On This Day

[Raistlin]

The Scots don't count...

I do and as long as yer esconced in the boldest realms of Surrey, then I guess its a safe place....

That's why we built the wall...

[Bizarra]

The Scots don't count...

I do and as long as yer esconced in the boldest realms of Surrey, then I guess its a safe place....

That's why we built the wall...

Oh You aren't English after all that patriotic spouting? Or do you mean that you are descended from one of the Roman's slave/forced labour gangs who built it? :lol2:

[Raistlin]

As long as it keeps them out who cares...

[Bizarra]

As long as it keeps them out who cares...

Points of view are funny things Bothy sees that the other way round

[Phoenix999]

As long as it keeps them out who cares...

Points of view are funny things Bothy sees that the other way round

So it keeps them in then

[Bizarra]

As long as it keeps them out who cares...

Points of view are funny things Bothy sees that the other way round

So it keeps them in then

Out of England & in Scotland Bothy sees it as keeping Brits out of Scotland & IN England It helps keep the bloodlines pure

[Raistlin]

Births

1757 Marquis de Lafayette, French soldier and statesman

1766 John Dalton, British chemist

1860 Jane Addams, US sociologist

1892 Edward Appleton, British physicist

1943 Britt Ekland, Swedish film actress

1947 Roger Waters, English bassist

Deaths

1566 Suleiman I, sultan of Turkey

1683 Jean-Baptiste Colbert, French politician

1952 Gertrude Lawrence, English actress and singer

1966 Hendrik Verwoerd, South African prime minister, assassinated

1994 James du Maresq Clavell, British writer, scriptwriter, and film director

1997 Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu), Albanian-born Indian ascetic and founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity

Events

1522 Ferdinand Magellan's 17 surviving crew members reached the Spanish coast aboard the Vittoria, having completed the first circumnavigation of the world.

1852 Britain's first free lending library opened in Manchester.

1880 cricket test match in England was played between England and Australia at the Oval, London.

1901 US President William McKinley was shot and fatally wounded by an anarchist.

1941 Nazi Germany made the wearing of the yellow Star of David badges compulsory for all its Jewish citizens.

1965 India invaded West Pakistan.

1975 A massive earthquake centred on Lice, Turkey, caused nearly 3,000 deaths.

1989 Due to a computer error, 41,000 Parisians received letters charging them with murder, extortion, and organized prostitution instead of traffic violations.

1991 Soviet authorities formally granted independence to Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia..

1997 The funeral service for Diana, Princess of Wales, was held in Westminster Abbey, London, England; an estimated 2 billion people worldwide watch the service on television.

[Raistlin]

Births

1533 Elizabeth I, Queen of England

1815 John McDougall Stuart, Australian explorer

1909 Elia Kazan, US stage and film director

1913 Anthony Quayle, English actor

1923 Peter Lawford, English actor

1929 Sonny Rollins, US saxophonist

1936 Buddy Holly, US rock singer

Deaths

1548 Catherine Parr, 6th wife of Henry VIII of England

1907 Armand Sully-Prudhomme, French poet

1910 William Hunt, British painter

1978 Keith Moon, English rock drummer

1981 Christy Brown, Irish novelist

1984 Liam O'Flaherty, Irish novelist

1997 Mobutu Sese Seko, president of Zaire 1965-97

Events

1533 Queen Anne Boleyn gave birth to Princess Elizabeth.

1812 The Russians were defeated by Napoleon's forces at the Battle of Borodino, 70 mi west of Moscow.

1838 Grace Darling and her father rescued the crew of the Forfarshire, a steamer wrecked off the Northumberland coast; she subsequently became a national heroine.

1901 The Peace of Peking was signed, ending the Boxer Rebellion in China.

1904 Francis Younghusband led a British expedition to Tibet, where a treaty was signed with the Dalai Lama.

1920 The first 'Miss America' beauty competition was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey; the winner was Miss Margaret Gorman.

1973 Jackie Stewart became world champion racing driver for the third consecutive year.

1977 The USA and Panama signed the Panama Canal Treaty which returned the canal zone to Panama.

1986 Bishop Desmond Tutu was appointed archbishop of Capetown, the first black head of South African Anglicans.

1991 Yugoslav civil war opened in The Hague, the Netherlands, under EC sponsorship.

1996 Mike Tyson knocked out World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight champion Bruce Seldon in Las Vegas, Nevada to capture the WBA title.

