On This Day

[Raistlin]

Births

1740 James Boswell, Scottish biographer and diarist

1877 Wilfred Rhodes, English cricketer

1882 Jean Giraudoux, French author

1891 Fanny Brice, US singer and entertainer

1897 Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi propaganda chief

1947 Richard Dreyfuss, US actor

Deaths

1911 Joseph Pulitzer, US newspaper publisher

1924 Frances Hodgson Burnett, English novelist

1950 Gustav V, King of Sweden

1957 Louis Burt Mayer, US film producer and distributor

1986 John Braine, British novelist

Events

1618 Sir Walter Raleigh, English navigator, courtier, and once favourite of Elizabeth I, was beheaded at Whitehall for treason.

1787 Mozart's opera Don Giovanni was first performed, in Prague.

1863 The International Red Cross was founded by Swiss philanthropist Henri Dunant.

1929 The Wall Street crash known as 'Black Tuesday' took place, leading to the Great Depression.

1957 Fulgencio Batistá suspended the Cuban constitution.

1964 The union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar was announced, adopting the name of Tanzania.

1967 Expo-67, an international exhibition, opened in Montreal, Canada.

1991 Vietnam formally approved a plan to forcibly repatriate tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees living in camps in Hong Kong.

[Raistlin]

Events

1485 The Yeomen of the Guard were established by King Henry VII of England.

1650 'Quakers', the more common name for the Society of Friends, came into being during a court case, at which George Fox, the founder, told the magistrate to 'quake and tremble at the word of God'.

1911 P'u-Yi, the boy emperor of China aged five, granted a new constitution, officially ending three centuries of Manchu domination over China.

1918 The Republic of Czechoslovakia was proclaimed.

1925 The Scottish inventor John Baird made the first televised transmission of a moving object (a 15-year-old office boy).

1938 US actor Orson Welles' radio production of The War of the Worlds by H G Wells caused panic in the USA.

1965 Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was jailed for drug offences.

1988 Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, conducted the marriage of 6,516 couples in a Seoul factory; the couples had first met the day before.

1997 The British nanny Louise Woodward was found guilty of the murder of baby Matthew Eappen by a court in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Births

1735 John Adams, 2nd US president

1751 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish dramatist

1840 Alfred Sisley, French painter

1885 Ezra Pound, US poet

1932 Louis Malle, French film director

1960 Diego Armando Maradona, Argentinian footballer

Deaths

1757 Edward Vernon, English admiral

1823 Edmund Cartwright, English inventor

1923 Andrew Bonar Law, British statesman

1956 Pio Baroja, Spanish novelist

1959 Jim Mollison, Scottish pioneer aviator

1979 Barnes Neville Wallis, British aeronautical engineer

[Red Yaris 54]

1961: World condemns Russia's nuclear test

Russia has exploded the world's largest ever nuclear device provoking widespread condemnation from around the world.

The device believed to be 50 megatons, equivalent to be 50 million tons of TNT, caused the biggest ever man-made explosion.

The test, the 26th in the current series, was carried out over the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya despite repeated objections from the West.

Shockwaves from the explosion were first picked up at the seismological institute at Uppsala in Sweden at 0830 hours GMT.

They were two-and-a-half times as powerful as Russia's last test, which was carried out on 23rd October using a 30-megaton weapon.

British indignation

A spokesman at the Kew Observatory in Britain where shockwaves from the explosion were recorded at about 1151 hours GMT said: "This was a big one alright. It's the largest such recording I have ever known."

A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Russia refused to make any comment.

Earlier, the United Nations had sent an official appeal asking Russia not to continue with its nuclear testing programme.

Lord Home, British Foreign minister, said, in a statement: "The British Government wholeheartedly deplores the news of this latest and largest of the Russian nuclear explosions.

"Eighty-seven nations appealed to the Soviet leaders to spare the world the explosion of the 50-megaton bomb, which endangers the health of many millions of people.

"The British Government shares the indignation which will be universally felt at this wanton disregard for the welfare and safety of the human race."

The United States Government insists it has known for many years how to make 50 and 100-megaton bombs but remains convinced that smaller weapons are more effective.

