On This Day

[Raistlin]

Events

1775 At the outbreak of the War of American Independence, US patriot Paul Revere rode from Charleston to Lexington, warning people as he went that British troops were on their way.

1881 The Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, was opened.

1906 An earthquake and the fire that followed it destroyed most of the city of San Francisco, and killed over 450 people.

1934 The first launderette, called a 'washeteria', was opened in Fort Worth, Texas.

1942 Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of Vichy France.

1946 The League of Nations is dissolved.

1949 Eire proclaimed itself the Republic of Ireland.

1954 General Nasser became prime minister and military governor of Egypt.

1968 The old London Bridge was sold to a US company, who shipped it, stone by stone, to Arizona, where it was re-erected.

1980 The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President.

1986 President Botha of South Africa announced an end to pass laws restricting movement within the country.

1996 18 Greek tourists were killed and 15 were wounded during an attack on a hotel by militant Islamic gunmen in Cairo.

1997 25,000 demonstrators opposed to Brazilian president Cardoso's pro-market reforms came out in support of the 1,500 peasants of the Landless Movement (MST).

Births

1480 Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara

1580 Thomas Middleton, English dramatist.

1857 Clarence Darrow, US lawyer

1882 Leopold Stokowski, USconductor and composer

1922 Barbara Hayle, US film actress

1946 Hayley Mills, English actress

1958 Malcolm Marshall, West Indian cricketer

1973 Haile Gebrselassie, Ethiopian athlete.

Deaths

1552 John Leland, English antiquarian.

1650 Simonds d'Ewes, English antiquarian and politician.

1689 George Jeffreys, the 'hanging judge'

1802 Erasmus Darwin, English physician and writer

1898 Gustave Moreau French painter.

1936 Ottorino Respighi, Italian composer

1945 John Ambrose Fleming, English physicist and electrical engineer.

1947 Josef Tiso, Slovakian leader.

1949 Will Hay, English comedian

1955 Albert Einstein, German-born US physicist

1993 Elisabeth Frink, English sculptor

2002 Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer.

[Raistlin]

Events

1500 Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral landed on the coast of Brazil; he claimed it for Portugal.

1509 Henry VIII ascends the throne of England after the death of his father.

1662 King Charles II granted a charter to the Royal Society of London, which became an important centre of scientific activity in England.

1834 The South Atlantic island of St Helena was declared a British crown colony.

1838 The first steamship to cross the Atlantic, the British ship Sirius, arrived at New York; it made the crossing in 18 days.

1913 Pravda, the "voice" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publications in Saint Petersburg.

1915 The Second Battle of Ypres began, during World War I.

1969 Sailor Robin Knox Johnston returned to Falmouth after a 312-day solo voyage around the world.

1972 The first people to row across the Pacific Ocean, Sylvia Cook and John Fairfax, arrived in Australia; they had been at sea for 362 days.

1995 In the USA, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr separately interviewed President and Hillary Clinton about their involvement in the Whitewater Development Corporation and related matters.

1997 Peruvian special forces stormed the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, bringing to a violent end a four-month hostage crisis.

Births

1451 Queen Isabella of Castile and Leon

1707 Henry Fielding, English novelist

1724 Immanuel Kant, German philosopher

1766 Mme de Staël, French writer

1870 Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary

1899 Vladimir Nabokov, Russian writer

1904 Robert Oppenheimer, US physicist who invented the atom bomb

1912 Kathleen Ferrier, English contralto

1916 Yehudi Menuhin, US-born British violinist

1925 George Cole, English actor

1937 jack Nicholson, US film actor

Deaths

1662 John Tradescant, English naturalist

1778 James Hargreaves, English inventor of the spinning jenny

1821 John Crome, English landscape painter

1827 Thomas Rowlandson, English caricaturist

1908 Henry Campbell-Bannerman, British politician

1993 Andries Treurnicht, South African Conservative Party politician

1994 Richard Nixon, the only US president to have resigned

[Raistlin]

Events

1719 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.

1792 The guillotine was first used in Paris.

1792 "La Marseillaise" (French national anthem) was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

1859 Work began on the Suez Canal, supervised by the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, who designed it.

1915 In World War I, Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli in Turkey.

1925 Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany.

1953 Francis Crick and James D. Watson published their findings on the double helix structure of DNA

1959 The St Lawrence Seaway was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II and President Eisenhower, linking the Atlantic with ports on the Great Lakes.

1975 The first free elections for 50 years were held in Portugal, resulting in a precarious Socialist government.

1980 A US commando mission to rescue hostages in Iran failed with the loss of eight lives.

1982 British forces recaptured South Georgia.

1997 The UN General Assembly, convening in an emergency session, voted to condemn Israeli plans to build the Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem. Only the USA and Micronesia joined Israel in opposing the measure.

