On This Day

[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

[Bizarra]

The same events happened on the same day twice ?

Must have been groundhog day

[Raistlin]

Events

1557 The first Russian Embassy opened in London; exactly one year later, the first trade mission arrived.

1879 US chemists Ira Remsen and Constantine Fahlberg announced their discovery of saccharin.

1881 British troops were defeated by the Boers at Majuba Hill, Transvaal.

1933 The German Reichstag (parliament building) in Berlin was destroyed by fire; it is believed that the Nazis were responsible, though they blamed the Communists.

1948 The Communist Party seized power in Czechoslovakia.

1973 British civil servants went on strike for the first time.

1991 The First Gulf War came to an end with the liberation of Kuwait and the retreat of Iraqi forces.

1997 An amendment ending the Irish constitution's divorce ban went into effect, making divorce universally available for the first time in the history of the Irish Republic. Ireland had been the only nation in Europe in which divorce was illegal.

Births

AD 274 Constantine, Roman emperor

1807 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, US poet

1861 Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher

1902 John Steinbeck US novelist

1912 Lawrence Durrell, English poet and novelist

1932 Elizabeth Taylor, English-born US film actress

Deaths

1706 John Evelyn, English diarist

1887 Alexander Borodin, Russian composer and chemist

1936 Ivan Pavlov, Russian psychologist

1940 Peter Behrens, German architect

1985 Henry Cabot Lodge, US politician and diplomat

1993 Lilian Gish, US film actress

1994 Harold Acton, Italian-born English writer and aesthete

[Raistlin]

Events

1772 The Boston assembly threatened secession from Britain unless rights of colonies were maintained.

1784 John Wesley, English founder of the Wesleyan faith, signed its deed of declaration.

1900 Relief forces under General Buller reached British troops besieged for four months at Ladysmith, Natal; Boer troops retreated.

1912 The first parachute jump was made, over Missouri, USA.

1948 The last British troops left India.

1975 A London underground train crashed at Moorgate station, killing 42 people.

1986 Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was shot dead as he walked home from a cinema in Stockholm.

1994 NATO forces entered combat for the first time in the 45-year history of the pact to shoot down 4 Bosnian Serb aircraft which had violated a UN no-fly zone in Central Bosnia.

1996 The Princess of Wales consented to a divorce.

1997 A powerful earthquake struck the province of Ardabil in northwest Iran, killing close to 1,000 people, wounding an estimated 2,600, and leaving 40,000 others homeless.

Births

1683 René Antoine de Réaumur, French scientist and inventor of a thermometer scale

1909 Linus Pauling, US physicist and chemist

1909 Stephen Spender, English poet and critic

1913 Vincente Minnelli, US film director

1915 Peter Medawar, English immunologist

1951 Barry McGuigan, Irish-born boxer

Deaths

1869 Alphonse de Lamartine, French poet

1916 Henry James, US-born British novelist

1941 Alfonso XIII, ex-king of Spain

1963 Rajendra Prasad, first president of India

1967 Henry Luce, US magazine publisher

[Raistlin]

Events

1780 Pennsylvania became the first US state to abolish slavery.

1845 The USA annexed Texas.

1940 English actress Vivien Leigh won an Oscar for her performance as Scarlett O'Hara in the film Gone with the Wind.

1949 US heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis retired after successfully defending his title 25 times.

1954 The USA conducted its first hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands.

1966 The uncrewed Soviet spacecraft Venus 3 landed on Venus.

1993 US forces began to drop relief supplies to civilians in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1994 Negotiations were concluded on the enlargement of the European Union to include Sweden, Finland, and Austria.

1995 The gangland-style slaying of a well-known television journalist in Moscow set off a wave of grief and upheaval in Russia.

1997 Tens of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees fled the Tingi Tingi camps, 125 mi south of Kisangani in eastern Zaire, when they were overrun by Zairean rebels.

Births

1810 Frédéric Chopin, Polish composer

1880 Lytton Strachey, English biographer

1904 Glenn Miller, US bandleader

1910 David Niven, Scottish-born US film actor

1927 Harry Belafonte, US singer

1945 Roger Daltrey, English rock musician, singer with the Who

Deaths

1633 George Herbert, English poet

1643 Girolamo Frescobaldi, Italian composer

1912 George Grossmith, English singer and comedian

1984 Jackie Coogan, US film actor who in 1921 played the child in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid

1995 Georges Köhler, German immunologist

Edit: Bugger I forgot the server clock was slow...