A White House spokesperson said: "It is a scientific fact that five 20-megaton weapons will cause more damage than one 100-megaton weapon."

[Raistlin]

Events

1517 Martin Luther nailed his theses on indulgences to the church door at Wittenberg, Germany.

1864 Nevada became the 36th state of the Union.

1902 The first telegraph cable across the Pacific Ocean was completed.

1940 The Battle of Britain ended.

1951 Zebra crossings came into effect in Britain.

1952 At Eniwetok Atoll, in the Pacific, the USA detonated the first hydrogen bomb.

1956 British and French troops bombed Egyptian airfields at Suez.

1971 An IRA bomb exploded at the top of the Post Office Tower, London.

1982 The Thames barrier, part of London's flood defences, was raised for the first time.

1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards.

1992 Galileo Galilei, forced by the Inquisition in 1633 to recant his assertion that the Earth orbits the Sun.

1995 Five million Quebecers say 'no' to separatism, but referendum results showed the province was as divided as ever, with 50.6% voting against and 49.4% voting in favour of separatism.

Births

1632 Jan Vermeer, Dutch painter

1795 John Keats, English poet

1828 Joseph Wilson Swan, English inventor of the electric lamp

1887 Chiang Kai-shek, Chinese leader

1912 Dale Evans, US film actress

1930 Michael Collins, US astronaut

Deaths

1904 Dan Leno, British comedian

1926 Harry Houdini, US escapologist

1943 Max Reinhardt, Austrian producer and director

1961 Augustus John, Welsh painter

1984 Indira Gandhi, Indian politician, assassinated

1993 River Phoenix, US film actor

1993 Federico Fellini, Italian film director and screenwriter

1994 John Pope-Hennessy, English art historian and museum curator

[Raistlin]

Events

1755 An earthquake reduced two-thirds of Lisbon to rubble and resulted, according to accounts, in the death of 60,000 people.

1848 The first W H Smith railway bookstall opened, at Euston Station, London.

1911Woman's Weekly magazine was first published.

1914 The British ships Good Hope and Monmouth were sunk by the Germans, at the Battle of Coronel.

1936 Hitler and Mussolini signed the Berlin-Rome Axis.

1940 A prehistoric painting was discovered in a cave in Lascaux in the Dordogne, France.

1950 Two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate US President Truman.

1959 The first stretch of the M1 motorway linking London with the North of England was opened.

1963 During an army coup in South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated and succeeded by General Duong Van Minh.

1972 Orissa, India, was struck by a tidal wave which killed 10,000 people and left 5 million homeless.

1993 Maastricht Treaty (the Treaty on European Union) came into force; the European Community became the European Union (EU).

1995 Peace talks between parties in the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina were held at the Wright-Paterson airforce base near Dayton, Ohio, USA.

Births

1500 Benvenuto Cellini, Italian sculptor and goldsmith

1757 Antonio Canova, Italian sculptor

1871 Stephen Crane, US novelist

1887 L S Lowry, English painter

1923 Victoria de los Angeles, Spanish soprano

1935 Gary Player, South African golfer

2005 Hayden Kingston Lynch

Deaths

1793 George Gordon, British Protestant agitator

1972 Ezra Pound, US poet

1982 King Vidor, US film director

1985 Phil Silvers, US comedian and actor

1988 Louis Johnson, New Zealand poet

1993 Severo Ochoa, Spanish-born US biochemist

[Raistlin]

Events

1785 The first insubmersible lifeboat was patented by Lionel Lakin, a London coach builder.

1871 The 'Rogues Gallery' was started, when photographs of all prisoners in Britain were first taken.

1899 Ladysmith, in Natal, South Africa, was besieged by the Boers.

1917 The Balfour Declaration, stating British support for the Jewish Zionist goal of a homeland in Palestine, was sent to Lord Rothschild.

1920 Warren G Harding, a Republican, was elected US president.

1930 Ras Tafari, King of Ethiopia, was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie ('Might of the Trinity').

1948 In USA, Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman elected senator.

1957 With eight simultaneous hits in the UK Top 30 chart, Elvis Presley set an all-time record.

1960 A British jury acquitted Penguin Books of obscenity in the matter of publishing D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.