Births

1214 King Louis IX of France

1284 King Edward II of England

1599 Oliver Cromwell, Puritan leader in the English Civil War

1769 Mark Isambard Brunel, French-born British engineer

1873 Walter de la Mare, English poet and novelist

1874 Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor and pioneer in the development of radio

1918 Ella Fitzgerald, US jazz singer

1940 Al Pacino, US film actor

1947 Johann Cruyff, Dutch footballer

Deaths

1265 Roger de Quincy, 2nd Earl of Winchester, English Crusader

1595 Torquato Tasso, Italian poet

1744 Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer who invented the centigrade thermometer

1800 William Cowper, English poet

1840 Siméon-Denis Poisson, French mathematician

1878 Anna Sewell, English author

1976 Carol Reed, English film director

1982 Celia Johnson, English actress

1995 Ginger Rogers, US actress, dancer, and singer

[Raistlin]

Events

1923 The Duke of York and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, were married in Westminster Abbey, London.

1933 The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, was established.

1937 The Spanish town of Guernica was almost destroyed by German bombers acting in support of the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.

1942 1,549 miners died in an explosion at the Honkeiko Colliery, Manchuria.

1957 English astronomer Patrick Moore presented the first broadcast of The Sky at Night.

1962 The NASA spacecraft Ranger 4 crashed into the Moon.

1964 Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to become the Republic of Tanzania.

1968 The largest underground nuclear device ever to be tested in the USA exploded in Nevada.

1986 Radioactive material was leaked from a damaged nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, Ukraine; the effects could be measured thousands of miles away.

1994 South Africa's first non-racial democratic elections since the abandonment of apartheid.

Births

AD121 Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor

1765 Lady Hamilton, English mistress of Horatio Nelson

1785 John James Audubon, US naturalist and painter

1798 EugŠne Delacroix, French painter

1880 Michel Fokine, Russian ballet dancer and choreographer

1889 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher

1894 Rudolf Hess, German Nazi leader

Deaths

1940 Karl Bosch, German metallurgist and chemist

1970 Gypsy Rose Lee, US dancer and striptease artist

1980 Cicely Courtneidge, British actress

1984 Count Basie, US bandleader

1986 Broderick Crawford, USfilm actor

[Bizarra]

An interesting fact about Guernica. I have a Basque friend, who is a School Teacher. She told me that when she was in school, they were taught that the citizens of Guernica destroyed the town themselves :censor:

History is written by the winners. The winners have now lost & the truth is revealed

[Raistlin]

Events

1296 An English army, led by Edward I, defeated the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar.

1749 The first official performance of Handel's music for the Royal Fireworks finished early due to the outbreak of fire.

1937 King George VI performed the official opening of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England.

1939 Conscription for men aged 20 - 21 was announced in Britain.

1947 Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl set off from Callao, Peru, heading for Polynesia to prove his theory that the original Polynesian islanders could have come from Peru.

1960 French Togoland became independent as the Republic of Togo.

1961 Sierra Leone became an independent republic within the Commonwealth.

1968 Abortion became legal in Britain, when pregnancy endangers the physical or mental health of a woman or child.

1992 Betty Boothroyd was elected the first woman speaker of the House of Commons.

1997 Top economic decision-makers of the Group of Seven (G7) leading industrialized nations signalled their concern over the continued rise of the US dollar, especially in relation to the weakened Japanese yen.

Births

1737 Edward Gibbon, English historian who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

1759 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, English feminist author

1791 Samuel Morse, US inventor of Morse Code

1822 Ulysses Simpson Grant, US general and 18th president

1904 Cecil Day Lewis, English poet

1932 Anouk Aimée, French film actress

1937 Sandy Dennis, US film actress

1969 Darcey Bussell, British ballerina

Deaths

1521 Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese navigator, murdered by islanders in the Philippines

1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson, US poet and essayist

1915 Alexander Skryabin, Russian composer

1932 Harold Hart Crane, US poet

1972 Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana

1995 Peter Wright, British intelligence agent

[Raistlin]

Events

1603 Queen Elizabeth I's funeral took place at Westminster Abbey.

1770 English navigator Captain James Cook and his crew, including the botanist Joseph Banks, landed in Australia, at the place which was later named Botany Bay.

1789 The crew of the ship Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian, mutinied against their captain, William Bligh.

1919 The League of Nations was founded.

1923 The first FA Cup Final was held at Wembley Stadium.

1939 Adolf Hitler denounced the 1935 British-German naval agreement and repeated demands on Poland.

1945 In Italy, Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and members of his entourage were shot by partisans; the bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were displayed in Milan the following day.

1965 US marines intervened in an attempted communist coup in the Dominican Republic.

1969 French president General de Gaulle resigned.

1996 President Clinton testified as a defence witness in the Whitewater affair.

1996 A lone gunman shot and killed 32 people, including several children, in Port Arthur, Tasmania.

1997 The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention went into effect. Russia, Iraq and North Korea were notable nations who had not ratified the treaty.

2001 Millionnaire Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist.

2003 Apple Computer's iTunes music Store launched, selling 1 million songs in its first week.

Births

1442 Edward IV, King of England

1758 James Monroe, 5th president of the USA

1795 Charles Sturt, British explorer of Australia

1878 Lionel Barrymore, US actor

1908 Oskar Schindler, Austrian businessman

1916 Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian automobile manufacturer

1924 Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia

1937 Saddam Hussein, former leader of Iraq

1941 Ann-Margret, Swedish actress

1942 Mike Brearley, English cricketer

Deaths

1918 Gavrilo Princip, Bosnian revolutionary assassin who caused World War I by killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife

1936 King Fuad I of Egypt

1945 Benito Mussolini

1992 Francis Bacon, Irish-born painter

1992 Olivier Messiaen, French composer

[Raistlin]

Events

1429 The Siege of Orléans was lifted by a French army under the leadership of Joan of Arc.

1884 Oxford University agreed to admit female students to examinations.

1913 Swedish-born US inventor Gideon Sundback patented the zip fastener in its modern form - earlier versions had not been successful.