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1797 £1 notes were first issued by the Bank of England.

1815 Napoleon escaped from exile on the island of Elba and returned to France.

1839 The Grand National was first run at Aintree.

1854 William Smith O’Brien, the leader of the 1848 rebellion, received a pardon.

He returned to Ireland on July 8, 1856.

1904 The Britannic was launched.

A sister ship of the Olympic 1910) and the Titanic 1911), she was the largest ship built in these islands, and was floated at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast.

1935 Radar was first demonstrated in Daventry by Robert Watson-Watt.

1936 The Volkswagen car factory was opened in Saxony by Adolf Hitler.

1962 The IRA called off the campaign of bombings it had directed against Northern Ireland since 1956.

1983 Pat Jennings became the first footballer to play in 1,000 Football League matches.

1989 Burke’s Peerage reported that King Arthur’s Round Table had been found near Stirling, Scotland, on the banks of the Carron River.

1996 A haul of the Somali drug Khat was discovered in a suitcase at Shannon Airport.

1997 The Tribunal investigating payments to politicians was told that supermarket mogul Ben Dunne would hand over all documents relating to the investigation.

[Raistlin]

Births

1545 Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford

1824 Bedrich Smetana, Czech composer

1900 Kurt Weill, German composer who worked with Bertolt Brecht

1923 Basil Hume, archbishop of Westminster

1931 Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet leader

1949 J P R Williams, Welsh rugby player

1958 Ian Woosnam, Welsh golfer

Deaths

1791 John Wesley, English founder of Methodism

1797 Horace Walpole, English novelist and historian

1930 D H Lawrence, English novelist

1939 Howard Carter, English Egyptologist who discovered Tutankhamen's tomb

1987 Joan Greenwood, English film actress

1987 Randolph Scott, US film actor

Events

1717 The first ballet, The Loves of Mars and Venus was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London.

1882 An attempt was made to assassinate Queen Victoria at Windsor, in England.

1949 US Airforce Captain James Gallagher returned to Fort Worth, Texas, after flying non-stop around the world in 94 hours with a crew of 13 men; tanker aircraft refuelled their plane four times during the flight.

1955 Severe flooding in N and W Australia killed 200 people.

1969 The French-built supersonic aircraft Concorde made its first test flight from Toulouse.

1970 Rhodesia proclaimed itself a republic.

1986 Queen Elizabeth signed the Australia Bill in Canberra, severing remaining legal ties with Britain.

1992 Violent clashes took place in Sarajevo between militant Serbs, Croats, and Muslims.

1995 Two competing teams of scientists using different detectors at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois announced that they have found the top quark, the last unknown among the six quark particles thought to be the building blocks of matter.

1997 The Albanian parliament decreed a nationwide state of emergency, giving security forces a mandate to end violent protests taking place throughout the country.

[Raistlin]

Births

1831 George Pullman, US designer of luxury railway carriages

1847 Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born inventor of the telephone

1911 Jean Harlow, US film actress

1920 Ronald Searle, English artist and cartoonist

1958 Miranda Richardson, English actress

1961 Fatima Whitbread, English javelin champion

Deaths

1703 Robert Hooke, English physicist

1792 Robert Adam, Scottish architect

1804 Giandomenico Tiepolo, Italian artist

1959 Lou Costello, US comedian

1983 Arthur Koestler, Hungarian-born writer and supporter of euthanasia, committed suicide

1987 Danny Kaye, US comedian

1993 Albert Sabin, Russian-born US microbiologist

Events

1770 A brawl broke out between civilians and troops in Boston (annually celebrated as the Boston Massacre).

1802 Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' published.

1820 Maine entered the Union as a free state to counteract the impending entrance of Missouri as slave state.

1875 The first performance of Bizet's opera Carmen was staged at the Opéra Comique, Paris.

1931 'The Star-Spangled Banner' was adopted as the US national anthem.

