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Post by Mr Jinx on Mar 26, 2012 17:01:04 GMT
Marsh 26.
1780: The British Gazette and Sunday Monitor was published for the first time. It was the first Sunday newspaper in Britain.
1827: Composer Ludwig van Beethoven died.
1942: The Germans began sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their "bed-in" for peace in Amsterdam.
1973: Women were allowed on the floor of the London Stock Exchange for the first time.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Mar 27, 2012 20:51:27 GMT
March 27.
1931 - Actor Charlie Chaplin received France’s Legion of Honor decoration.
1968 - Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the earth, died in a plane crash.
1977: At least 560 people died after two jumbo jets collided on a runway in the holiday destination of Tenerife. It is thought to be the world's worst disaster involving aircraft on the ground.
1997 - Dexter King met with James Earl Ray. Ray was in prison for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dexter King believes that Ray had nothing to do with the assassination.
1998 - In the U.S., the FDA approved the prescription drug Viagra. It was the first pill for male impotence.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Mar 28, 2012 18:59:13 GMT
Marsh 28.
1910 - The first seaplane took off from water at Martinques, France. The pilot was Henri Fabre.
1945 - Germany launched the last of the V-2 rockets against England.
1967 - Raymond Burr starred in a TV movie titled "Ironside." The movie was later turned into a television series.
1986 - More than 6,000 radio stations of all format varieties played "We are the World" simultaneously at 10:15 a.m. EST.
1996 - Phil Collins announced that he was leaving Genesis to concentrate on his solo career.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Mar 29, 2012 21:10:58 GMT
March 29.
1461 - Edward IV secured his claim to the English thrown by defeating Henry VI’s Lancastrians at the battle of Towdon.
1848 - Niagara Falls stopped flowing for one day due to an ice jam.
1971 - A jury in Los Angeles recommended the death penalty for Charles Manson and three female followers for the 1969 Tate-La Bianca murders. The death sentences were later commuted to live in prison.
1980 - The BeeGees were sued by a Chicago man for plagiarism of the song "How Deep Is Your Love." The BeeGees won the case on appeal.
1986 - A court in Rome acquitted six men in a plot to kill the Pope.
1993 - Clint Eastwood won his first Oscars. He won them for best film and best director for the film "Unforgiven."
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Post by Mr Jinx on Mar 30, 2012 17:34:45 GMT
March 30.
1533: Henry VIII divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
1979: Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Airey Neave was killed by a car bomb as he left the House of Commons car park.
1981: President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded after a lone gunman opened fire in Washington.
1987: Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" was bought for $39.85 million.
1998 - Rolls-Royce was purchased by BMW in a $570 million deal.
2002: The Queen Mother died peacefully in her sleep aged 101, Buckingham Palace announced.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 1, 2012 11:26:08 GMT
Sorry it's a day late but I was up in London all day yesterday.
March 31.
1953: Queen Mary was laid to rest next to her late husband following a funeral service at Windsor Castle.
1990: An anti-poll tax rally in central London erupted into the worst riots seen in the city for a century. Forty-five police officers were among the 113 people injured as well as 20 police horses.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 1, 2012 11:29:27 GMT
April 1.
On this day in 1957 the normally po-faced BBC pulled, possibly, the most famous April Fools joke of all time-
BBC fools the nation.
The BBC has received a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary broadcast this evening about spaghetti crops in Switzerland.
The hoax Panorama programme, narrated by distinguished broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, featured a family from Ticino in Switzerland carrying out their annual spaghetti harvest.
It showed women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry.
But some viewers failed to see the funny side of the broadcast and criticised the BBC for airing the item on what is supposed to be a serious factual programme.
Others, however, were so intrigued they wanted to find out where they could purchase their very own spaghetti bush.
Exotic delicacy
Spaghetti is not a widely-eaten food in the UK and is considered by many as an exotic delicacy.
Mr Dimbleby explained how each year the end of March is a very anxious time for Spaghetti harvesters all over Europe as severe frost can impair the flavour of the spaghetti.