1976 James Earl Carter was elected the 39th president of the USA.

1990 Ivana Trump filed for divorce from US millionaire Donald Trump.

Births

1734 Daniel Boone, US frontiersman

1755 Marie Antoinette, queen of King Louis XVI of France

1766 Joseph Radetzky, Austrian field marshal

1906 Luchino Visconti, Italian film director

1913 Burt Lancaster, US film actor

1944 Keith Emerson, English rock musician

Deaths

1600 Richard Hooker, English theologian

1887 Jenny Lind, Swedish soprano

1909 William Powell Frith, British painter

1950 George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist

1961 James Thurber, US humorous writer and cartoonist

[Raistlin]

Events

1493 Christopher Columbus, on his second voyage of discovery, sighted Dominica, in the West Indies.

1706 A violent earthquake occurred in the Abruzzi, Italy, killing some 15,000 inhabitants.

1871 Henry Stanley from the New York Herald finds Dr Livingston in Africa. He introduces himself with the greating "Dr Livingstone, I presume."

1927 Turkey adopted the Roman alphabet, abolishing the use of Arabic.

1942 British troops, led by Field Marshal Montgomery, broke through Rommel's front line in Africa.

1957 The Russian dog, Laika, became the first in space aboard Sputnik 2.

1964 President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Democrat, had a sweeping victory over Republican Barry Goldwater in the US presidential elections.

1975 The North Sea pipeline, the first to be built underwater, was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

1992 Democrat William Jefferson ('Bill') Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, won the US presidential election with 370 electoral college votes.

1993 A mystery woman paid a record 5 million Swiss francs (£2.2m) for an envelope with two stamps sent from Mauritius to a Bordeaux wine exporter in 1847.

1996 Ffyona Campbell, who in 1994 had been named in the Guinness Book of Records as the first woman to walk around the world, admitted that she had not actually accomplished the feat.

Births

1801 Vincenzo Bellini, Italian operatic composer

1801 Karl Baedeker, German guide-book publisher

1922 Charles Bronson, US film actor

1936 Roy Emerson, Australian tennis player

1949 Larry Holmes, US boxing champion

1954 Adam Ant, English rock musician

Deaths

361 Constantius II, Roman emperor of the East

1926 Annie Oakley, US entertainer and markswoman

1954 Henri Matisse, French painter

1962 Ralph Hodgson, English poet

1993 Leon Theremin, Russian inventor

[Raistlin]

Births

1650 William III, King of Great Britain and Ireland

1740 Augustus Montague Toplady, British clergyman and author

1873 Eden Phillpotts, English novelist and dramatist; G E Moore, British philosopher

1879 Will Rogers, US humorist and actor

1918 Art Carney, US actor

Deaths

1847 Felix Mendelssohn, German composer

1856 Paul Delaroche, French painter

1859 Joseph Rowntree, British cocoa manufacturer and philanthropist

1918 Wilfred Owen, English poet

1924 Gabriel Fauré, French organist and composer

Events

1605 Guy Fawkes, a Roman Catholic convert and conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested in the British House of Parliament's cellar.

1862 US inventor Richard Gatling patented the rapid-fire, or machine, gun.

1914 The first fashion show was organized by Edna Woodman Chase of Vogue magazine, and held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, New York.

1922 British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen.

1946 UNESCO was established, with headquarters in Paris.

1979 Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Teheran and held over 60 staff and US marines hostage.

1980 Ronald Reagan was elected 40th US president.

1991 Imelda Marcos returned to the Philippines after five years of exile in the USA; the government endorsed her return so that she could be tried on corruption and tax evasion charges.

1995 Itzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, was assassinated at peace rally in Tel Aviv by Jewish law student Yigal Amir.

1997 French lorry drivers blockaded roads and ports until a negotiated settlement ended their dispute over pay and conditions.