1969 US spacecraft Apollo 9 was launched.

1985 British miners voted to go back to work after a year of striking over pit closures.

1991 Latvia and Estonia voted to secede from the Soviet Union.

1995 The last remaining 2,400 UN peace-keeping troops in Somalia departed from Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

1995 The British House of Commons unanimously passed a bill that would largely prohibit game hunting in the country. The proposed legislation, known as the Wild Mammals (Protection) Bill, mainly targets fox, stag, and hare hunting.

1997 An express train jumped its tracks in eastern Punjab, Pakistan, killing at least 126 people and injuring another 175.

[Raistlin]

Births

1394 Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese patron of explorers

1678 Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer

1928 Patrick Moore, English astronomer

1929 Bernard Haitink, Dutch conductor

1931 Miriam Makeba, South African singer

1951 Kenny Dalgleish, Scottish footballer

Deaths

1193 Saladin, Kurdish-born Muslim leader who defeated the Crusaders

1470 Thomas Malory, English writer of the Morte d'Arthur

1832 Jean-François Champollion, French Egyptologist

1852 Nikolai Gogol, Russian novelist and playwright

1963 William Carlos Williams, US poet

Events

1681 King Charles II granted a Royal Charter to William Penn, entitling Penn to establish a colony in North America.

1861 Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th president of the USA.

1877 The Russian Imperial Ballet staged the first performance of the ballet Swan Lake in Moscow.

1882 Britain's first electric trams came into operation in Leytonstone, East London.

1890 The Forth railway bridge, Scotland, was officially opened.

1968 Tennis authorities voted to admit professional players to Wimbledon, previously open only to amateur players.

1974 Edward Heath resigned after Liberals refused to enter coalition.

1987 President Reagan accepted full responsibility for the Iran-Contra scandal.

1996 The American computer company Apple was sued over 'wild' pay to its chief executive by a Californian lawyer shareholder.

[Raistlin]

Events

1461 King Henry VI of England was deposed; he was succeeded by Edward IV.

1770 British troops killed five civilians when they fired into a crowd of demonstrators in Boston; the incident became known as the 'Boston Massacre'.

1850 English engineer Robert Stephenson's tubular bridge was opened, linking Anglesey with mainland Wales.

1933 The Nazi Party won almost half the seats in the German elections.

1936 The British fighter plane Spitfire made its first test flight from Eastleigh, Southampton.

1946 The term 'iron curtain' was first used, by Winston Churchill in a speech in Missouri, USA.

1976 The pound falls below $2 for the first time ever.

1995 The Inkatha Freedom Party agreed at a party meeting to end its boycott of South Africa's parliament. Zulu chief Buthelezi had led his Inkatha party in a walkout from the nation's multiparty parliament.

1997 In a New York City hotel, US and North and South Korean officials began talks aimed at formally ending the Korean War. It was the first time since 1972 that North and South Koreans sat in the same room to talk peace.

1997 The Swiss government announced plans to create a fund providing financial compensation to victims of the Holocaust and of other catastrophes and human-rights violations.

Births

1133 Henry II, King of England

1512 Gerardus Mercator, Flemish cartographer

1852 Augusta Gregory, Irish playwright

1887 Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian composer

1908 Rex Harrison, English actor

1952 Elaine Page, English musical actress

Deaths

1534 Antonio Correggio, Italian painter

1815 Friedrich Mesmer, Austrian physician and founder of mesmerism, or 'animal magnetism'

1827 Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist

1953 Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator

1953 Sergei Prokofiev, Russian composer

1984 Tito Gobbi, Italian operatic baritone

1993 Nicholas Ridley, British Conservative politician

[Raistlin]

Events

1480 By the Treaty of Toledo, Ferdinand and Isabella recognize Afonso's African conquests, while he cedes the Canaries to Spain.

1836 The 12-day siege of the Alamo ended, with only six survivors out of the original force of 155.

1899 Aspirin was patented by chemist Felix Hoffman.

1930 Clarence Birdseye's first frozen foods went on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA.

1957 Ghana became independent, the first British colony to do so.

1987 A cross-channel ferry left Zeebrugge, Belgium, with its bow doors open; it capsized suddenly outside the harbour, killing over 180 passengers.

1988 British SAS men shot dead three IRA members in a street in Gibraltar, claiming that they had been about to attack a military parade.

1995 Adrianus Jacobs, chairman of the Dutch financial conglomerate Internationale Nederlanden Groep NV (ING), in London announced that his company would buy most of Barings PLC, a 223-year-old bank that had collapsed earlier in 1995, for the nominal price of £1.00/$1.60.