[Raistlin]

Births

1157 King Richard I (the Lion Heart) of England

1474 Ludovico Ariosto, Italian poet

1841 Antonin Dvorák, Czech composer

1863 Siegfried Sassoon, English writer

1910 Jean-Louis Barrault, French actor and director

1925 Peter Sellers, English actor and comedian

1940 Frankie Avalon, US singer

Deaths

1645 Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas, Spanish writer

1853 George Bradshaw, British publisher of the first railway guides

1949 Richard Strauss, German composer

1954 André Derain, French painter

1979 Jean Seberg, US actress

1994 Terence Young, British film director

Events

1664 The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was surrendered to the British who renamed it New York in 1669.

1831 William IV was crowned King of Great Britain.

1886 Johannesburg, South Africa, was founded after the discovery of gold there.

1888 The first English Football league matches were played.

1900 Parts of Texas, USA, were hit by a tornado and tidal waves, which caused over 6,000 deaths near Galveston.

1926 Germany was admitted to the League of Nations.

1944 The first German V2 flying bombs fell on Britain.

1951 The Treaty of Peace with Japan was signed by 49 nations in San Francisco.

1966 The Severn Road Bridge was officially opened between England and Wales.

1974 US President Ford fully pardoned Richard Nixon for his part in the Watergate affair.

1995 The combatants in the conflicts in former Yugoslavia agreed to a US-brokered agreement aimed at ending the fighting in Bosnia.

1996 Pete Sampras won his second consecutive US Open tennis title; Germany's Steffi Graf won her fifth career US Open title.

1997 The ferry Fierte Gonaivience capsized off Port-au-Prince, Haiti, killing 600.

[Raistlin]

Births

1585 Cardinal Richelieu, French statesman

1737 Luigi Galvani, Italian physiologist

1828 Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist

1900 James Hilton, English novelist

1941 Otis Redding, US singer and songwriter

1949 John Curry, English figure skating champion

Deaths

1087 King William I (the Conqueror) of England

1513 James IV, King of Scotland

1778 Giambattista Piranesi, Italian architect

1898 Stéphane Mallarmé, French poet

1901 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter

1976 Mao Zedong, Chinese leader

1997 Burgess Meredith, US actor

Events

1087 William I the Conqueror, King of England died suppressing a revolt in Maine.

1513 The Scots were defeated by the English at the Battle of Flodden Field.

1835 Local government in Britain was constituted under the British Municipal Corporations Act.

1850 California became the 31st state of the Union.

1943 In World War II, Allied forces landed at Salerno, Italy.

1945 Palestinians attempted to hijack an El Al flight but were overpowered by security guards. The Israelis reluctantly handed over the failed hijackers at Heathrow, where the plane made its landing.

1971 Geoffrey Jackson, who had been kidnapped by the Tupamaros in Uruguay eight months previously, was released.

1975 Czech tennis player Martina Navratilova, aged 18, defected to the West, requesting political asylum in the USA.

1985 Massive earthquakes in Mexico left more than 4,700 dead and 30,000 injured.

1994 USA agreed to accept 20,000 Cuban refugees a year.

1996 The European Court of Human Rights agreed to hear a case in which a 12-year-old boy was challenging British laws allowing parents to practise corporal punishment on their children.

[Raistlin]

Births

1727 Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Italian painter, son of Gianbattista Tiepolo

1753 John Soane, English architect

1771 Mungo Park, Scottish explorer

1890 Franz Werfel, Austrian novelist and poet

1914 Robert Wise, US film director

1929 Arnold Palmer, US golfer

1945 José Feliciano, US singer

Deaths

954 Louis IV, King of France

1797 Mary Wollstonecraft, British feminist

1935 Huey Long, US politician, assassinated

1938 Charles Cruft, British dog expert

1983 Balthazar Johannes Vorster, South African Nationalist politician

Events

1721 The Peace of Nystad was concluded between Russia and Sweden.

1823 Simón Bolívar, known as the Liberator, became the dictator of Peru.

1894 George Smith, a London cab driver, became the first person to be convicted for drunken driving; he was fined 20s (£1).