He also explained how each strand of spaghetti always grows to the same length thanks to years of hard work by generations of growers.
This is believed to be one of the first times the medium of television has been used to stage an April Fools Day hoax.
For those of you who have never seen it here's the original Spaghetti broadcast -
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Post by scaramouche on Apr 1, 2012 11:53:36 GMT
Just wanted to say how much I do enjoy this thread. Great little informative, historical diary. Each entry in itself could be the makings of a topic for discussion on here. Thanks, Mr Jinx. PS: How DARE you go and spend a whole day in London without doing your 'On this day ...' entry. Priorities man! Just don't let it happen again.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 1, 2012 12:07:09 GMT
PS: How DARE you go and spend a whole day in London without doing your 'On this day ...' entry. Priorities man! Just don't let it happen again. Really sorry, don't know what came over me!
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 2, 2012 20:00:17 GMT
April 2.
1972: Burt Reynolds appeared nude in "Cosmopolitan" magazine.
1977: Red Rum galloped into racing history by winning the Grand National for a record third time. The steeple chaser won the race in 1973 and 1974 and came home second in the following two years.
1982: Argentina invaded the British territory of the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic. The islands, off the coast of Argentina, have been a cause of friction between the two countries since Britain claimed them in 1833.
1986: Four people, including an eight-month old baby, were sucked out of a TWA passenger jet after an explosion ripped a hole in its side. The Boeing 727 was flying at 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) over Greece, on its way to Athens, when a bomb went off.
1990: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatened to incinerate half of Israel with chemical weapons if Israel joined a conspiracy against Iraq.
2005: Pope John Paul II, the third longest-serving pontiff in history, died at the age of 84. The Pope died in his private apartment at the Vatican at 2137 local time (1937 GMT), surrounded by his closest Polish aides.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 3, 2012 21:18:03 GMT
April 3.
1860: The first Pony Express riders left St. Joseph, MO and Sacramento, CA. The trip across country took about 10 days. The Pony Express only lasted about a year and a half.
1882: The American outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back and killed by Robert Ford for a $5,000 reward. There was later controversy over whether it was actually Jesse James that had been killed.
1954: Oxford has won the 100th Boat Race in rough conditions on the River Thames.
1987: The late Duchess of Windsor's jewellery was sold for £31m ($50m) - six times the expected figure during an auction in Switzerland.
1993: The Grand National ended in chaos after a series of events at the start which reduced the world-famous horse race to a shambles. An estimated 300 million people around the world were watching the race, held at the Aintree racecourse in Liverpool, live on television, when 30 of the 39 riders failed to realise a false start had been called and set off around the racetrack.
1996: Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was arrested. He pled guilty in January 1998 to five Unabomber attacks in exchange for a life sentence without chance for parole.
2010: The Apple iPad went on sale.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 4, 2012 16:09:46 GMT
April 4.
1905: In Kangra, India, an earthquake killed 370,000 people.
1949: Twelve nations signed a treaty to create The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
1968: The American black civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King, was assassinated.
1979: Pakistan's former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hung in spite of international calls for clemency.
1984: The women from the main peace camp at Greenham Common in Berkshire were evicted but said it would not end their protest.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 5, 2012 20:48:26 GMT
April 5.
1614: American Indian Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.
1843: Queen Victoria proclaimed Hong Kong to be a British crown colony.
1895: Playwright Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde had been accused of homosexual practices.
1955: Sir Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister of Britain due to his failing health.
1976: Eccentric American billionaire Howard Hughes died aged 70.
1999: Two Libyans suspected of bombing a Pan Am jet in 1988 were handed over so they could be flown to the Netherlands for trial. 270 people were killed in the bombing.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 6, 2012 17:43:17 GMT
April 6.
1199: English King Richard I was killed by an arrow at the siege of the castle of Chaluz in France.
1896: The first modern Olympic Games began in Athens, Greece.
1917: The U.S. Congress approved a declaration of war on Germany and entered World War I on the Allied side.