1916 Republican rebels destroyed the Post Office in Dublin.

1945 The German army in Italy surrendered to the Allies under the British General Alexander.

1992 Four white policemen in Los Angeles were acquitted of beating a black motorist, despite video-tape evidence, 58 people died in riots and looting which broke out in protest at the acquittals.

1996 William Colby, director of the CIA 1973-76, drowned after his canoe capsizes.

1997 A US Army court-martial jury convicted a former drill instructor, Staff Sgt Delmar G Simpson, of raping six women trainees under his command in 1995 and 1996.

Births

1879 Thomas Beecham, English conductor

1899 'Duke' Ellington, US composer and bandleader

1901 Emperor Hirohito of Japan

1907 Fred Zinneman, US film director

1934 Peter de la Bilière, British commander in the Gulf War

1936 Zubin Mehta, Indian conductor

1970 Andre Agassi, American tennis player

Deaths

1707 George Farquhar, Irish playwright

1933 Constantinos Cavafy, Greek poet

1937 Wallace Carothers, US chemist who patented nylon

1980 Alfred Hitchcock, English film director

1988 Andrew Cruikshank, English actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1789 George Washington became the first president of the USA.

1803 France sold Louisiana to the USA.

1902 Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande had its first performance, in Paris.

1945 In Germany, Adolf Hitler shot himself in his bunker in Berlin; Eva Braun took poison.

1973 President Nixon accepted responsibility for the bugging of the Watergate building but denied any personal involvement.

1975 The Vietnam War ended, with the South surrendering unconditionally to the North.

1979 The Jubilee Line on the London Underground was officially opened.

1980 Queen Juliana of the Netherlands abdicated and was succeeded by her daughter, Beatrix.

1993 The World Wide Web was born at CERN

1995 The cease-fire in Bosnia-Herzegovina expired; during May violence escalated.

1995 Bill Clinton became the first U.S. President to visit Northern Ireland.

1996 In Rio de Janeiro, a policeman was found guilty of six counts of murder and sentenced to a total of 309 years in prison for killing street children in 1993.

Births

1770 David Thompson, English explorer

1777 Karl Gauss, German mathematician and astronomer

1870 Franz Lehár, Hungarian composer

1883 Jaroslav Hasek, Czech novelist

1909 Queen Juliana of the Netherlands

1926 Cloris Leachman, USfilm actress

1946 King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden

Deaths

1865 Robert Fitzroy, English admiral and meteorologist

1883 Edouard Manet, French painter

1943 Otto Jespersen, Danish philologist

1945 Adolf Hitler, German fascist dictator

1945 Eva Braun, German mistress and later wife of Adolf Hitler

1983 Muddy Waters, US blues singer

1983 George Balanchine, Russian choreographer

1985 Charles Francis Richter, American seismologist

[Raistlin]

Births

1469 Niccoló Machiavelli, Italian politician

1860 John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist

1898 Golda Meir, Russian-born Israeli prime minister

1920 Sugar Ray Robinson, US boxer

1923 Norman Thelwell, English cartoonist

1933 James Brown, US singer

1934 Henry Cooper, English boxer

Deaths

1703 Eglon van der Neer, Dutch painter

1845 Thomas Hood, English poet

1958 Henry Cornelius, South African-born film director

1969 Karl Freund, Czech-born US film cameraman and photographer

Events

1381 The weavers of Ghent, led by Philip van Artevelde, took Bruges; other Flemish towns revolted.

1493 Pope Alexander VI published the first bull Inter cetera dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal.

1497 A rising broke out in Cornwall, provoked by taxation; James Tutchet, Lord Audley, led an army of 15,000 from Taunton through the southern counties to attack London.

1747 The Battle of Cape Finisterre took place, at which the British defeated the French.

1808 A duel was fought from two hot-air balloons over Paris, the first of its kind.

1841 New Zealand was declared a British colony.

1898 Bread riots in Milan were put down with heavy loss of life.

1906 The Sinai Peninsula became Egyptian territory after Turkey renounced its claims.

1951 King George VI opened the Festival of Britain.

1958 US President Eisenhower proposed demilitarization of Antarctica, subsequently accepted by the countries concerned.

1982 Israeli Prime Minister Begin announced that Israel would assert sovereignty over occupied West Bank.

1989 The centre-right coalition government under Ruud Lubbers in Holland resigned over an environmental issue.

1995 Republican protesters, many of whom were reportedly Sinn Fein members, in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, clashed with police.

[Raistlin]

Births

1825 Thomas Huxley, English naturalist

1827 John Speke, English explorer who discovered the source of the Nile

1852 Alice Liddell, the girl for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland

1882 Sylvia Pankhurst, English suffragette

1923 Eric Sykes, English comedian

1929 Audrey Hepburn, Dutch-born US film actress

Deaths

1879 William Froude, English engineer and mathematician

1955 Georges Enesco, Romanian composer

1969 Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, English author

1980 Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavian soldier and president

1984 Diana Dors, English film actress

Events

1471 The Battle of Tewkesbury, the last battle in the Wars of the Roses, took place; the Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians.