[Raistlin]

Births

1884 James Elroy Flecker, English poet

1892 John Haldane, Scottish scientist

1913 Vivien Leigh, British actress

1935 Lester Piggott, British jockey

1940 Elke Sommer, German actress

1941 Art Garfunkel, US singer and composer

Deaths

1807 Death of Angelica Kauffman

1955 Maurice Utrillo, French painter

1960 Mack Sennett, US film producer

1979 Al Capp, US cartoonist

1982 Jacques Tati, French film actor and director

1989 Vladimir Horowitz, US pianist

1991 Robert Maxwell, British publishing and newspaper proprietor

Events

1605 Gunpowder Plot, to blow up the House of Lords during James I's state opening of Parliament, was discovered.

1854 The combined British and French armies defeated the Russians at the Battle of Inkerman during the Crimean War.

1872 Ulysses Grant was re-elected US president.

1912 The British Board of Film Censors was appointed.

1914 Cyprus was annexed by Britain on the outbreak of war with Turkey.

1919 Rudolph Valentino, the archetypal romantic screen lover, married actress Jean Acker; the marriage lasted less than six hours.

1927 Britain's first automatic traffic lights began functioning, in Wolverhampton.

1968 Richard Nixon was elected 37th US president.

1990 Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the militant Jewish Defence League and Israel's extremist anti-Arab Kach party, was assassinated in a New York City hotel.

1996 Russian President Yeltsin underwent a multiple-bypass heart operation in Moscow.

1996 Pakistani President Leghari dismissed Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dissolved the National Assembly amidst charges of economic mismanagement and corruption in Bhutto's government.

1996 A volcano underneath the Vatnajokull glacier in SE Iceland erupted again (previously 1 Oct), flooding the largely uninhabited surrounding area.

[Raistlin]

Events

1429 Henry VI was crowned King of England.

1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th US president.

1869 Diamonds were discovered at Kimberley, in Cape Province, South Africa.

1924 British Tory leader Stanley Baldwin was elected prime minister.

1932 In general elections held in Germany, the Nazis emerged as the largest party.

1952 The USA exploded the first hydrogen bomb, at Eniwetok island in the Pacific.

1956 Construction of the Kariba High Dam, on the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe, began.

1975 UK punk rock group, the Sex Pistols, gave their first public performance at London's St Martin's College of Art; college authorities cut the concert short after 10 minutes.

1979 Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolutionary Council took power in Iran from the provisional government.

1988 Six thousand US Defense Department computers were crippled by a virus; the culprit was the 23-year-old son of the head of the country's computer security agency.

Births

1771 Alois Senefelder, Austrian inventor of lithography

1814 Adolphe Sax, Belgian inventor of the saxophone

1854 John Philip Sousa, US bandmaster and composer

1892 John Alcock, British pioneer aviator

1931 Mike Nichols, US director

1946 Sally Field, US actress

Deaths

1632 Gustavus II, King of Sweden

1672 Heinrich Schütz, German composer

1796 Catherine the Great, Russian Empress

1842 William Hone, British satirist and editor

1893 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer

1901 Kate Greenaway, British illustrator

1991 Gene Eliza Tierney, US film actress

1997 Isaiah Berlin, Latvian-born British philosopher and historian

[Raistlin]

Events

1783 The last man to be hanged at Tyburn, John Austin, was executed.

1872 The Marie Celeste, the ill-fated brigantine, sailed from New York to be found mysteriously abandoned near the Azores some time later.

1916 Jeanette Rankin, of the state of Montana, became the first woman member of US Congress.

1916 Democrat Woodrow Wilson was re-elected US president.

1917 The Bolshevik Revolution, led by Lenin, overthrew Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky's government.

1944 Democrat Franklin D Roosevelt was re-elected US president for a fourth term.

1972 Richard Nixon was re-elected US president.

1988 In Las Vegas, 'Sugar' Ray Leonard knocked out Canadian Donny Londe, completing his collection of world titles at five different weights.

1990 Mary Robinson became the Irish Republic's first woman president.

1996 A team of British, American and Australian scientists reported evidence that life on Earth originated some 350 million years earlier than previously believed.