1987: Sugar Ray Leonard took the middleweight title from Marvin Hagler.
1997: The US space agency, Nasa, aborted the latest space shuttle flight and ordered its crew to return to Earth because of a defective fuel cell.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 7, 2012 9:25:36 GMT
April 7.
1933: Prohibition ended in the United States.
1968: Motor racing world champion Jim Clark was killed in a car crash during a Formula Two race at Hockenheim.
1970: John Wayne won his first and only Oscar for his role in "True Grit." He had been in over 200 films.
1985: The Soviet Union announced a unilateral freeze on medium-range nuclear missiles.
1985: Wham! became the first Western act to play in China. (Mr Jinx says - this one is debatable since the french musician Jean Michel Jarre played there in 1981)
1989: A Soviet submarine carrying nuclear weapons sank in the Norwegian Sea.
1998: George Michael was arrested in a public restroom in Beverly Hills for lewd conduct. He was sentenced to community service for the incident.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 8, 2012 20:14:14 GMT
April 8.
1953: The bones of Sitting Bull were moved from North Dakota to South Dakota.
1973: The artist Pablo Picasso died of a heart attack at his chateau near Cannes on the French Riviera. He suffered the fatal seizure at approximately 1100 local time (1000GMT).
1986: Residents of the Californian town of Carmel overwhelmingly voted for actor Clint Eastwood as their mayor.
1994: The lead-singer of American grunge rock band Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, was found dead in his Seattle home.
1995: British-born Nicholas Ingram was executed in the electric chair in the US after two appeals to the US Supreme Court were turned down.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 9, 2012 15:13:29 GMT
April 9.
1770: Captain James Cook discovered Botany Bay on the Australian continent.
1838: The National Galley opened in London.
1914: In London, the first full-color film, "The World, The Flesh & the Devil," was shown.
1963: Winston Churchill became the first honorary U.S. citizen.
1986: It was announced that Patrick Duffy's character on the TV show Dallas would be returning after being killed off.
2005: The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles finally became husband and wife - more than 30 years after their romance first began.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 10, 2012 21:06:44 GMT
April 10.
1849: Walter Hunt patented the safety pin. He sold the rights for $100.
1912: The Titanic set sail from Southampton, England.
1953: Warner Bros. released "House of Wax." It was the first 3-D movie to be released by a major Hollywood studio.
1992: A bomb exploded in London's financial district. The bomb, set off by the Irish Republican Army, killed three people and injured 91.
2001: The Netherlands legalized mercy killings and assisted suicide for patients with unbearable, terminal illness.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 11, 2012 20:03:01 GMT
April 11.
1689: William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.
1941: Germany bombers blitzed Conventry, England.
1970: Apollo 13 blasted off on a mission to the moon that was disrupted when an explosion crippled the spacecraft. The astronauts did return safely.
1981: In the Brixton area of London, a race riot erupted that resulted in the injury of more than 300 people.
1985: Scientists in Hawaii measured the distance between the earth and moon within one inch.
1986: Kellogg's stopped giving tours of its breakfast-food plant. The reason for the end of the 80-year tradition was said to be that company secrets were at risk due to spies from other cereal companies.
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Post by Mr Jinx on Apr 12, 2012 20:30:28 GMT
April 12.
1606: England adopted the original Union Jack as its flag.
1911: Pierre Prier completed the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes.
1961: The Soviet Union beat the USA in the race to get the first man into space. Major Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was fired from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, Soviet central Asia, in the space craft Vostok (East).
1982: The British Navy began enforcing a blockade around the Falkland Islands.
1985: Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns. They were goats with horns that had been surgically implanted.
1992: Disneyland Paris opened in Marne-La-Vallee, France.
2002: A first edition version of Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" sold for $64,780 at Sotheby's. A signed first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" sold for $66,630. A copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," signed by J.K. Rowling sold for $16,660. A 250-piece collection of rare works by Charles Dickens sold for $512,650.
2002: It was announced that the South African version of "Sesame Street" would be introducing a character that was HIV-positive.
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