On This Day

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1960 - The TV personality with a reputation for outspokenness, Gilbert Harding, dies as he leaves the BBC's Broadcasting House in London

On this Day - 1995 - The Queen Mother had her right hip replaced in an operation in London

On this Day - 1979 - Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher named Sir Anthony Blunt, a former security service officer, as the "fourth man" in the Philby affair

[Raistlin]

Events

1800 The US Congress met for the first time, in Washington DC.

1880 The first three British women to graduate received their Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of London.

1922 The last sultan of Turkey was deposed by Kemal Atatürk.

1922 Siberia voted for union with the USSR.

1969 US-Soviet talks on strategic arms limitation (SALT) opened in Helsinki.

1970 The USSR's Luna 17 landed on the Sea of Rains on the moon, and released the first moonwalker vehicle.

1970 Stephanie Rahn became the Sun newspaper's first Page Three girl.

1988 Benazir Bhutto was elected prime minister of Pakistan, becoming the first female leader of a Muslim state.

1996 The Russian spacecraft bound for Mars - Mars 96 - crashed on Bolivian soil just one day after it was launched.

1997 Hokkaido Takushoku, Japan's tenth largest commercial bank, ceased operations.

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1953 - Twenty Italian sailors die following a collision between two boats in the English Channel.

On this Day - 1986 - The head of the Renault car company, Georges Besse, is assassinated outside his home in Paris

On trhis Day - 1997 - More than 60 people die in an attack on a group of foreign tourists visiting a temple in southern Egypt

On this Day - 1989 - Riot police arrest hundreds of people taking part in the biggest show of public dissent in Prague Czechoslovakia for 20 years.

[Raistlin]

Births

1755 Louis XVIII, King of France

1887 Bernard Law Montgomery, British field-marshal

1925 Charles Mackerras, Australian conductor

1925 Rock Hudson, US film actor

1937 Peter Cook, English writer and entertainer

1942 Martin Scorsese, US film director

Deaths

1497 Pico della Mirandola, Italian philosopher

1558 Mary I, Queen of England

1856 Robert Owen, British socialist

1917 Auguste Rodin, French sculptor

1959 Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian composer

1971 Gladys Cooper, English actress

[Raistlin]

Events

1477 William Caxton's The Dictes or Sayinges of the Philosophres was published - the first printed book in England bearing a date.

1626 St Peter's in Rome was consecrated.

1918 Latvia was proclaimed an independent republic.

1928 The first experimental sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, starring Mickey Mouse, was screened in the USA.

1977 President Anwar Sadat became the first Egyptian leader to visit Israel and to address the Knesset (parliament).

1987 A fire broke out at London's King's Cross underground station, killing 30 people.

1987 A report of the joint Senate/House of Representatives Iran-Contra Committee blamed President Reagan for abuse of law; eight Republicans refused to sign the report.

1991 The Shi'ite Muslim faction Islamic Jihad freed Church of England envoy Terry Waite (held since Jan 1987) and US university professor Thomas Sutherland (held since June 1985).

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Events

1493 On his second voyage to the New World, Columbus discovered Puerto Rico.

1607 Spanish Bankruptcy

1850 Alfred Tennyson was appointed England's poet laureate.

1863 President Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg address, after the American Civil War.

1942 The Red Army counter-attacked and surrounded the German army at Stalingrad.

1969 Brazilian footballer Pelé scored his 1,000th goal in his 909th first class match.

1987 A record price for a car was reached when a 1931 Bugatti Royale was sold at auction for £5.5 million.

1995 Former communist Aleksander Kwasniewski defeated President Lech Walesa in presidential elections.

1996 A fire broke out in the Channel Tunnel, injuring 34 people and interrupting rail service.

1997 The first septuplets to be successfully delivered alive were born in Des Moines, Iowa, to Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey.

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1969 - A second crew of astronauts landed on the Moon with the Apollo 12 mission to the Ocean of Storms

On this Day - 1994 - Britain's first national lottery draw was shown live on a flagship BBC One show.

[Raistlin]

Events

1759 The British fleet under Admiral Hawke defeated the French at the Battle of Quiberon Bay, thwarting an invasion of England.

1818 Simón Bolívar, known as 'the Liberator', declared Venezuela to be independent of Spain.

1917 The Battle of Cambrai began, in which the British deployed large numbers of tanks for the first time.

1944 The lights of Piccadilly, the Strand, and Fleet Street were switched back on after five years of blackout.

1945 The Nuremberg trials of 24 chief Nazi war criminals by an international military tribunal began.

1979 Anthony Blunt, surveyor of the queen's pictures, was stripped of his knighthood when his past work as a double agent was made public.