Births

1867 Marie Curie, Polish physicist

1879 Leon Trotsky, Russian Communist leader

1888 Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Indian physicist

1913 Albert Camus, French writer

1926 Joan Sutherland, operatic soprano

1943 Joni Mitchell, Canadian singer

Deaths

1723 Godfrey Kneller, German painter

1959 Victor McLaglen, English film actor

1962 Eleanor Roosevelt, US writer and lecturer

1978 Gene Tunney, US heavyweight boxer

1980 Steve McQueen, US film actor

1993 Alexander Dubcek, Czech statesman; Adelaide Hall, US singer, dancer, and actress

[Raistlin]

Births

1656 Edmond Halley, English astronomer

1847 Bram Stoker, Irish writer

1866 Herbert Austin, English motor-car manufacturer

1900 Margaret Mitchell, US novelist

1922 Christiaan Barnard, South African heart transplant pioneer

1935 Alain Delon, French film actor

Deaths

1674 John Milton, English poet

1865 Tom Sayers, English bare-knuckle pugilist

1886 Fred Archer, English jockey

1908 Victorien Sardou, French dramatist

1953 Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin, Russian poet

1965 Edgard Varèse, French composer

Events

1793 The Louvre was opened to the public by the Revolutionary government, although only part of the collection could be viewed.

1864 Abraham Lincoln was re-elected US president.

1895 William Röntgen discovered X-rays during an experiment at the University of Wurzburg.

1923 Hitler led his unsuccessful rising in Munich, known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

1942 Under Eisenhower's command, British and US forces invaded North Africa, in 'Operation Torch'.

1958 Melody Maker published the first British album charts.

1960 John F Kennedy was elected US president.

1987 An IRA bomb went off in Eniskillen, Co Fermanagh, shortly before a Remembrance Day service, killing 11 people.

1991 Yugoslavia in an effort to halt the civil war there.

1994 In the US mid-term elections, the Democrats and President Clinton suffered a devastating setback: the Republicans gained control of the Senate for the first time since 1986.

1994 In Oregon, USA, voters supported Measure 16, permitting euthanasia in regulated circumstances for the terminally ill.

1997 Skip Away, ridden by US jockey Mike Smith, won the one and a quarter mile long Breeders' Cup Classic horse race at Hollywood Park, California, in a record time of 1 min 59 sec.

[Raistlin]

Events

1837 Moses Montefiore became the first Jew to be knighted in England.

1859 Flogging in the British army was abolished.

1908 Britain's first woman mayor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was elected at Aldeburgh.

1918 Following a revolution in Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and fled to Holland.

1925 The SS (Schutzstaffel or 'Protection Squad') was formed in Germany.

1965 Capital punishment was abolished in Britain.

1972 Andrew Young became the first African-American to be elected from the South to the US Congress since the mid-19th century.

1988 Gary Kasparov became world chess champion after beating Anatoly Karpov, who had held the title for ten years, in Moscow.

1989 East Germany announced the opening of its border with West Germany.

1996 Evander Holyfield defeated Mike Tyson with a technical knockout in the 11th round to win the WBA heavyweight title in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Births

1818 Ivan Turgenev, Russian dramatist

1841 Edward VII, King of Great Britain and Ireland

1880 Giles Gilbert Scott, English architect

1909 Katherine Hepburn, US film actress

1913 Hedy Lamarr, US film actress

1934 Carl Sagan, US astronomer

Deaths

1918 Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet

1937 James Ramsay MacDonald, British statesman

1940 Neville Chamberlain, British statesman

1953 Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet

1970 Charles de Gaulle, French statesman

1991 Yves Montand, French singer and actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1775 The Continental Congress authorized the creation of the 'Continental Marines', now known as the US Marines.

1862 The first performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Forza del Destino was held in St Petersburg.

1871 Henry Morton Stanley, who had been sent to track down missing explorer David Livingstone, met him at Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika.

1928 Hirohito was crowned Emperor of Japan, at the age of 27.

1938 Kristallnacht, or 'night of (broken) glass', took place when Nazis burned 267 synagogues and destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and businesses in Germany.

1989 Bulldozers began demolishing the 28-year-old Berlin Wall, following the government's announcement that it would allow free travel between East and West Germany.

1995 Despite appeals from around the world, Nigeria's military regime hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa, the author and playwright, and 8 other activists in the city of Port Harcourt.

1997 US judge Hiller Zobel, in his decision on the English nanny Louise Woodward's murder case, reduced her second degree murder conviction to involuntary manslaughter and freed her.

