On this day

1577 – Sir Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.

1636 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.

1809 – Dr. Ephraim McDowell performed the first ovariotomy, removing a 22 pound tumor.

1937 – Nanjing Massacre. Japanese troops begin carrying out several weeks of raping and killing of civilians and suspected Chinese resistance after the fall of Nanjing.

1943 – World War II: The Massacre of Kalavryta by German occupying forces in Greece.

1962 – NASA Relay 1 launch, first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.

1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.

2002 – Enlargement of the European Union: The European Union announces that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia will become members from May 1, 2004.

2003 – Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit (see Operation Red Dawn).

14th December 1979
London Calling (double album)-The Clash is released in u.k.on this date.

December 14th, 1962 - Mariner 2, Planet Venus and the 'Music of the Spheres'

The U.S. spacecraft Mariner 2, an unmanned probe, took the first ever space scan of Venus during a fly-by mission that took NASA closest to the planet than ever before. Thus, Mariner 2 became the first robotic space probe to establish radio contact with another planet.

Mission Objectives

From a scientific point of view - there were a multitude of devices fitted and it was decided there was to be six main experiments conducted to gain a variety of data. Devices included infrared and microwave radiometers; particle detector; ionization chamber; fluxgate magnetometer; solar plasma spectrometer and a cosmic dust detector. The main scientific experiments focused on gathering data on temperatures of the planet (both absolute and localised areas); radiation both on the surface and in the atmosphere; the planet's magnetic fields and day and dark hours of the planet's hemispheres; emittance of cosmic dust particles in to space and the level of solar wind.

For the engineering side, Mariner would record evaluations on the attitude and environmental control systems; the communication system and the overall power system.

Launch and Flight

The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 06:53 UTC on August 27th 1962. The two stage Atlas-Agena rocket allowed the separation of the Mariner craft 5 minutes after launch, with the NASA-NDIF station at Johannesburg, South Africa establishing tracking contact around 31 minutes later. On August 29th, cruise science experiments were activated followed by Earth acquisition and lock on September 3rd.

On September 4th, a mid-course correction maneuver was performed to satisfy the mission requirements, which took 34 minutes to complete. Commands were transmitted to the probe to perform a specific set of moves to ensure correct course trajectory. Over the course of the next three months several occurences played a part including loss of attitude control, deterioration of a solar panel and loss of sun lock believed to be caused by a minor collision with an unidentified object. However, despite these minor setbacks, Mariner 2 arrived at Venus on December 14th 1962. The craft completed a positive encounter, passing the planet at nearly 41,000 km and gathering a large variety of data.

The transmission of data back to NASA lasted approximately 40 minutes. Radio contact was established at about 1900 GMT, heard in the form of strange chord-like sounds at the Goldstone tracking station in California. As the sounds were picked up at Goldstone for the first time, Dr William Pickering of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, "Listen to the music of the spheres."

Further missions to Venus followed. These were launched in 1967 (Soviet mission Venera); from 1989 to 1994 (US Magellan mission) and from 2005 to 2006 (European Space Agency mission 'Venus Express').

I've posted the BBC and Wikipedia links below for further reading. There's some really cool links including the audio transmission creating the music and the launch video.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...061955.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_2

1896 – The Glasgow Underground Railway is opened by the Glasgow District Subway Company.

1900 – Quantum mechanics: Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law.

1911 – Roald Amundsen's team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first to reach the South Pole.

1939 – Winter War: The Soviet Union is expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland.

1946 – The United Nations General Assembly votes to establish its headquarters in New York, New York.

1955 – Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sri Lanka join the United Nations.

1958 – The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition becomes the first expedition to reach The Pole of Relative Inaccessibility in the Antarctic.

1971 – Over 200 of East Pakistan's (now Bangladesh) intellectuals are massacred by the Pakistan Army and their local allies.

1994 – Construction begins on the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.

1995 – Yugoslav Wars: The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris, France by leaders of various governments.

2004 – The Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world, near Millau, France is officially opened.

2004 – Cuba and Venezuela found the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.

2006 – American spy satellite USA-193 is launched.

2008 – President George W. Bush makes his fourth and final (planned) trip to Iraq as president and is almost struck by two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi during a news conference in Baghdad.

1905 – The Pushkin House is established in St. Petersburg to preserve the cultural heritage of Alexander Pushkin.

1906 – The London Underground's Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opens.

1933 – The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.

1939 – Gone with the Wind receives its première at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

1941 – Holocaust: German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobitsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.

1945 – Occupation of Japan: General Douglas MacArthur orders that Shinto be abolished as the state religion of Japan.

1965 – Gemini program: Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Four orbits later, it achieves the first space rendezvous, with Gemini 7.

1970 – Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully land on Venus. It is the first successful soft landing on another planet.