1996 The Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan was fined for burning a cross in his garden and infringing Californian clean-air regulations.

1997 More than 200 people were killed when Tamil Tiger guerrillas overran a military base and attacked the air force's eastern headquarters.

1997 Tête de Femme, an impressionistic portrait painted by Pablo Picasso in 1939, and priced at £650,000, was stolen from the Lefevre Gallery in London's Mayfair.

Births

1619 Cyrano de Bergerac, French novelist and playwright

1806 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet

1922 Frankie Howerd, English comedian

1926 Andrzej Wajda, Polish film director

1937 Valentina Tereshkova, Soviet astronaut

1944 Kiri Te Kanawa, New Zealand soprano

Deaths

1888 Louisa May Alcott, US novelist

1900 Gottlieb Daimler, German motor engineer who invented the motorcycle

1951 Ivor Novello, Welsh composer and actor

1961 George Formby, English entertainer

1971 Pearl Buck, US novelist

1984 Donald Maclean, English-born Soviet spy

1994 Merlina Mercouri, Greek actress and politician

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1792 Sir John Herschel, astronomer who first mapped the stars of the southern hemisphere, was born in Slough.

1802 Sculptor and animals painter Sir Edward Landseer was born in London.

He designed the bronze lions at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.

1875 Maurice Ravel, French composer (Bolero), was born in Cibourne, Bas Pyrenees.

1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the first telephone.

1917 The Dixie Jazz Band One-Step was the world’s first jazz record to be released - ironically by the all-white Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

1941 British troops invaded Italian-held Ethiopia.

1946 British doctors mounted a campaign to fight the introduction of a National Health Service.

1971 Swiss men voted in favour of giving women the vote and allowing them to hold office.

1975 The body of kidnapped heiress Lesley Whittle was found in a 60ft drain shaft.

She had been held for 52 days then strangled by Donald Nielson, The Black Panther, who was later given four life sentences.

1989 Chinese troops fired on Tibetan monks and civlians demanding independence in Lhasa.

Some reports said hundreds died.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1702 Queen Anne acceded to the throne on the death of William III in a riding accident.

1787 Karl von Grafe, pioneer of plastic surgery, was born in Warsaw.

1790 The French Assembly voted to continue slavery in their colonies.

1859 Kenneth Grahame, author of children’s books, notably The Wind In The Willows, was born in Edinburgh.

1879 Otto Hahn, German physicist and chemist who discovered nuclear fission, was born.

1910 The first pilot’s licences were granted.

The Royal Aero Club granted licence number one to J T C Moore Brabazon (later Lord Brabazon of Tara).

1952 An artificial heart was used for the first time on a 41-year-old man, which kept him alive for 80 minutes.

1961 Sir Thomas Beecham, English conductor and founder of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, died aged 81.

1966 An IRA bomb destroyed the Nelson Column in Dublin.

1971 Boxer Joe Frazier defeated Muhammad Ali on points to become World Heavyweight Champion.

1980 President Jimmy Carter refused to apologise for past US actions in Iran in return for the release of 53 hostages.

1990 More than 3,000 Britons had fully developed Aids, figures showed.

[Raistlin]

Events

1074 Pope Gregory VII excommunicated all married priests.

1796 French army commander Napoleon Bonaparte married Josephine de Beauharnais.

1831 The French Foreign Legion was founded in Algeria; its headquarters moved to France in 1962.

1918 The Russian capital was transferred from Petrograd (St Petersburg) to Moscow.

1923 Lenin retired as Soviet leader after suffering a severe stroke; he died the following year.

1935 Hitler notified the Western Powers of the existence of the German Air Force.

1956 Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus was deported to the Seychelles to prevent his involvement in terrorist activities.

1995 Canadian authorities captured a Spanish trawler off the coast of Newfoundland and arrested the ship's captain, after chasing the vessel for four hours and firing warning shots from a machine gun.

1997 More than 50,000 opponents of Serbian President Milosevic rallied in Belgrade in support of more democracy and freedom for the media.