1919 The Treaty of Saint-Germain was signed; the new boundaries it set brought about the end of the Austrian Empire.

1942 In a single raid, the RAF dropped 100,000 bombs on Dusseldorf.

1945 Former Norwegian premier, Vidkun Quisling, who had collaborated with the Germans during World War II, was sentenced to death.

1981 Guernica was returned to Spain after 40 years in US custodianship; the artist had refused to show the painting in Spain before the restoration of democracy.

1989 Hungary opened its border to the West allowing thousands of East Germans to leave, much to the anger of the East German government.

1996 A court in Berlin sentenced six former East German generals for ordering guards to shoot people attempting to escape the communist state and enter West Germany.

1996 The UN General Assembly approved the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans nuclear tests in the air, sea, or underground. India, Bhutan and Libya voted against the treaty.

[Bizarra]

In April 1937, Guernica was the first city to be deliberately targeted for aerial bombing. Guernica was the ancient capital of the Basques - a group who had withstood the advances of the army since the Spanish Civil War begun in 1936. The region's resilient stand was punished by Franco when he allowed the unprotected city to be bombed by Hitler's air force.

By the time the Condor Legion had left, the centre of Guernica was in ruins. 1,654 people were killed and 889 wounded. The world was horrified but Franco denied that the raid ever took place. He blamed the destruction of Guernica on those who defended it

This was the version of events taught, by Law, in Basque Schools until recently :censor:

History is written by the Winners & Franco's influence is only now being removed :(

[Raistlin]

Do I detect a Spanish influence in you recent posts

[Bizarra]

Do I detect a Spanish influence in you recent posts

A Basque influence.

[Raistlin]

So, Basque-ing in reflected glory...

[Bizarra]

So, Basque-ing in reflected glory...

In front of a full length mirror :D

[Raistlin]

Naked of course

[Bizarra]

Naked of course

Nothing to impede the Rays

[Raistlin]

Events

1709 England's Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Austria defeated the French, under Marshal Villars, at the Battle of Malplaquet.

1777 American troops led by George Washington were defeated by the British at the Battle of Brandywine Creek, in the American War of Independence.

1841 The London to Brighton commuter express train began regular service, taking just 105 minutes.

1855 In the Crimean War, Sebastopol was taken by the Allies after capitulation by the Russians.

1922 A British mandate was declared in Palestine.

1951 Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress was performed for the first time, in Venice; the libretto was by W H Auden.

1973 A military junta, with US support, overthrew the elected government of Chile.

1978 Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian defector, was fatally stabbed by a poisoned umbrella point wielded by a Bulgarian secret agent in London.

1997 Israeli physicist Rafi de-Picciotto demonstrated the formation, within semiconductor materials, of 'quasiparticles', which have a charge one-third that of an electron.

2001 Series of terror attacks, committed by the al-Qaeda militant Islamic terrorist network, in the United States. Four airliners were hijacked, crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, Manhattan, New York, the Pentagon (Arlington County, Virginia) and Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Births

1524 Pierre de Ronsard, French poet

1700 James Thomson, Scottish poet

1862 O Henry, US short story writer

1877 James Hopwood Jeans, British mathematician and scientist

1885 D H Lawrence, English writer

1950 Barry Sheene, British racing motor cyclist

Deaths

1712 Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian-French astronomer

1869 David Thomas Graham, Scottish chemist

1950 Jan Christian Smuts, South African statesman

1971 Nikita Khrushchev, Russian leader

1973 Salvador Allende Gossens, Chilean politician

1987 Peter Tosh, Jamaican reggae star

1994 Jessica Tandy, English film and theatre actress

[Raistlin]

Events

1609 Henry Hudson sailed the sloop Half Moon into New York Bay and up to Albany to discover the river named after him.

1878 Cleopatra's Needle, the obelisk of Thothmes II, was erected on London's Embankment.

1910 Alice Stebbins Wells, a former social worker, became the world's first policewoman, appointed by the Los Angeles Police Department.