Births

1483 Martin Luther, German Protestant reformer

1668 François Couperin, French composer

1697 William Hogarth, English painter and engraver

1759 Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, German poet and dramatist

1880 Jacob Epstein, British sculptor

Deaths

461 Pope Leo I (the Great)

1891 Arthur Rimbaud, French poet

1938 Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, Turkish statesman

1979 Dennis Wheatley, English novelist

1982 Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet political leader

1986 Gordon Richards, English horse jockey

[Raistlin]

Births

1729 Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French navigator

1821 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Russian author

1868 Edouard Vuillard, French painter

1922 Kurt Vonnegut, US novelist

1935 Bibi Andersson, Swedish film actress

1947 Rodney Marsh, Australian cricketer

Deaths

1855 Sören Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher

1880 Ned Kelly, Australian outlaw

1936 Edward German, English composer

1945 Jerome Kern, US composer

1979 Dimitri Tiomkin, US composer

1986 Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Russian leader

Events

1918 The armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany in Compiègne, France, effectively ending World War I.

1921 The British Legion held its first Poppy Day to raise money for wounded World War I veterans.

1940 The Willys-Overland Company launched a four-wheel drive vehicle for the US Army, named 'Jeep' after GP (general purpose).

1952 The first video recorder was demonstrated in Beverly Hills, California, by its inventors John Mullin and Wayne Johnson.

1965 Rhodesia, unilaterally declared his country's independence from Britain.

1969 The UN General Assembly rejected the admission of Communist China for 20th time.

1975 Angola gained independence from Portugal.

1982 A bomb destroyed Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, Lebanon, killing 100.

1992 The Church of England General Synod voted to allow women to be ordained to the priesthood.

[Raistlin]

Births

1833 Alexander Borodin, Russian composer

1840 Auguste Rodin, French sculptor

1866 Sun Yat-sen, Chinese nationalist politician

1929 Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco

1946 Neil Young, Canadian rock singer and guitarist

1961 Nadia Comaneci, Romanian gymnast

Deaths

1035 Canute II (the Great), king of England and Denmark

1793 John Sylvan, French astronomer

1865 Elizabeth Gaskell, English novelist

1916 Percival Lowell, US astronomer

1947 Baroness Orczy, English novelist

1972 Rudolf Friml, US composer

1993 H R Haldeman, US political aide

Events

1660 John Bunyan was arrested for preaching without a licence; refusing to give up preaching, he remained in jail for 12 years.

1847 The first public demonstration of the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic was given by James Simpson, at the University of Edinburgh.

1859 Jules Léotard, the daring young man on the flying trapeze, made his debut at the Cirque Napoléon, in Paris.

1912 The remains of English explorer Robert Scott and his companions were found in Antarctica.

1918 The Republic of Austria was declared, thus ending the Habsburg dynasty.

1944 The RAF bombed and sank the Tirpitz, the last of the major German battleships.

1974 For the first time since the 1840s, a salmon was caught in the Thames.

1974 'Lucky' Lord Lucan disappeared from London after the murder of his children's nanny.

1981 The US shuttle Columbia became the first reusable crewed spacecraft, by making its second trip.

1996 Two aeroplanes collided in midair about 60mi/100km west of the airport in New Delhi, India, killing all 349 people aboard the planes.

1996 The European Court of Justice ordered Britain to enforce an EU policy mandating a maximum 48-hour week and enacting other workplace rules.

[Raistlin]

Events

1002 The Massacre of the Danes in the southern counties of England took place by order of Ethelred II.

1511 Henry VIII joined the Holy League and thus entered European politics.

1851 The telegraph service between London and Paris began operating.

1907 The first helicopter rose 2 m/6.5 ft above the ground in Normandy.

1914 US heiress Mary Phelps Jacob patented a new female undergarment, known as the 'backless brassiere'.

1956 Alabama bus segregation ended after Rosa Parks is arrested for sitting in 'whites only' area.

1970 A cyclone and tidal waves struck East Pakistan, killing over 500,000 people.

1979 In Britain, publication of The Times and The Sunday Times resumed after a year-long industrial dispute.

1985 The Colombian volcano Nevado del Ruiz, dormant since 1845, erupted, killing over 20,000 people.

1987 With a view to encouraging 'safe sex', or AIDS prevention, the BBC screened its first condom commercial (without a brand name).