Births

1763 William Cobbett, author and politician

1890 Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet politician

1892 Vita Sackville-West, English novelist

1934 Yuri Gagarin, Soviet astronaut, the first man in space

1943 Bobby Fischer, US chess champion

1952 Bill Beaumont, English rugby player

Deaths

1566 David Rizzio, secretary to Mary Queen of Scots, murdered

1661 Jules Mazarin, French cardinal and politician

1888 Wilhelm I of Prussia

1918 Frank Wedekind, German playwright

1993 Bob Crosby, US bandleader

1993 Cyril Parkinson, English writer and historian

1994 Charles Bukowski, German-born US writer and poet

1994 Fernando Rey, Spanish actor

[Raistlin]

Births

1628 Marcello Malpighi, Italian physiologist

1885 Tamara Karsavina, Russian ballet dancer

1892 Arthur Honegger, French composer

1903 Bix Beiderbecke, US jazz musician and composer

1964 Prince Edward, youngest son of Queen Elizabeth II

Deaths

1832 Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian nationalist

1940 Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist and playwright

1948 Jan Masaryk, Czech politician, allegedly committed suicide after Communist takeover

1985 Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet leader

1986 Ray Milland, US film actor

Events

1801 The first census was begun in Britain.

1886 Cruft's Dog Show was held in London for the first time - since 1859 it had been held in Newcastle.

1906 The Bakerloo line was opened on the London underground railway.

1914 English suffragette Mary Richardson slashed Velasquez' Rokeby Venus with a meat cleaver.

1969 James Earl Ray was sentenced to 99 years' imprisonment after pleading guilty to the murder of civil-rights leader Martin Luther King.

1974 A Japanese soldier was discovered hiding on Lubang Island in the Philippines. He was unaware that World War II had ended, and was waiting to be picked up by his own forces.

1987 The Vatican document, 'Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation: Replies to Certain Questions of the Day', condemned artificial methods of fertilization and called for a ban on experiments on living embryos.

1993 In USA, gynaecologist Dr David Gunn was shot dead by an anti-abortion activist in Pensacola, Florida, in a wave of violent attacks on abortion clinics by 'Rescue America'.

1997 The Spice Girls, a British all-girl band, made pop music history by becoming the first group to top the charts with every one of their first four singles.

[Raistlin]

Births

1811 Urbain Leverrier, French astronomer

1885 Malcolm Campbell, English speed record holder

1916 Harold Wilson, British politician

1931 Rupert Murdoch, Australian newspaper proprietor

1932 Nigel Lawson, British politician

1952 Douglas Adams, English author of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Deaths

1915 Rolf Boldrewood, Australian author

1936 David Beatty, British admiral

1955 Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin

1957 Richard Evelyn Bird, US aviator and explorer

1970 Erle Stanley Gardner, US lawyer and crime writer

Events

1682 The Royal Chelsea Hospital for soldiers was founded by Charles II.

1702 The first successful English daily newspaper, the Daily Courant was published in London.

1941 US Congress passed the Lend-Lease Bill, authorizing huge loans to Britain to finance World War II.

1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the USSR.

1989 A South African law commission published a working paper calling for the abolition of apartheid and introduction of universal franchise.

1990 Lithuania declared independence from USSR.

1990 US tennis player Jennifer Capriati, aged 13, became the youngest-ever finalist in a professional contest.

[Raistlin]

Please wait a few seconds for Video to load!

[Raistlin]

Births

1626 John Aubrey, English antiquary and author of Brief Lives

1710 Thomas Arne, English composer who wrote 'Rule Britannia'

1881 Kemal Ataturk, Turkish leader

1890 Vaslav Nijinsky, Russian ballet dancer

1908 Max Wall, English actor and comedian

1946 Liza Minnelli, US film actress and singer

Deaths

604 St Gregory, pope

1507 Cesare Borgia, Italian cardinal and politician

1925 Sun Yat-sen, Chinese revolutionary leader

1945 Anne Frank, Dutch Jewish diarist, died in a Nazi concentration camp

1955 Charlie Parker, US jazz saxophonist

1985 Eugene Ormandy, US conductor

1993 Zhen Wang, Chinese communist political leader

Events

1609 Bermuda became a British colony.

1881 France made Tunisia a protectorate.

1904 Britain's first mainline electric train ran from Liverpool to Southport.

1912 The Girl Guides movement (later called Scouts) was founded in the USA.

1930 Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi began his walk to the sea, known as the Salt March, in defiance of the British government's tax on salt and monopoly of the salt trade in India.