1914 The Allies were victorious at the First Battle of Marne, in World War I.

1919 Italian writer and nationalist Gabriele D'Annunzio led an unofficial army and seized Fiume from Yugoslavia.

1940 The Lascaux Caves, France, containing prehistoric wall paintings, were discovered.

1943 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, imprisoned by the Allies, was rescued by German parachutists.

1974 A military coup deposed Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, the Lion of Judah

1989 The Solidarity-dominated government took office in Poland and became the first government in Eastern Europe since the 1940s not under Communist control.

1997 The US spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor went into orbit around Mars.

Births

1818 Richard Jordan Gatling, US inventor

1852 Herbert Henry Asquith, British statesman

1888 Maurice Chevalier, French actor and entertainer

1907 Louis MacNeice, British poet

1913 John Cleveland 'Jesse' Owens, US athlete

1937 Wesley Hall, West Indies cricketer and politician

Deaths

1733 François Couperin, French composer

1764 Jean-Philippe Rameau, French composer

1819 Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Prussian general and field-marshal

1869 Peter Mark Roget, English lexicographer

1977 Steve Biko, South African civil rights leader

1992 Anthony Perkins, US actor

1993 Raymond Burr, Canadian actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1759 General Wolfe dies defeating the French at the Battle of Quebec.

1788 New York became the capital of the USA (until 1789).

1845 The Knickerbocker Club, the first baseball club, was founded in New York.

1914 The first Battle of the Aisne, during World War I, began.

1942 The Germans began their attack on Stalingrad.

1943 Chiang Kai-shek was re-elected president of the Republic of China.

1956 Little Richard recorded 'Tutti Frutti' in Los Angeles with cleaned-up lyrics.

1957 The Mousetrap became Britain's longest running play, reaching its 1,998th performance.

1989 Britain's biggest ever banking computer error gave customers an extra £2 billion in a period of 30 minutes; 99.3 per cent of the money was reportedly returned.

1993 In Washington, DC, USA, the peace agreement (the 'Declaration of Principles') was signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which provided for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip and Jericho; Yassir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands.

Births

1791 William Betty, British boy actor

1874 Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer

1894 John Joseph Priestley, English author

1905 Claudette Colbert, French actress

1938 John Smith, British politician

1944 Jacqueline Bisset, English actress

Deaths

1506 Andrea Mantegna, Italian painter

1592 Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, French essayist

1759 General James Wolfe

1806 Charles James Fox, English statesman

1894 Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier, French composer

1977 Leopold Stokowski, US conductor

1991 Joe Pasternak, US film producer

[Raistlin]

Events

1402 The English defeated the Scots at the Battle of Homildon Hill.

1759 A Journey Through Europe, or the play of Geography, the earliest dated English board game, went on sale, priced 8s (40p).

1812 Napoleon entered Moscow in his disastrous invasion of Russia.

1891 The first penalty kick in an English League football game was taken by Heath of Wolverhampton Wanderers against Accrington.

1901 Roosevelt became the 26th US president, 12 hours after the death of President McKinley, who had been shot by an anarchist on 6 Sept.

1923 Miguel Primo de Riviera became dictator of Spain.

1959 The Soviet Lunik II became the first spacecraft to land on the Moon.

1984 South African Prime Minister Botha was sworn in as the country's first Executive President.

1991 The South African government, the ANC, and the Inkatha Freedom Party signed a peace accord aimed at ending the factional violence in the black townships.

1994 US and Canadian scientists reported finding a gene responsible for some forms of breast cancer.

1996 In Bosnia, first nationwide elections since the end of its civil war in 1995 were held. Bosnian President Izetbegovic, a Muslim, was elected chairman of the three-man collective presidency; he was joined on the presidential panel by Krajisnik, a Bosnian Serb, and Zubak, a Bosnian Croat.

