On this day...

[andrews]

20th December

1892 - Phileas Fogg completes around world trip, according to Verne
1900 - Giacobini discovers a comet (will be 1st comet visited by spacecraft)
1912 - Paul Claudels "L'Annonce Faite à Marie," premieres in Paris
1920 - Bob Hope became an American citizen
1922 - 14 republics form Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics (USSR)
1924 - Adolf Hitler freed from jail early
1941 - World War II: First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" in Kunming, China.
1944 - Terence Rattigans "O Mistress Mine," premieres in London
1950 - "Harvey," starring James Stewart, premieres in NY
1955 - Cardiff is proclaimed the capital city of Wales, United Kingdom.
1957 - Elvis Presley given draft notice to join US Army for National Service
1962 - Osmond brothers debut on Andy Williams Show
1963 - Berlin Wall opens for 1st time to West Berliners
1967 - "Graduate," starring Dustin Hoffman & Anne Bancroft, premieres
1969 - Peter, Paul & Mary's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" reaches #1
1972 - Neil Simons "Sunshine Boys," premieres in NYC
1981 - Harry Krieger/Tom Eyen's musical "Dreamgirls," premieres in NYC
1987 - "Nuts" with Barbra Striesand premieres
1990 - Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze resigns
1991 - Paul Keating installed as premier of Australia
1992 - Slobodan Milosevic re-elected president of Serbia
2005 - The first same sex civil partnerships in Scotland are celebrated.
2007 - Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.
2007 - The painting Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904), by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, was stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art, along with O Lavrador de Café, by the major Brazilian modernist painter Candido Portinari.

[andrews]

12th January

1866 The Aeronautical Society of Great Britain was formed in London, fourteen years after the Société Aérostatique de France, (the first such organization), and thirty-seven years before the Wright Brothers achieved the first successful powered flight.

1879 The British Zulu War began.

1895 The National Trust was founded by three Victorian philanthropists - Miss Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley.

1950 The British submarine Truculent collided with a Swedish ship in the Thames, resulting in its sinking, and the deaths of 65 people.

1954 The Queen opened New Zealand’s parliament, the first time in that country’s history that a reigning monarch had done so.

1959 Henry Cooper defeated Brian London on points over 15 rounds, becoming British and European heavyweight boxing champion.

1970 The Boeing 747 completed its first transatlantic flight, from New York to Heathrow.

1971 Two bombs exploded at the home of Employment Secretary Robert Carr, in outer London. He was unhurt. The bombs had been planted by the Angry Brigade, protesting against a new controversial industrial relations bill Mr Carr was proposing.

1976 Crime writer Dame Agatha Christie died, leaving a rumoured multi-million pound fortune and a final book waiting to be published.

1978 The executors of Lady Churchill’s estate admitted she had burnt Graham Sutherland’s portrait of Sir Winston 18 months after the House of Commons had presented it to him in 1954. Sir Winston ironically described it as ‘a remarkable example of modern art’.

1982 Mark Thatcher, son of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, went missing in the Sahara while taking part in the Paris-Dakar Rally. He was rescued two days later, and it turned out that he had lost his way. The incident provoked a tidal wave of jokes and cartoons making fun of his sense of direction.

2001 The first foreign coach of the England football team, Sven Goran Eriksson, flew in to start his new job

[andrews]

19th January

1544 Francis II, King of France and husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, was born.

1547 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, courtier, poet and soldier, was beheaded at the Tower of London, for high treason.

1649 The Puritan parliament began the trial of Charles I for treason. Charles refused to plead, saying that he did not recognise the legality of the High Court.

1736 Birth of James Watt, the Scottish inventor who developed the steam engine and gave his name to a unit of power.

1746 Bonnie Prince Charlie's troops occupied Stirling.

1813 Sir Henry Bessemer, who gave his name to a process for converting cast iron into steel, was born, in Charlton - Hertfordshire.