1938 Germany annexed Austria.

1940 The Russo-Finnish war ended with Finland signing over territory to the USSR.

1947 US president Harry Truman outlined the 'Truman Doctrine'.

1993 Janet Reno became the first woman to be appointed attorney general of the USA.

1994 32 female deacons were ordained in London as the first female priests of the Church of England.

1997 Susie Maroney, a 22-year-old Australian, became the first woman to swim the Florida Straits, from Cuba to Key West, Florida; the swim took 25 hours.

[Raistlin]

Births

1733 Joseph Priestley, English scientist

1855 Percy Lowell, US astronomer

1884 Hugh Walpole, English novelist

1898 Henry Hathaway, US film director

1939 Neil Sedaka, US singer and songwriter

1950 Joe Bugner, Hungarian-born British boxer

Deaths

1619 Richard Burbage, English actor who built the Globe Theatre

1906 Susan Anthony, US feminist

1943 Stephen Benet, US poet who wrote 'John Brown's Body'

1947 Angela Brazil, English writer of stories about girls' schools

1957 John Middleton Murry, English writer and critic

Events

1781 German-born British astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

1881 Tsar Alexander II of Russia died after a bomb was thrown at him in St Petersburg.

1894 The first public striptease act was performed in Paris.

1928 450 people drowned when a dam burst near Los Angeles, USA.

1930 US astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the planet Pluto; its existence had been predicted 14 years earlier by US astronomer Percy Lowell.

1979 A Marxist coup led by Maurice Bishop took place in Grenada while the prime minister Edward Gairy was in New York at a meeting of the United Nations.

1996 Sixteen children aged five and six, together with their teacher, were shot dead by Thomas Hamilton at a school in Dunblane, Scotland.

1997 A lone Jordanian soldier armed with an automatic rifle fired on a group of 80 Israeli schoolgirls at a border site in the northern Jordan Valley, killing seven of the girls and wounding six other group members, including a teacher.

1997 Sister Nirmala, a 63-year-old nun who left her wealthy Indian army family to join the Missionaries of Charity, was elected Superior General of the order and succeeded Mother Teresa, 83, who retained the title of Mother General.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1804 Johann Strauss the Elder, composer of waltzes, was born in Vienna.

1836 Isabella Mary Mayson, who became Mrs Beeton of cookery book fame, was born in Heidelberg.

1879 Albert Einstein, physicist and mathematician, was born in Ulm, Bavaria.

1883 Death of German philosopher and father of Communism Karl Marx.

1885 First production of The Mikado, by Gilbert and Sullivan, at the Savoy Theatre, London.

1891 The first telephone cable along the English channel bed was laid by the submarine Monarch.

1929 In Chicago, boogie-woogie pioneer Clarence ‘Pinetop’ Smith was killed as he sat at his piano, by a gunman’s bullet not intended for him.

He was 24.

1939 The ‘Timeless’ Test between South Africa and England in Durban ended - it started on March 3 - because the England players had to rejoin their ship.

1961 The New English Bible was published.

1964 jack Ruby was found guilty in Dallas of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of President Kennedy, and was sentenced to death.

He died of a blood clot in the lung in 1967.

1977 The Government announced that prices had risen 69.

5% since 1974.

1984 Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams was shot and seriously injured by Loyalist gunmen.

1991 The ‘‘Birmingham Six’’ -were freed after the court of appeal upheld the men’s claim that officers of the West Midlands Police invented or distorted evidence against them.

[Demonic Angel]

On this day in 1985:

The company Symbolics became the first ever entity, individual or party to register a .com top-level domain name: symbolics.com.

[Raistlin]

Births

1767 Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the USA

1779 William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, British prime minister

1813 John Snow, English physician who pioneered the use of ether as an anaesthetic

1854 Emil von Behring, German bacteriologist

1941 Mike Love, US pop singer, member of the Beach Boys

1947 Ry Cooder, US guitarist

Deaths

44 BC Julius Caesar, Roman emperor, assassinated

1898 Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist who invented the Bessemer converter

1975 Aristotle Onassis, Greek shipping tycoon

1983 Rebecca West, English novelist

1984 Tommy Cooper, English comedian

1990 Farzad Barzoft, Iranian-born journalist working for the Observer, hanged as a spy in Iraq

1994 Mai Zetterling, Swedish actress and director

Events

1892 US inventor Jesse Reno patented the first escalator.

1909 US entrepreneur G S Selfridge opened Britain's first department store in Oxford Street, London.

1917 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated.