1780 The first Derby was run at Epsom; the winner was Diomed.

1896 The first issue of the Daily Mail was published in London.

1904 Work began on the Panama Canal.

1926 The General Strike began in Britain, with almost half of the country's 6,000,000 trade-union members participating; it continued until 12 May.

1973 The world's tallest building, Sears Tower, Chicago, was completed.

1979 Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Britain.

1982 Argentine missiles sank the British destroyer HMS Sheffield; 20 were killed.

1983 President Reagan declared support for the aim of the Nicaraguan Contras to overthrow the Sandinista government.

1994 Israel and the PLO sign an agreement giving Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

1997 Peace talks between Zaire's President Mobutu and rebel leader Laurent Kabila, hosted by South African President Mandela, ended with some degree of hope that a diplomatic solution to Zaire's civil war would be found.

1997 More than 100 Rwandan Hutu refugees making their way back to their homeland from camps in Zaire suffocated or were crushed to death on an overcrowded narrow-gauge train.

[Raistlin]

Births

1061 Godfrey of Bouillon, Norman crusader, first king of Jerusalem

1512 Gerardus Mercator (Gerhard Kremer), German cartographer

1747 Leopold III, Holy Roman Emperor

1803 George Borrow, English author

1813 Sören Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher

1818 Karl Marx, German philosopher and author

1883 Archibald, Lord Wavell, British soldier

Deaths

1527 Charles, Duke of Bourbon

1765 Edward Young, English poet

1821 Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor

1902 Francis Bret Harte, US author

Events

1525 The Peasants' Revolt in south Germany was suppressed and the Anabaptist preacher Thomas Münzer was hanged a few days later.

1751 Portuguese foreign secretary Sebastia Pombal curbed the power of the Inquisition in Portugal by decreeing that no auto da fé should take place without government approval.

1762 The Treaty of St Petersburg was signed between Russia and Prussia; Russia restored all territory taken and formed an alliance with Prussia.

1816 Carl August of Saxe-Weimar granted the first German constitution.

1863 In the American Civil War, Confederate troops defeated Federal forces at the Battle of Chancellorsville, but 'Stonewall' Jackson died of his wounds five days later.

1864 The indecisive Battle of the Wilderness was fought in Virginia, between Federal troops under Ulysses S Grant and Confederate troops under Robert E Lee.

1865 A revolt in San Domingo forced Spain to renounce sovereignty.

1921 Chanel No. 5 perfume was launched.

1955 The occupation régime in West Germany ended.

1981 Riots in Northern Ireland, followed the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in the Maze prison.

1994 Civil war erupted in the Yemen between north and south states.

2010 My Dads Birthday GRHS

[Raistlin]

Births

1501 Pope Marcellus II

1574 Pope Innocent X

1754 Thomas William Coke, Earl of Leicester

1756 André Massena, French soldier

1758 Maximilien François Robespierre, French revolutionary leader

1759 François Guillaume Andrieu

1856 Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychoanalyst

1856 Robert Edwin Peary, US Arctic explorer

1861 Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet and philosopher

Deaths

1540 Juan Luis Vives, Spanish philosopher

1540 Francesco Guicciardini, Italian historian

1631 Robert Cotton, English antiquary

1638 Cornelius Jansen, Dutch theologian

1859 Alexander von Humboldt, German explorer

1862 Henry David Thoreau, US poet

1949 Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian playwright

1992 Marlene Dietrich, German-born singer and actress

1993 Ann Todd, British film actress

Events

1527 The Sack of Rome, when imperialist troops under Charles, Duke of Bourbon (who was killed), mutinied, pillaging the city and killing some 4,000 of the inhabitants. Valuable art treasures were looted. Law was not restored until Feb1528.

1576 The Fifth War of Religion in France ended; the Huguenots were granted freedom of worship in all places except Paris.

1626 Dutch settler Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from native Americans for goods worth about $25.

1840 The Penny Black, the first postage stamp, was issued in Britain.

1882 Fenians murdered Irish chief secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and T H Burke, Irish under-secretary, in Phoenix Park, Dublin.

1910 George V became king of the United Kingdom on the death of Edward VII.

1937 The German zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire in New Jersey, USA, killing 36 passengers.

1954 Roger Bannister was the first man to run a mile in under 4 minutes, at the Iffley Road Sports Ground, Oxford, England.

1994 The Channel Tunnel was inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth II and President François Mitterrand.

1995 The Queen Mother in Hyde Park, London opened three days of VE Day celebrations in Britain. The tributes were attended by leading figures from about 60 nations.

1997 Britain's new Labour government granted greater autonomy to the Bank of England, giving it the power to control the nation's interest rates for the first time in history.