1980 The Solar Challenger was flown for the first time, entirely under solar power.

1990 In elections held for leadership of the British Conservative Party, with Michael Heseltine as challenger to Mrs. Thatcher; Thatcher failed to secure the margin needed for re-election.

1995 In Sri Lanka, government forces entered Jaffna.

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1992 - A fierce blaze is raged through Windsor Castle in Berkshire, threatening one of the world's greatest collections of art

On this Day - 1995 - Diana Princess of Wales spoke openly for the first time about her separation from the Prince of Wales in a frank interview for BBC Television

On this Day - 1975 - General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain with an authoritarian hand for 39 years, died at the age of 82.

[Bizarra]

1428 Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick, the so-called Kingmaker who was the power behind the throne during the Wars Of The Roses, was born.

He died at the Battle of Barnet in 1471.

1497 The Portguese explorer Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in his search for a route to India.

1718 Edward Teach, English pirate who sailed under the name of Blackbeard, was killed off the coast of North Carolina.

1808 Thomas Cook, who pioneered the holiday package tour, was born in Derbyshire.

1819 Mary Ann Evans, who took the pseudonym George Eliot and wrote The Mill On The Floss, was born in Arbury, Warwickshire.

1830 Container transport was introduced by Pickfords, the carriers, in an agreement with the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company.

1913 Composer Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft.

1946 The first ballpoint pen went on sale, invented by Hungarian Laslo Biro.

1963 John F Kennedy, United States President, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, during the run-up to the 1964 Presidential campaign.

1975 The monarchy was restored in Spain when Juan Carlos was sworn in as King in Madrid.

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1971 - Five teenagers and their female instructor died in one of Scotland's worst mountaineering accidents

On this Day - 1990 - Margaret Thatcher stood down as prime minister after her cabinet refused to back her in a second round of leadership elections

On this Day - 1995 - Britain's most prolific female serial killer, Rosemary West, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 10 young women and girls

On this Day - 1997 - Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of Australian rock band INXS and partner of British television star Paula Yates, was found dead in Sydney

On this Day - 2003 - England's rugby team won the World Cup, beating Australia 20-17 in a nailbiting final in Sydney

On this Day - 2005 - Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrats, was sworn in as Germany's first woman chancellor

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Events

1407 The Duke of Orleans is Ambushed

1670 Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme was performed for the first time in Paris.

1852 Britain's first pillar boxes were erected, at St Helier, Jersey.

1889 The first juke box was installed in the Palais Royal Saloon in San Francisco.

1906 Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso was fined $10 for sexual harassment.

1921 US President Warren Harding banned doctors from prescribing beer, eliminating a loophole in the prohibition law.

1963 The first episode of the BBC TV serial Dr Who was broadcast, with William Hartnell as Dr Who and Anna Ford as his female companion.

1980 A violent earthquake struck Southern Italy, killing over 4,000 people.

1987 (-24th) Secretary of State Shultz and USSR Foreign Minister Shevardnadze agreed on a treaty to eliminate all intermediate-range nuclear (INF) weapons.

1996 A hijacked Ethiopian 767 passenger jet crashed into the Indian Ocean, killing 125 of the 175 passengers and crew aboard.

The three Ethiopian hijackers had ordered the pilot to take the plane to Australia, ignoring his warning that the plane did not have enough fuel for such a journey.

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1963 - Lyndon B Johnson became the new president of the USA following Kennedy's assassination

On this Day - 1978 - A Birmingham nightclub is ordered to open its doors to black and Chinese people. It was the first non-discrimination notice issued by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) since the non-governmental body was formed to tackle racial discrimination by the 1976 Race Relations Act

On this day - 1984 - Almost 1,000 passengers were trapped in smoke-filled tunnels for three hours after a fire at Oxford Circus underground station

[Raistlin]

Births

1859 Billy the Kid, US outlaw

1876 Manuel de Falla, Spanish composer

1887 Boris Karloff, English film actor

1917 Michael Gough, English actor

1934 Lew Hoad, Australian tennis player

1956 Shane Gould, Australian swimmer

Deaths

1763 Abbé Prévost, French author

1910 Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, US murderer, executed

1934 Arthur Wing Pinero, British dramatist

1941 P C Wren, British novelist

1976 André Malraux, French novelist

1979 Merle Oberon, British film actress

[Bizarra]

2348BC Claimed by some biblical scholars to be the day when the Flood began.

1823 The first pleasure pier, The Chain Pier at Brighton, opened.

It closed in 1896 and was destroyed in a storm the same year.

1835 Andrew Carnegie, US industrialist and philanthropist responsible for the Carnegie Free Libraries, born.

1860 The offices of the Freeman's Journal became the first in Dublin to have an external electric light.

1880 Captain Boycott, in the middle of the confrontation which made him famous, brought 50 Orange labourers under heavy escort to work Lord Erne's Mayo Estate at Lough Mask.