1995 In a dispute with Republicans in Congress over the 1996 US budget, President Clinton blocked two temporary funding measures, resulting in closure of some government functions.

Births

1312 Edward III, King of England

1761 John Moore, British general

1825 Charles Frederick Worth, English couturier

1850 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer

1912 Eugene Ionesco, French author and dramatist

1935 George Carey, archbishop of Canterbury

Deaths

1868 Gioacchino Rossini, Italian composer

1903 Camille Pissarro, French painter

1973 Elsa Schiaparelli, Italian couturière

1974 Vittorio de Sica, Italian film director

1982 Chesney Allen, British comedian

[Raistlin]

Births

1765 Robert Fulton, US engineer

1840 Claude Monet, French painter

1889 Jawaarlal Nehru, Indian statesman

1930 Elisabeth Frink, English sculptor

1935 King Hussein of Jordan

1948 Charles, the Prince of Wales

Deaths

1687 Nell Gwyn, English actress and mistress of Charles II, King of England

1716 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German philosopher

1831 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher

1915 Booker T Washington, US educationalist

1946 Manuel de Falla, Spanish composer

1991 Tony Richardson, British director

Events

1770 Scottish explorer James Bruce discovered the source of the Blue Nile in NE Ethiopia, then considered the main stream of the Nile.

1896 The speed limit for motor vehicles in Britain was raised from 4 mph to 14 mph.

1925 An exhibition of Surrealist art opened in Paris, including works by Max Ernst, Man Ray, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.

1927 Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev were expelled from the Soviet Communist Party.

1940 Enemy bombing over England destroyed Coventry's medieval cathedral.

1952 Britain's first pop singles chart was published by New Musical Express.

1954 In Egypt, President Neguib was deposed.

1963 The island of Surtsey off Iceland was 'born' by the eruption of an underwater volcano.

1973 Bobby Moore made his 108th (and final) international appearance for England, against Italy at Wembley.

1983 Defence Secretary Heseltine announced the arrival of the first Cruise missiles at Greenham Common.

1991 Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia's former head of state, returned to Phnom Penh after nearly 13 years in exile to head the country's interim government.

[Raistlin]

Births

1708 William Pitt the Elder, British statesman

1738 William Herschel, English astronomer

1891 Erwin Rommel, German field marshal

1891 Averell Harriman, US diplomat

1934 Petula Clark, British singer and actress

1942 Daniel Barenboim, Israeli pianist and conductor

Deaths

1802 George Romney, English painter

1916 Henryk Sienkiewicz, Polish novelist

1954 Lionel Barrymore, US actor

1958 Tyrone Power, US film actor

1976 Jean Gabin, French actor

1978 Margaret Mead, US anthropologist

1993 Luciano Liggio, Italian racketeer

Events

1837 Pitman's system of shorthand was published, under the title Stenographic Sound-Hand.

1889 Brazil was proclaimed a republic.

1899 Winston Churchill, British politician, was captured by the Boers while covering the war as a reporter for the Morning Post.

1956 Love Me Tender, the first film starring Elvis Presley, premiered in New York.

1968 The Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth ended her final transatlantic journey.

1983 An independent Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was unilaterally proclaimed, recognised only by Turkey.

1985 UK and Irish premiers, Margaret Thatcher and Garret Fitzerald, signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Dublin.

1991 In the wake of increased sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, Britain called up 1,400 reserve troops for full-time active duty.

1996 The oil company Texaco Inc agreed to a $176.1 million settlement of a federal discrimination lawsuit brought in 1994 by black Texaco employees.

1997 The English pop group the Spice Girls released the album Spiceworld.

[Raistlin]

Births

42 BC Tiberius, Roman emperor

1811 John Bright, British political reformer

1839 William Frend de Morgan, English artist and novelist

1889 George S Kaufman, US dramatist

1942 Willie Carson, English jockey

1961 Frank Bruno, British boxer

Deaths

1272 Henry III, King of England

1724 jack Sheppard, English highwayman

1885 Louis Riel, Canadian leader of the Métis rebellion

1960 Clark Gable, US film actor

1981 William Holden, US film actor

1983 Arthur Askey, English comedian

1997 Georges Marchais, French politician

Events

1824 Australian explorer Hamilton Hume discovered the Murray River, the longest river in Australia.

1869 Suez Canal, which had taken ten years to build, was formally opened.

1913 The first volume of Remembrance of Things Past, the classic autobiographical novel by Marcel Proust, was published in Paris.