[Raistlin]

Births

1711 David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian

1812 Robert Browning, English poet

1833 Johannes Brahms, German composer

1840 Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer

1847 Archibald Philip Primrose, Lord Rosebery, British politician

1901 Gary Cooper, US film actor

Deaths

1617 Jacques de Thou, French historian and politician

1718 Mary of Modena, consort of James II

1868 Henry, Lord Brougham, British politician

1932 Paul Doumer, French president, assassinated

1940 George Lansbury, British politician

1941 James George Frazer, Scottish anthropologist

Events

1793 The second partition of Poland was effected, with Russia taking Lithuania and W Ukraine, and Prussia taking Danzig, Thorn, Posen, Gnesen, and Kalisch.

1821 The Africa Company was dissolved because of heavy expenses incurred, and Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Gold Coast were taken over by the British government to form British West Africa.

1832 Greece became an independent kingdom.

1848 Polish rebels surrendered after Prussian troops put down an insurrection in Warsaw.

1915 German forces sank the liner Lusitania off the Irish coast, with the loss of 1,198 lives; the USA was brought to the verge of war with Germany.

1928 Women's suffrage in Britain was reduced from the age of 30 to 21.

1954 Dien Bien Phu fell to Communist Vietnamese.

1960 Leonid Brezhnev replaced Marshal Voroshilov as president of the USSR.

1995 Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, leader of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) Party, was elected to a seven-year term as president of France in a run-off.

1996 The first international war-crimes trial since Nuremberg and Tokyo opened in the Hague. Dushan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, was accused of killing, raping, and torturing Muslim civilians detained in various prison camps in northwest Bosnia in 1992.

1996 South Africa approved a new constitution outlawing discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, sex, age, and religion, and outlawing capital punishment and abortion..

1997 Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb reserve policeman, was found guilty on 11 counts of persecution and beatings, by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

[Raistlin]

Events

1559 Queen Elizabeth I of England signed the Act of Uniformity.

1886 The Presidential Succession law was passed in the USA, providing for succession to presidency in the event of the Deaths of both the President and the Vice-President.

1892 A ban was imposed on natives of the Congo, prohibiting them from collecting rubber and ivory other than for the state.

1902 On the Caribbean island of Martinique, the volcano Mount Pelée erupted, killing 30,000 people.

1914 Paramount Pictures was formed.

1945 Formal end of World War II, celebrated as VE day.

1950 Douglas MacArthur was appointed commander of UN forces in Korea.

1958 J F Dulles stated in the Berlin House of Representatives that an attack on Berlin would be regarded as an attack on the Allies.

1988 President Mitterrand (Socialist) defeated Jacques Chirac (Gaullist) in French Presidential elections, with over 54% of the vote.

1997 Abbas Gokal was convicted of a $1.2 billion/£740 million fraud involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI); he was sentenced to 14 years in jail and fined a record £2.9 million.

2005 The new Canadian War Museum opened to commemorate the 60th anniversary of V-E Day.

Births

1500 Peter Martyr (Pieto Martire Vermigli), Italian religious reformer

1582 Phineas Fletcher, English poet

1592 Francis Quarles, English poet

1653 Claude de Villars, French soldier

1668 Alain René Lesage, French novelist and playwright

1698 Henry Baker, English naturalist

1796 François Mignet, French historian

1858 Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Italian composer

1884 Harry S Truman, 33rd president of the USA

1926 David Attenborough, English naturalist and broadcaster

Deaths

1462 Palla Strozzi, founder of the first public library in Florence

1794 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, French chemist, guillotined

1803 Vittorio Alfieri, Italian poet

1873 John Stuart Mill, English philosopher

1880 Gustave Flaubert, French novelist

1936 Oswald Spengler, German philosopher

1947 Henry Gordon Selfridge, US-born British store-owner

1986 Emmanuel Shinwell, British politician

1994 George Peppard, US actor

1999 Dirk Bogarde, British actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1386 The Treaty of Windsor, between kings Richard and John, made a perpetual alliance between England and Portugal.

1695 The Scottish Parliament met and enquired into the massacre of Glencoe.

1828 The British Test and Corporation Acts were repealed so that Catholic and Protestant Nonconformists could hold public office in Britain.

1939 British prime minister Winston Churchill urged military alliance with USSR.

1940 RAF began night bombing of Germany.

1940 Romania placed itself under German protection.

1945 Russian troops took Prague.

1946 Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicated and Umberto II proclaimed himself king.

1955 West Germany was admitted as a member of NATO.

1978 Aldo Moro was found dead in Rome after the Italian government refused to make concessions to his captors.

1996 The Bulgarian national currency, the levy, collapsed after the Bulgarian national bank announced a rise in its interest rate from 67% to 108%.

1996 The British House of Commons voted to maintain the Ministry of Defence ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces.

2004 Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov was killed in a landmine bomb blast during a World War II memorial victory parade in Chechnya.

Births

1741 Giovanni Paisiello, Italian composer

1773 Jean Sismondi, Swiss historian and economist

1800 John Brown, US abolitionist

1860 J M Barrie, Scottish writer

1873 Howard Carter, British Egyptologist

1930 Joan Sims, English actress

1934 Alan Bennett, English actor and playwright

1936 Glenda Jackson, English actress

Deaths

1618 James Lancaster, English navigator

1657 William Bradford, English-born American colonist

1707 Dietrich Buxtehude, Danish organist and composer

1850 Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac, French physicist and chemist

1891 Helena Blavatsky, Russian founder of the Theosophical Society

1944 Ethel Smyth, English composer and suffragette

1986 Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese sherpa

1993 Freya Stark, English traveller, mountaineer, and writer

2004 Akhmad Kadyrov, Chechen president

[Raistlin]

Events

973 Edgar the Peaceful was crowned at Bath as King of all England; he then went to Chester, where eight Scottish and Welsh kings rowed him on the Dee. 1534 English King Henry VIII made peace with his nephew, James V of Scotland.