Harvesting his lordship's crops is estimated to have cost £10,000.

1882 To beat copyright pirates, Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan was premiered in London and America, the first show to open simultaneously in both countries.

1884 Evaporated milk was patented by John Mayenberg of St Louis, Missouri.

1914 The battleship HMS Bulwark was blown to pieces off Sheerness, with the loss of 800 lives.

1952 Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap opened in London, at the Ambassadors Theatre.

Richard Attenborough played the detective, and reviews said the play had a 'fair degree of success'.

The record-breaking production is still running today.

1969 In protest against Britain's involvement in Biafra and support of US involvement in Vietnam, John Lennon returned his MBE.

1970 Yukio Mishima, Japanese novelist, committed suicide.

1972 Seán McStiofáin, chief of staff of the Provisional IRA, was sentenced to six months in prison for membership of an illegal organisation.

1975 Surinam, formerly called Dutch Guiana, became a fully independent republic.

1984 Top rock stars, responding to a call by Bob Geldof, gathered together under the name Band Aid to record Do They Know It's Christmas, in aid of the Ethiopian famine appeal.

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Events

1703 England was hit by severe gales, known as the Great Storm, in which 8,000 people died.

1789 The American holiday of Thanksgiving was celebrated nationally for the first time.

1906 President Theodore Roosevelt returned to Washington after a trip to Central America, becoming the first US president to travel abroad while in office.

1942 The Soviet forces counter-attacked at Stalingrad, ending the siege and forcing General von Paulus's Sixth Army to retreat.

1949 India became a federal republic within the Commonwealth.

1964 Britain borrowed $3,000 million from foreign bankers to save the pound.

1966 French President Charles de Gaulle opened the world's first tidal power station in Brittany.

1976 Catholicism ceased to be the state religion of Italy.

1990 Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's prime minister for 31 years, announced that he was stepping down.

1994 An assault on the Chechen capital Grozny by Russian forces was defeated by Chechen forces loyal to President Dudayev.

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1953 - Peers back the Government's proposals for commercial television - despite fierce opposition from some rebels who fear the influence of advertisers

On this Day - 1983 - An armed gang carries out Britain's largest-ever robbery from the Brinks Mat warehouse, at London's Heathrow Airport

[Raistlin]

Events

1095 Pope Urban began to preach the First Crusade at Clermont, France.

1582 William Shakespeare, aged 18, married Anne Hathaway.

1914 Britain's first policewomen went on duty, at Grantham, Lincolnshire.

1940 In Romania, the pro-fascist group Iron Guard murdered 64 people, including former prime minister Jorga.

1967 French President Charles de Gaulle rejected British entry into the Common Market.

1970 The Gay Liberation Front held its first demonstration in London.

1990 John Major won his second ballot for leadership of the Conservative Party.

1997 United Nations Inter-Agency Flood Response estimated that flooding in Somalia had left 230,000 people homeless.

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1975 - The BBC TV presenter and co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records is shot dead outside his home

On this Day - 2000 - A 10-year-old schoolboy Damilola Taylor dies after being stabbed in the leg by a gang of hooded attackers near his home

[Bizarra]

1660 The Royal Society was founded in London.

1757 William Blake, mystic and visionary English poet and painter, was born in London.

1905 The Irish political party Sinn Fein was founded in Dublin by Arthur Griffith.

1919 Viscountess (Nancy) Astor became Britain’s first woman MP, holding a safe Plymouth seat for the Tories in a by-election caused by her husband’s elevation of the peerage.

1934 Winston Churchill warned that weak defences could mean that Britain could be ‘‘tortured into absolute subjection’’ in any war with Germany.

1943 The Big Three - Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin - met in theran to ‘‘plan strategy’’ and discuss post-war policy, including treatment of a defeated Germany.

1948 The first Polaroid cameras went on sale in Boston.

1967 Horseracing was suspended in Britain after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

1968 Enid Blyton, creator of Noddy and Big Ears among many other children’s favourites, died.

1983 The Government announced an end to the monopoly by opticians on the sale of glasses.

[Red Yaris 54]

On this Day - 1990 - Margaret Thatcher formally tenders her resignation to the Queen and leaves Downing Street for the last time.

On this Day - 1999 - Eleven people are injured in a sword attack at a church in south London after a naked man wielding a Samurai sword bursts in during Sunday Mass

On this Day - 1994 - Norway for a second time rejected membership of the European Union in a referendum after a closely-fought campaign

[Bizarra]

1530 Cardinal Wolsey was arrested as a traitor and recalled to London.

On the way he died at Leicester, and was buried there in Abbey Park.