1915 More than 20 people were killed when German zeppelins bombed England for the first time. The bombs were dropped on Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn.

1937 The first play written for British television, The Underground Murder Mystery by J. Bissell Thomas, was broadcast by the BBC.

1937 The 18 year old English ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn made her debut in 'Giselle' at Sadler's Wells in London.

1973 The Statesman, an unarmed ocean going tug, was sent to protect British trawlers from Icelandic patrol boats as the dispute over cod fishing rights intensified.

1988 Christopher Nolan, a 22-year-old Irish writer, won the £20,000 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for his autobiography, Under the Eye of the Clock. Completely paralysed, Nolan used a ‘unicorn’ attachment on his forehead to write the novel at a painfully slow speed.

1990 Police in Johannesburg, armed with batons and dogs, broke up a demonstration against English cricketers who had defied a ban on playing in segregated South Africa.

2004 Prime Minister Tony Blair said that he would survive his toughest week as he faced the Hutton report and the top-up fees vote and ........ he was right!

[andrews]

26th January

1823 Edward Jenner, the pioneer of vaccination, died.

1841 Hong Kong was proclaimed British sovereign territory.

1871 The Rugby Football Union was formed in London by an initial 20 clubs.

1885 The British commander of Khartoum, General Charles Gordon was killed during the attack on Khartoum by troops of the Mahdi following a 10 month siege.

1907 A riot broke out in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on the first night of J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, when the audience took offence at the ‘foul language’. The riots continued for a week, but the show went on, heavily guarded by police.

1908 The 1st Glasgow Boy Scout group, the first Scout group ever, was registered.

1910 Police rescued the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, from a crowd of angry Suffragettes.

1931 Mahatma Gandhi was released from prison to have discussions with the British Government in India.

1950 India became a Republic within the British Commonwealth.

1952 At least 20 people were killed and hundreds injured in anti-British riots in Cairo.

1968 The National Provincial Bank and the Westminster Bank merged to form the National Westminster (NatWest).

1982 Conservative Prime Minister Mrs. Thatcher was elected in 1979 on the slogan 'Labour isn't working', yet the number of people out of work in Britain rose above three million for the first time since the 1930s.

1986 The Sunday Times and News of the World were printed at Wapping for the first time as the nation's presses moved away from Fleet Street.

1994 A protester fired two blank shots from a starting pistol at Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, as he prepared to speak at an Australia Day rally in Sydney.

[andrews]

28th January

Happy Birthday to|:

Rosamund Pike (1979, London, England, UK)
Elijah Wood (1981, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA)
Alan Alda (1936, New York City, New York, USA)
Will Poulter (1993, England, UK)
Lynda Boyd (1965, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
Peter Youngblood Hills (1978, Johannesburg, South Africa)
Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948, Riga, Latvia, Soviet Union. [now independent Latvia])

[andrews]

4th February

1911 Rolls-Royce commissioned their famous figurehead ‘The Spirit of Ecstasy’ by Charles Sykes. He used Lord Montague’s mistress, Eleanor Thornton, as his model. 60 years later to the day, Rolls-Royce was declared bankrupt due to a disastrous contract to supply aero engines to Lockheed. The British government came to its rescue.

1920 Norman Wisdom, actor & star of many comedy films, was born.

1927 Malcolm Campbell reached over 174 mph in Bluebird on the Pendine Sands in Wales to set a new land speed record. A year later in 1928 at Daytona Beach, Florida, he reached 206.35 mph. Four years and one day later, in 1931, he reached a record-breaking 245 mph, again at Daytona Beach.

1945 Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea to discuss plans for the post-war future.

1948 Ceylon became a self governing dominion within the British Commonwealth. It later changed its name to Sri Lanka.

1953 Sweets were taken 'off ration' in Britain, 8 years after the 2nd World War had ended.

1962 The first colour supplement in Britain was published by The Sunday Times.

1968 The world's largest hovercraft, weighing 165 tonnes, was launched at Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

1974 Eleven people, including eight off-duty soldiers and two young children, travelling to an army base in North Yorkshire, were killed when their coach was blown up by a bomb. Twelve others were seriously injured.