1709 The first mass emigration of Germans from the Palatinate to North America began.

1812 British prime minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the House of Commons.

1824 British forces took Rangoon, Burma.

1867 Luxembourg gained its independence.

1949 Siam changed its name to Thailand.

1949 Israel was admitted to the United Nations.

1995 It was confirmed that a mysterious disease that had broken out in Zaire was caused by the Ebola virus, one of the deadliest known viruses. WHO officials reported 30 May that 153 people had died in the outbreak.

1996 An airliner en route from Miami to Atlanta crashed in Florida, killing all 109 passengers and crew, raising questions over the safety of discount airline companies using old aircraft.

1997 The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue trounced the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 19 moves.

Births

1811 Chang and Eng, Chinese Siamese twins

1888 Irving Berlin, US composer

1889 Paul Nash, English painter

1892 Margaret Rutherford, English actress

1904 Salvador Dalí, Catalan painter

1905 Mikhail Sholokhov, Russian novelist

1950 Jeremy Paxman, British journalist and author

Deaths

1163 Abdal-Mu'min, Almohad ruler of Muslim Spain and NW Africa

1610 Matteo Ricci, Jesuit missionary

1778 William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, British politician

1812 Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

1871 John Herschel, English astronomer

1920 William Dean Howells, US novelist and critic

1960 John D. Rockefeller, Jr., American philanthropist

1981 Bob Marley, Jamaican singer and musician

1988 Kim Philby, English-born Soviet spy

[Raistlin]

Events

1203 Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus seized Trebizond and established a new Greek empire there.

1607 Riots took place in Northamptonshire and other Midland counties of England in protest at widespread enclosure of common land.

1643 Oliver Cromwell defeated the Royalists at Grantham, England.

1787 The 'First Fleet' left Portsmouth, with eleven ships full of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.

1846 Formal declaration of war by USA against Mexico.

1888 Serfdom was abolished in Brazil.

1915 The names of emperors of Germany and Austria were struck off the roll of Knights of the Garter.

1927 'Black Friday' with the collapse of Germany's economic system.

1968 US and North Vietnamese negotiators began peace talks in Paris.

1981 A gunman seriously wounded Pope John Paul II in an assassination attempt in St Peter's Square.

1994 Israel withdrew military forces from the Jericho area of the occupied West Bank to make way for self-rule by Palestinian National Authority.

1995 Team New Zealand's Black Magic 1 completed a five-race sweep over the US Team Stars & Stripes to win the America's Cup.

Births

1265 Dante Alighieri, Italian poet

1753 Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot, French revolutionary leader

1792 Pope Pius IX

1840 Alphonse Daudet, French novelist

1842 Arthur Sullivan, English composer

1857 Ronald Ross, British bacteriologist

1907 Daphne du Maurier, English novelist

1914 Joe Louis, US boxer

1937 Trevor Baylis, English inventor of the wind-up radio

1950 Stevie Wonder, US singer

Deaths

1619 Johan van Oldenbarneveldt, Dutch lawyer and politician

1832 Georges Cuvier, French zoologist

1835 John Nash, English architect

1885 Friedrich Henle, German anatomist

1930 Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian Arctic explorer

1961 Gary Cooper, US film actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1080 Walcher, Bishop of Durham and Earl of Northumberland was murdered; William (the Conqueror) consequently ravaged the area; he also invaded Scotland and built the castle at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

1147 Conrad and the German crusaders departed from Regensburg.

1264 The English barons under Simon de Montfort defeated Henry III at the Battle of Lewes.

1796 The first smallpox vaccination administered

1804 The Lewis and Clark Expedition began their historic journey up the Missouri River.

1889 The children's charity the NSPCC was launched in London

1897 By treaty with Ethiopia Britain abandoned certain claims in Somaliland but Emperor Menelek refused to surrender his claims to lands near the Nile.

1921 29 Fascists returned in Italian elections.

1948 As the British mandate in Palestine came to an end, a Jewish provisional government was formed in Israel with Chaim Weizmann as president and David Ben-Gurion as premier.

1969 President Nixon suggested the mutual withdrawal of US, Allied, and North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam.

1972 Ulster Defence Association set up the first Protestant 'no go' areas in Belfast.

1995 Argentine President Carlos Saul Menem was reelected outright in balloting, as voters apparently signaling a preference for a continuation of free-market policies instituted under his administration.

Births

1553 Marguérite de Valois, queen of Navarre

1686 Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, German physicist, the first to use mercury in thermometers

1771 Robert Owen, Welsh social reformer

1841 Squire Bancroft, English actor

1853 Hall Caine, English novelist

1885 Otto Klemperer, German conductor

1905 Hastings Banda, president of Malawi

1926 Eric Morecambe, British comedian

Deaths

1565 Jean Grolier, French diplomat and bibliophile

1610 Henry IV of France, assassinated

1871 Daniel Auber, French composer

1912 August Strindberg, Swedish playwright

1925 Henry Rider Haggard, English novelist

1979 Jean Rhys, British novelist

1998 Frank Sinatra, American singer and actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1252 Pope Innocent IV issued the ad exstirpanda, bull authorizing the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.