Births

1617 Peter Lely, Dutch painter

1769 Baron von Humboldt, German traveller and naturalist

1886 Jan Garrigue Masaryk, Czech statesman

1909 Peter Scott, British artist and ornithologist

1910 jack Hawkins, British film actor

1957 Kepler Wessels, Australian cricketer

Deaths

1321 Dante Alighieri, Italian poet

1851 James Fenimore Cooper, US novelist

1852 Augustus Pugin, English architect

1852 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, English soldier and politician

1927 Isadora Duncan, US dancer

1982 Princess Grace of Monaco (Grace Kelly)

[Bizarra]

"1852 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, English soldier and politician "

Arthur Wellesley, the son of the Earl of Mornington, was born in Dublin in 1769. After being educated at Eton and a military school at Angers he received a commission in the 73rd Infantry. Eventually Wellesley obtained the rank of captain and became aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

[Bizarra]

1886 Jan Garrigue Masaryk, Czech statesman was born

This is how he died :(

Jan MasarykJan Masaryk Jan Masaryk's death has been shrouded in mystery ever since his pyjama-clad body was found beneath his bathroom window on March 10th 1948. For decades the official verdict was suicide, but many Czechs always believed that Masaryk - beloved son of the country's first president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk - was murdered. His humanist views and close association with the democratic First Republic, they assumed, had made him a threat to Moscow.

That theory was given weight in 2004, when a police forensics expert concluded that Jan Masaryk had been pushed. The official verdict was amended to murder.

This weekend the Czech News Agency published an interview with a Russian journalist named Leonid Parshin. Mr Parshin's mother worked in Czechoslovakia as a Soviet intelligence officer after the war. He alleges that several years after returning to Russia, she had attended an informal gathering of retired spies.

She claimed to have been talking to one Mikhail Illich Byelkin, former head of Soviet intelligence in Central Europe. She told Byelkin that she'd worked in Czechoslovakia, but joked that she hadn't killed Masaryk. Byelkin replied - "I know you didn't - because it was me who threw him out of the window."

Jan SrbJan Srb This is not the first time Mr Parshin has made the claims. The Czech authority responsible for investigating Masaryk's death - the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism or UDV - has known about them for some years. Jan Srb is the UDV's spokesman.

"What Mr Parshin is claiming is nothing new. And from the point of view of our investigation the claims are worthless because this information is not even second-hand, it's third-hand. His claims are based on those of his mother, and she made those claims thirty or so years ago. All the people involved are now dead, and so for the investigation these claims are essentially irrelevant."

Jan Srb says in 2001 the UDV made a formal request to the Russian prosecutor's office to interview Mrs Parshina. They also asked for access to archive material. The reply came nine months later: Mrs Parshina had died the previous summer, and all documents pertaining to the case were classified.

So there the story ends. Jan Masaryk's death remains a mystery. The Czech authorities are confident he was murdered. But even if there are any clues as to who killed him, they lie in dusty archives, far away in Russia. And those archives remain closed.

[Raistlin]

Events

1784 The first ascent in a hydrogen balloon in England was made by the Italian aeronaut Vincenzo Lunardi.

1812 The Russians set fire to Moscow in order to halt the French occupation.

1830 The Manchester and Liverpool railway opened in England; during the ceremony, William Huskisson, MP, became the first person to be killed by a train.

1916 Military tanks, designed by Ernest Swinton, were first used by the British Army, at Flers, in the Somme offensive.

1917 Alexander Kerensky proclaimed Russia a republic.

1935 The Nuremburg laws were passed in Germany, outlawing Jews and making the swastika the country's official flag.

1938 In British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's meeting with Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden, Hitler stated his determination to annex the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia on the principle of self-determination.

1964 The Sun, which became Britain's biggest selling newspaper, was first published.

1974 The civil war between Christians and Muslims in Beirut began.

1985 Tony Jacklin's European golf team won the Ryder Cup from the USA who had long dominated the competition.

1993 The National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action, proposing framework for the creation of a national 'information highway', was published in the USA.

Births

AD53 Trajan, Roman emperor

1649 Titus Oates, British priest and conspirator

1857 William Taft, 27th US president

1890 Agatha Christie, English detective novelist

1894 Jean Renoir, French film director

1945 Jessye Norman, US soprano

Deaths

1859 Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British engineer

1864 John Hanning Speke, British explorer

1916 José Echegaray, Spanish dramatist and scientist

1972 Geoffrey Fisher, former archbishop of Canterbury

1973 Gustav VI, King of Sweden

1989 Robert Penn Warren, US novelist