1975 Edward Heath withdrew from the Conservative party leadership after losing the first-round vote to Margaret Thatcher.

1988 Thousands of seamen at major British ports were continuing to strike, in support of 161 crew sacked by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company.

1997 British Home Secretary Michael Howard ruled that Moors murderer Myra Hindley should never be released from prison.

[andrews]

7th February

1301 Edward of Caernarfon (later King Edward II) became the first Prince of Wales, a title traditionally given to the English royal heir.

1478 Birth of Sir Thomas More, English statesman and Lord Chancellor. He was executed by Henry VIII for refusing to deny Papal authority. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1935.

1812 Charles Dickens, English journalist and novelist was born.

1863 185 British sailors were killed when HMS Orpheus was wrecked off the coast of New Zealand.

1886 While building a cottage for a prospector in the Transvaal, South Africa, an Englishman, George Walker, found a clear streak of gold. It became the richest gold reef in the world.

1937 Britain's first dive-bomber, the prototype B.24 Skua, made its maiden flight over Yorkshire. It was piloted by Dasher Blake.

1964 The Beatles pop group arrived in New York at the start of their first tour of the United States.

1974 Prime Minister Edward Heath announced a general election and appealed to the miners to suspend their planned strike.

1976 Joan Bazeley became the first woman to referee a men's football match and Diana Thorne became the first woman jockey to win under National Hunt Rules (on ‘Ben Ruler’ at Stratford).

1991 Prime Minister John Major and senior Cabinet Ministers escaped unhurt during an apparent assassination attempt, when the IRA fired three mortar shells at 10 Downing Street from a van parked several streets away in the centre of London.

1992 The European Union was formed.

1994 It was reported that 13.1 million television viewers watched British boxer Chris Eubank beat German Graciano Rocchigiani in Berlin. It was the most watched programme of the year.

2005 Britain's Ellen MacArthur (born 8th July 1976) became the fastest person to sail solo around the world. Two months after her amazing feat she also became the youngest person to receive a damehood.

[andrews]

26th August

55BC Julius Caesar crossed the English Channel for his invasion of Britain.

1346 The English, led by Edward III and his son Edward the Black Prince, won the Battle of Crécy against Philip VI of France. It was at this battle that the English first used the gesture of holding up two fingers as an insult, as this was how they held their new, and far superior weapon, the longbow.

1676 Sir Robert Walpole was born. He was a Whig politician who became the first Prime Minister. He was also the first Lord of the Treasury and the first Chancellor of the Exchequer.

1819 Prince Albert, (Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) and consort to Queen Victoria, was born in Bavaria. He persuaded Victoria towards more progressive views in some areas, took a keen interest in the arts, and organized the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace.

1936 Over 7,000 people queued to see the first high definition television pictures on sets at the Olympia Radio Show, west London. The pictures were transmitted by the BBC from Alexandra Palace, introduced by Leslie Mitchell, their first announcer.

1959 British car manufacturers Austin and Morris launched a small family car - the 'Mini'.

1959 The Radio Show opened at Earls Court in London, with the appearance of some of the first 'transistor' radios.

1963 Cilla Black made her first major concert appearance at The Odeon Cinema, Southport, on a bill with the Beatles.

1981 Steve Ovett recaptured the mile-run record which had been taken from him just a week earlier by Sebastian Coe. Ovett's new world record time was 3:48.40.

1994 A man was given the world's first battery-operated heart in a pioneering operation in Britain.

1997 Diana, Princess of Wales, condemned the previous Conservative Government as 'hopeless' over the issue of the banning of landmines.

2001 It was announced that thousands of patients facing long delays in British hospitals could have the chance to be treated abroad in a Government bid to reduce waiting lists.