1567 Mary Queen of Scots married Bothwell in Edinburgh.

1649 The Levellers were defeated at Burford, England.

1718 World's first machine gun patented by English lawyer

1756 The Seven Years' War begins.

1848 A communist rising began in Paris, after news of suppression of Polish revolt; workers overturned the government and set up a provisional administration which immediately collapsed.

1902 Portugal declared itself bankrupt.

1905 Las Vegas, Nevada, founded.

1922 Germany ceded Upper Silesia to Poland.

1937 Muslim rising in Albania.

1946 US President Truman signed a bill of credit for $3.75 billion for Britain.

1948 Egyptian troops intervened in Palestine on the side of the Arabs.

1957 Britain exploded the first British thermonuclear bomb in megaton range at Christmas Island, in the Central Pacific.

1958 USSR placed Sputnik 3 in orbit for aerodynamic studies.

1990 Home-produced beef was banned in UK schools and hospitals as a result of concern over 'mad-cow disease' (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE).

1991 Edith Cresson became first woman prime minister of France.

Births

1773 Clemens Prince Metternich, Austrian politician

1859 Pierre Curie, French physicist

1862 Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian novelist and playwright

1909 James Mason, US film actor

1935 Ted Dexter, English cricketer

1936 Ralph Steadman, British cartoonist

Deaths

1740 Ephraim Chambers, English encyclopedist

1782 Richard Wilson, Welsh landscape painter

1847 Daniel O'Connell, Irish leader

1886 Emily Dickinson, US poet

1922 Leslie Ward ('Spy'), English caricaturist

1967 Edward Hopper, American painter

1987 Rita Hayworth, US film actress

1995 Eric Porter, English actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1203 Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was crowned Latin Emperor of Constantinople.

1220 Henry III of England laid the foundation stone of a new Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey, thus beginning the new abbey-church (1245).

1532 Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor of England.

1770 The Dauphin of France (later Louis XVI) married Marie Antoinette, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

1804 Napoleon was declared Emperor.

1836 Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin

1907 The Pact of Cartagena was declared between Britain, France, and Spain to counter German designs on the Balearic and Canary Islands.

1920 Joan of Arc was declared a saint.

1929 The first Academy Awards took place at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Tickets cost $5.

1949 Chinese Nationalists organized a Supreme Council under Chiang Kai-shek, which began to remove forces to Formosa.

1995 Japanese authorities arrested Shoko Asahara, the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese religious sect that had been linked to a March nerve-gas attack on Tokyo's subway system.

1997 With Laurent Kabila's rebels poised to take Kinshasa, capital of Zaire, government officials announced that President Mobutu Sese Seko was giving up his powers.

1997 At a White House ceremony, US President Clinton formally apologized on behalf of successive US administrations for the use of impoverished black syphilis victims for a 30-year medical research project beginning in 1932 without their knowledge or consent.

Births

1316 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor

1718 Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian scholar

1760 Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, French soldier who wrote the Marseillaise

1782 John Sell Cotman, English watercolourist

1905 Henry Fonda, US film actor

1936 Roy Hudd, English comedian

Deaths

1164 Héloise, French nun

1164 Peter the Lombard, Bishop of Paris

1703 Charles Perrault, French writer of fairy tales

1862 Edward Gibbon Wakefield, British colonial politician

1892 Edward Augustus Freeman, English historian

1942 Bronislaw Malinowski, Polish anthropologist

1953 Django Reinhardt, Belgian musician

1984 Andy Kaufman, American comedian

1990 Sammy Davis, Jr., American singer

1990 Jim Henson, puppeteer

[Raistlin]

Events

1215 The English barons in revolt against King John took possession of London.

1521 Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was executed for treason.

1527 Archbishop Warham began a secret inquiry at Greenwich into Henry VIII's marriage with Catherine of Aragon, the first step in divorce proceedings.

1536 Archbishop Cranmer declared Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn invalid; she was executed on the 19th.

1742 Frederick II defeated the Austrians at Chotusitz.

1792 The New York Stock Exchange was formed with signing of the Buttonwood Agreement by 24 New York City stockbrokers

1846 Adolphe Sax patented the saxaphone.

1885 Germany annexed Northern New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago in SW Pacific.

1900 The Relief of Mafeking by British troops against the besieging Boer forces.

1939 Sweden, Norway and Finland rejected Germany's offer of non-aggression pacts, but Denmark, Estonia and Latvia accepted.

1960 The Kariba Dam, Rhodesia, was opened.

1977 The Likud bloc won Israeli elections for the first time.

1993 In Britain, nurse Beverley Allitt was convicted of murdering four babies under her care at the Grantham and Kesteven hospital.