1797 Gaetano Donizetti, opera composer was born in Bergamo, Italy.

1832 Louisa M Alcott, author of Little Women, was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania.

1895 Busby Berkeley, choreographer and director who revolutionised Hollywood musicals, was born.

1907 Florence Nightingale, the ‘‘Lady of the Lamp’’, was presented with the Order of Merit by Edward VII for her work during the Crimean War.

1929 US admiral Richard Byrd, and pilot Bernt Balchen, became the first men to fly over the South Pole.

1932 The first performance took place of Cole Porter’s The Gay Divorcee in New York starring Fred Astaire and featuring the song Night And Day.

1934 First broadcast of a royal wedding - that of the Duke of Kent and Princess Marina in Westminster Abbey.

1954 Sir George Robey, comedian and actor, died.

1965 Mary Whitheouse began her clean-up TV campaign.

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Events

1840 Napoleon I's remains were returned from St Helena to Paris.

1872 The first international football match was played, Scotland vs England (drawing 0 - 0).

1914 Charlie Chaplin made his film debut in Making a Living, a Mack Sennett one-reeler, without his trademark moustache and cane.

1936 The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, designed by Joseph Paxton and originally constructed in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, burned down.

1939 The USSR invaded Finland.

1988 PLO leader Yassir Arafat attempted to enter the USA to address the UN General Assembly, but was refused a visa.

1993 In the USA, the Brady Act introduced controls on the acquisition of firearms.

1996 The government of Sierra Leone and rebel forces signed a peace agreement ending a five-year-long civil war.

1997 Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé was re-elected president of Honduras, while his Liberal Party won legislative elections.

[Raistlin]

Events

1640 The Spanish were driven out of Portugal and the country regained its independence.

1919 US-born Lady Nancy Astor became the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons, as MP for the Sutton division of Plymouth.

1925 The Locarno Pact was signed in London, guaranteeing peace and frontiers in Europe.

1939 The film Gone with the Wind premiered in New York.

1942 The Beveridge Report on Social Security, which formed the basis of the welfare state in Britain, was issued.

1953 The first issue of Hugh Heffner's Playboy magazine was published; the centre-spread nude featured Marilyn Monroe.

1970 Divorce became legal in certain cases in Italy.

1989 Pope John Paul II and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Rome, ending 70 years of hostility between the Vatican and the USSR.

1991 France won its first Davis Cup tennis title in 59 years by defeating the USA at the finals in Lyons, France.

1995 President Clinton visited Dublin, Ireland.

Births

1733 Samuel Crompton, inventor of the spinning mule

1761 Madame Tussaud, French wax-modeller

1910 Alicia Markova, British ballet dancer

1935 Woody Allen, US film actor, writer and director

1939 Lee Trevino, US golfer

1940 Richard Pryor, US comedian and actor

1945 Bette Midler, US comedienne and singer

Deaths

1135 Henry I, King of England

1455 Lorenzo Ghiberti, Italian sculptor and goldsmith

1931 Vincent d'Indy, French composer

1964 J B S Haldane, English scientist and writer

1966 Walt Disney, US Animator

1973 David Ben-Gurion, Israeli statesman

1987 James Baldwin, US writer

[Raistlin]

Births

1859 Georges Seurat, French painter

1884 Ruth Draper, US entertainer

1899 John Barbirolli, English conductor

1906 Peter Carl Goldmark, US inventor of the LP record

1923 Maria Callas, US lyric soprano

1924 Alexander Haig, US general and politician

Deaths

1547 Hernándo Cortés, Spanish conquistador

1594 Gerhardt Mercator, Belgian cartographer

1814 Marquis de Sade, French writer and philosopher

1859 John Brown, US abolitionist

1985 Philip Larkin, English poet

1990 Aaron Copland, US composer

1993 Pablo Escobar, Colombian racketeer

Events

1697 St Paul's Cathedral, London, was opened, rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren.

1805 Napoleon (crowned emperor exactly one year earlier) defeated the Austrians and Russians at the Battle of Austerlitz.

1823 US president James Monroe proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, warning that any further European colonial ambitions in the western hemisphere would be considered threats to US peace and security.

1901 In the USA, King Camp Gillette patented a safety razor with a double-edged disposable blade.

1942 The first nuclear chain reaction took place at the University of Chicago, under physicists Enrico Fermi and Arthur Compton.

1954 US Senate censures Joseph McCarthy for misconduct.

1956 Fidel Castro and followers landed in Cuba, aiming to overthrow Batista's government.

1988 In Bangladesh, a cyclone killed thousands of people and left five million homeless.

1990 West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was elected chancellor of a united Germany.

1994 The Australian government agreed to pay A$13,500,000 to Aborigines displaced by the nuclear tests of the 1950s and 60s.

1997 The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the irradiation of pork, beef, and lamb in the wake of contaminated hamburger meat from Nebraska.