostitute for three years.

1994 An Israeli settler opened fire with an automatic weapon in a Hebron mosque, killing 48 Palestinians.

1996 Islamic suicide bombers killed 24 Israelis in Jerusalem and Ashkelon.

1997 Three bombs placed on buses in the Chinese provincial capital of Urumqi killed nine people and injured 74. The bombs, timed to go off following Deng's final farewell in Peking's Great Hall of the People, were assumed to be the work of separatist forces who wanted an independent Muslim state.

[Raistlin]

Events

1531 An earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, killed 20,000 people.

1797 The first £ note was issued by the Bank of England.

1815 Napoleon escaped from exile on the island of Elba.

1839 The first Grand National Steeplechase was run at Aintree.

1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles published 'The Communist Manifesto'.

1935 Robert Watson-Watt gave the first demonstration of Radar at Daventry, England.

1936 Adolf Hitler launched the Volkswagen ('people's car'), intended to compete with Ford's Model T and boost the German economy.

1980 Israel and Egypt exchanged ambassadors for the first time.

1987 The report of the Tower Commission, which investigated the management of the White House during the period of the Iran-Contra affair, criticized White House Chief of Staff, Donald Regan (on the 27th, Regan was replaced by former Senator Howard Baker).

1995 Barings PLC, the country's oldest merchant bank, declared bankruptcy after discovering that Nicholas Leeson, the firm's chief trader in Singapore, had lost approximately £625 million/$1 billion of the bank's assets on unauthorized futures and options transactions.

1995 Boxer Gerald McClellan was listed in critical condition after a blood clot was removed from his brain. McClellan, 27, had been knocked out 25 Feb by WBC supermiddleweight champion Nigel Benn of Great Britain during a bout in London. The brutality of the fight, and McClellan's subsequent hospitalization, led some British politicians and medical groups to call for a ban on boxing.

1996 Haing Ngor, the Academy Award-winning actor who starred in The Killing Fields, was shot dead in Chinatown, Los Angeles.

1997 Britain's Armed Forces Minister, Nicholas Soames, fought off Labour demands for his resignation over the Ministry of Defence's suppression of information about the still unexplained Gulf War syndrome affecting 1,200 of the 40,000 British service personnel who fought in the Gulf.

Births

1802 Victor Hugo, French novelist and playwright

1846 William Cody ('Buffalo Bill'), US showman

1879 Frank Bridge, English composer and conductor

1928 Fats Domino, US singer

1932 Johnny Cash, US country singer

Deaths

1154 Roger II, King of Sicily

1823 John Philip Kemble, English actor

1903 Richard Gatling, US inventor of the Gatling gun

1950 Harry Lauder, Scottish music-hall comedian

1991 Slim Gaillard, US jazz musician