1933 Nazi leader Adolf Hitler proclaimed the Third Reich in Germany; he also banned left-wing newspapers and kosher food.

1949 Clothes rationing in Britain ended.

1964 Actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were married in Montreal.

1990 Gorbachev was sworn in as the first executive president of the USSR.

1997 Rebels in Zaire captured Kisangani.

1997 A report from the Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC) revealed that all stages of food handling in Britain, from the abattoir to the plate, were to some degree suspect.

[Bizarra]

A report from the Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC) revealed that all stages of food handling in Britain, from the

abattoir to the plate, were to some degree suspect.

And still we are all healthy & alive.

The Human race has survived unhygenic food since we descended from the trees. It raised our immunity capability & enabled us to to develop the ability to fight back against diseases & now is being suppressed.

I don't advocate maggots & cockroaches crawling at will around Kitchens, but ...............

Will know descend from my personal high horse

[Raistlin]

Births

1774 Matthew Flinders, English navigator who explored the coast of Australia

1787 Georg Ohm, German physicist

1920 Leo McKern, Australian actor

1926 Jerry Lewis, US comedy actor

1941 Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian film director

Deaths

AD37 Tiberius Claudius Nero, Roman emperor

1898 Aubrey Beardsley, English illustrator

1930 Miguel Primo de Rivera, Spanish politician and dictator

1937 Austen Chamberlain, British politician who negotiated the Locarno Pact

1963 William Henry Beveridge, English economist who wrote the report on which the British welfare state was founded

Events

1660 The Long Parliament of England was dissolved, after sitting for 20 years.

1802 The US Military Academy was established at West Point, New York State.

1872 The Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers 1 - 0 in the first FA Cup Final, at Kennington Oval.

1917 On Western Front, German troops withdrew to the specially constructed 'Hindenburg Line' between Arras and Soissons.

1926 The first rocket fuelled by petrol and liquid oxygen was successfully launched by US physicist Robert Goddard.

1973 The new London Bridge was opened.

1978 Red Brigade terrorists kidnapped former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.

1993 In Britain, Chancellor Norman Lamont announced the imposition of the Value Added Tax on domestic fuel.

1996 British boxer Frank Bruno lost his world heavyweight boxing title to the American Mike Tyson.

[Raistlin]

Births

1787 Edmund Kean, English actor

1846 Kate Greenaway, English children's book illustrator

1919 Nat 'King' Cole, US singer

1933 Penelope Lively, English children's novelist

1938 Rudolf Nureyev, Russian ballet dancer

1939 Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail single-handed, non-stop around the world

Deaths

AD180 Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor

1782 Daniel Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and physicist

1853 Christian Doppler, Austrian physicist

1912 Lawrence Oates, English Antarctic explorer, a member of Scott's expedition, who walked into a blizzard, saying 'I am just going outside, and may be some time'

1958 George Wilkins, Australian polar explorer

1986 John Glubb (Glubb Pasha), English soldier, founder of the Arab Legion

1993 Helen Hayes, US film and theatre actress

Events

1897 English-born New Zealand boxer Bob Fitzsimmons won the heavyweight title from US champion Jim Corbett.

1899 The first-ever radio distress call was sent, summoning assistance to a merchant ship aground on the Goodwin Sands, off the Kent coast.

1921 English doctor Marie Stopes opened the Mothers' Clinic in London, to advise women on birth-control.

1948 France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, and Britain signed the Brussels Treaty, for 50-year alliance against armed attack in Europe and providing for economic, social, and military cooperation.

1969 Golda Meir, aged 70, took office as prime minister of Israel, the first woman to do so.

1978 The oil tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground on the coast of Brittany, France, spilling over 220,000 tons of crude oil and causing extensive pollution.

1990 The Bastille opera house, Paris, was opened.

1995 President Clinton in Washington DC met with Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, in the second of two controversial meetings in two days.

1997 British Prime Minister John Major announced that a general election would be held on 1 May and expressed confidence in the chances of his Conservative Party.