1918 Hungary achieved independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire and was proclaimed a republic.

1920 Russian civil war ended with the victory of the Bolsheviks.

1928 In London, obscenity charges were brought against Radclyffe Hall's crusading lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness.

1965 The USSR launched Venus III, an unmanned spacecraft that successfully landed on Venus.

1993 Vladimir Lenin's mausoleum was closed by the Russian authorities; it was the first site in Moscow linked to Lenin to be shut down.

1996 The Hard Rock Cafe restaurant in Paris was closed by the authorities following the discovery there by French police of British beef after the EU had enacted a ban on British beef.

[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

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 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.

[Raistlin]

Births

1786 Carl von Weber, German composer

1789 Louis Daguerre, French photographic pioneer

1836 W S Gilbert, English dramatist and librettist

1860 Ignacy Padereweski, Polish pianist, composer and statesman

1923 Alan Shepard, US astronaut

1941 David Hemmings, English film actor and director

Deaths

1886 Chester Alan Arthur, 21st US president

1922 Marcel Proust, French author

1962 Niels Henrik Bohr, Danish physicist

1969 Joseph Kennedy, US financier and diplomat

1991 Gustáv Husák, Czech politician

1994 Cab Calloway, US band leader, singer, and actor

1994 Michael Somes, British ballet dancer and teacher

1997 Joyce Wethered, English golfer

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).

[Raistlin]

Births

1600 Charles I, King of England and Scotland

1805 Ferdinand de Lesseps, French engineer

1900 Anton Walbrook, German actor

1917 Indira Gandhi, Indian stateswoman

1942 Calvin Klein, US fashion designer

1963 Jodie Foster, US actress

Deaths

1665 Nicolas Poussin, French painter

1692 Thomas Shadwell, English dramatist and poet

1828 Franz Schubert, Austrian composer

1883 William Siemens, German metallurgist

1976 Basil Spence, British architect

1988 Christina Onassis, Greek shipowner

Events

1493 Columbus discovered Puerto Rico.

1607 Costly wars of religion and an inefficient tax system led to the 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.

[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.

Births

1889 Edwin Powell Hubble, US astronomer

1906 Alexandra Danilova, Russian ballerina and choreographer

1908 Alistair Cooke, English journalist and broadcaster

1920 Dulcie Gray, English actress

1923 Nadine Gordimer, South African novelist

1925 Robert Kennedy, US politician

Deaths

1894 Anton Rubinstein, Russian pianist and composer

1910 Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist

1925 Queen Alexandra, consort of Edward VII

1935 John Rushworth Jellicoe, British admiral

1945 Francis William Aston, English physicist

1975 Francisco Franco, Spanish dictator

[Raistlin]

Events

1783 François de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandres made the first human flight when they lifted off from the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, in a hot-air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers.

1918 The German High Seas Fleet surrendered to the Allies.

1934 Cole Porter's Anything Goes was first performed in New York.

1953 The discovery of the Piltdown Man skull by Charles Dawson in Sussex in 1912 was finally revealed as a hoax.

1974 In Birmingham, 20 people were killed and 200 injured by IRA bomb explosions.

1990 Leaders of NATO and Warsaw Pact member states signed the Charter of Paris and a treaty on conventional forces in Europe, bringing an end to the Cold War.

1997 South Korea, the world's tenth largest economy, sought International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance in response to financial crisis and a fall in value of its currency, the won.

Births

1694 Voltaire, French philosopher and writer

1888 Harpo Marx, US comedian

1898 René Magritte, Belgian painter

1904 Coleman Hawkins, US jazz saxophonist

1940 Natalia Makarova, Russian ballerina

1945 Goldie Hawn, US film actress

Deaths

1695 Henry Purcell, English composer

1835 James Hogg, Scottish novelist and poet

1916 Franz Josef I, Emperor of Austria

1942 James Hertzog, South African politician

1970 Venkata Raman, Indian physicist

1997 Robert Simpson, English composer