1994 President Banda was deposed in Malawi.

Births

1717 Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria

1749 Edward Jenner, English pioneer of vaccination

1855 Timothy Healy, Irish nationalist leader

1866 Erik Satie, French composer

1945 Dennis Hopper, US film actor, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Indian cricketer

1956 Sugar Ray Leonard, US boxer

Deaths

1510 Sandro Botticelli, Italian painter

1575 Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury

1729 Samuel Clarke, English philosopher

1838 Charles de Talleyrand-Périgord, French politician

1934 Cass Gilbert, US architect

[Bizarra]

1836 Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin

Incest & paedophilia? <_<

[Bizarra]

I just thought that the entry "Heloise French Nun" was too brief for a very remarkable & famous Lady.

Below is a brief & not comprehensive version of her story

Abelard and Heloise are one of the most celebrated couples of all time, known for their love affair... and for the tragedy that separated them.

In a letter to Abelard, Heloise wrote: "You know, beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the manner in which I lost you."

It's perhaps the most tragic love story ever ... Abelard and Heloise were two well-educated people, brought together by their passion, then separated by the act of her uncle's vengeance.

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was a French philosopher, considered one of the greatest thinkers of the 12th century. Among his works is "Sic et Non," a list of 158 philosophical and theological questions. His teachings were controversial, and he was repeatedly charged with heresy. Even with the controversy that surrounded him at times, nothing probably prepared him for the consequences of his love affair with Heloise, a relationship destined to change his life in dramatic ways.

Heloise (1101-1164) was the niece and pride of Canon Fulbert. She was well-educated by her uncle in Paris. Abelard later writes in his "Historica Calamitatum": "Her uncle's love for her was equaled only by his desire that she should have the best education which he could possibly procure for her. Of no mean beauty, she stood out above all by reason of her abundant knowledge of letters."

Wishing to become acquainted with Heloise, Abelard persuaded Fulbert to allow him to teach Heloise. Using the pretext that his own house was a "handicap" to his studies, Abelard further moved in to the house of Heloise and her uncle. She was supposedly a great beauty, one of the most well-educated women of her time; so, perhaps it's not surprising that Abelard and she became lovers. Also, she was more than 20 years younger than Abelard... And, of course, Fulbert discovered their love, as Abelard would later write: "Oh, how great was the uncle's grief when he learned the truth, and how bitter was the sorrow of the lovers when we were forced to part!"

They were separated, but that didn't end the affair. Instead, they discovered that Heloise was pregnant... She left her uncle's house when he was not at home; and she stayed with Abelard's sister until Astrolabe was born.

Abelard asked for Fulbert's forgiveness, and permission to marry Heloise; then with Fulbert's assent, Abelard tried to persuade Heloise to marry him. In Chapter 7 of "Historia Calamitatum," Abelard wrote: "She, however, most violently disapproved of this, and for two chief reasons: the danger thereof, and the disgrace which it would bring upon me... What penalties, she said, would the world rightly demand of her if she should rob it of so shining a light!"

When she finally agreed to become Abelard's wife, Heloise told him, "Then there is no more left but this, that in our doom the sorrow yet to come shall be no less than the love we two have already known." In regard to that statement, Abelard later wrote, in his "Historica," "Nor in this, as now the whole world knows, did she lack the spirit of prophecy."

Secretly married, the couple left Astrolabe with Abelard's sister. When Heloise went to stay with the nuns at Argenteuil, her uncle and kinsmen believe Abelard had cast her off, forcing her to become a nun.

Violently incensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night while I all unsuspecting was asleep in a secret room in my lodgings, they broke in with the help of one of my servants whom they had bribed. There they had vengeance on me with a most cruel and most shameful punishment, such as astounded the whole world; for they cut off those parts of my body with which I had done that which was the cause of their sorrow.

[Raistlin]

Events

1152 Henry II of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine.

1302 A French garrison was massacred in the 'Matins of Bruges', when the Flemings revolted against the French occupation.

1593 An arrest warrant was issued for Christopher Marlowe after Playwright Thomas Kyd accused him of heresy.

1764 The British Parliament amended the Sugar Act from a commercial to a fiscal measure, to tax American colonists.

1804 Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of France.

1878 Colombia granted a French company a nine-year concession to build the Panama Canal.

1897 Bram Stoker's gothic vampire story Dracula, was published.

1900 Tonga became a British protectorate.

1940 At Japan's request Britain prohibited the passage of war materials for China passing through Burma.

1944 Monte Cassino, Italy, was taken by Allied forces during World War II.

1980 Mount St Helens, USA, erupted for the first time since 1857, devastating an area of 600 sq km/230 sq mi.

1991 Chemist Helen Sharman was the first Briton to go into space, as a participant in a Soviet space mission.

1996 Romano Prodi was sworn in as Italy's 55th postwar prime minister.

Births

1474 Isabella d'Este, Marquise of Mantua

1525 Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Flemish painter

1525 George Gascoigne, English poet and playwright

1525 Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine

1525 John Stow, English historian

1692 Joseph Butler, English philosopher

1872 Bertrand Russell, English philosopher

1883 Walter Gropius, US architect

1897 Frank Capra, American producer, director, and writer

1914 Pierre Balmain, French fashion designer

Deaths

1692 Elias Ashmole, English antiquarian

1799 Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, French playwright

1803 Johann Gottfried von Herder, German critic and poet

1909 George Meredith, English novelist

1911 Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer

1935 Paul Dukas, French composer

1941 Werner Sombart, German economist