1973 – John Paul Getty III, grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, Italy, after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10, 1973.

1973 – The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the DSM-II.

1976 – The oil tanker MV Argo Merchant runs aground near Nantucket, Massachusetts, causing one of the worst marine oil spills in history.

1993 – History of Northern Ireland: The Downing Street Declaration is issued by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

1997 – The Treaty of Bangkok is signed allowing the transformation of Southeast Asia into a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone.

2000 – The 3rd reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down.

2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean.

2005 – Introduction of the F-22 Raptor into USAF active service.

2006 – First flight of the F-35 Lightning II.

2009 – Boeing's new Boeing 787 Dreamliner makes its maiden flight from Seattle, Washington.

1707 – Last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan.

1773 – Boston Tea Party – Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dump crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.

1850 – History of New Zealand: The Charlotte-Jane and the Randolph bring the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims to Lyttelton, New Zealand.

1903 – Taj Mahal Palace & Tower first opened its doors to the guests.

1907 – The Great White Fleet begins its circumnavigation of the world

1920 – The Haiyuan earthquake, magnitude 8.5, rocks the Gansu province in China, killing an estimated 200,000.

1930 – Bank robber Herman Lamm and members of his crew are killed by a posse of 200, following a botched bank robbery in Clinton, Indiana.

1937 – Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe attempt to escape from the American federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay; neither is ever seen again.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of the Bulge begins with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.

1985 – Mafia: In New York City, Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of the Gambino family.

1997 – An episode of Pokémon, "Dennō Senshi Porygon", aired in Japan induces seizures in 685 Japanese children.

1998 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Operation Desert Fox – The United States and United Kingdom bomb targets in Iraq.

1271 – Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of Mongolia and China.

1642 – Abel Tasman becomes first European to land in New Zealand.

1655 – The Whitehall Conference ends with the determination that there was no law preventing Jews from re-entering England after the Edict of Expulsion of 1290.

1888 – Richard Wetherill and his brother in-law discover the ancient Indian ruins of Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde.

1892 – Premiere performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1898 – Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat sets the first officially recognized land speed record of 39.245 mph (63.159 km/h) in a Jeantaud electric car.

1912 – The Piltdown Man, later discovered to be a hoax, is announced by Charles Dawson.

1916 – World War I: The Battle of Verdun ends when German forces under Chief of staff Erich von Falkenhayn are defeated by the French, and suffer 337,000 casualties.

1939 – World War II: The Battle of the Heligoland Bight, the first major air battle of the war, takes place.

1944 – World War II: 77 B-29 Superfortress and 200 other aircraft of U.S. Fourteenth Air Force bomb Hankow, China, a Japanese supply base.

1958 – Project SCORE, the world's first communications satellite, is launched.

1966 – Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker.

1969 – Capital punishment in the United Kingdom: Home Secretary James Callaghan's motion to make permanent the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, which had temporarily suspended capital punishment in England, Wales and Scotland for murder (but not for all crimes) for a period of five years.

1987 – Larry Wall releases the first version of the Perl programming language.

1999 – NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.

2006 – United Arab Emirates holds its first-ever elections.

2010 – Governmental protests begin in Tunisia, beginning the Arab Spring.

1984: Britain signs over Hong Kong to China
The British colony of Hong Kong is to be returned to China in 1997 after an historic agreement was signed in Peking today.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed the Joint Sino-British Declaration with her Chinese counterpart Zhao Ziyang.

It formally seals the future of Hong Kong, transferring it from a British colony of six million people to communist China in 13 years.

The agreement, which will end 155 years of British rule in the colony, also launches a new era in trade and diplomacy between the two countries.

Chinese president Deng Xiaoping, who pursued the recovery of Hong Kong, greeted Mrs Thatcher.

The champagne ceremony took place at the Great Hall of the People before delegates who helped draw up the agreement, including 101 guests from Hong Kong.

Mrs Thatcher said: "The circumstances are unique. The agreement is unique.

"It is right that we should feel a sense of history, of pride and of confidence in the future."

The declaration outlines Hong Kong will be "restored" to the People's Republic of China with effect from July 1 1997 and will apply for fifty years.

It will be known as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR).

Rocky negotiations

Britain has agreed to return Hong Kong after guarantees it will "enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs".

And China's principle of "one country, two systems" allows Hong Kong to have a capitalist economy and enjoy existing rights and freedoms.

The Prime Minister later revealed the negotiation process had been rocky.

When Mrs Thatcher last visited Peking in 1982 the atmosphere was hostile as an agreement could not be reached.

Talks restarted in July 1983 and today's agreement, which was finalised only ten days before the 30 September deadline, is being hailed as a diplomatic coup.

Mrs Thatcher will visit Hong Kong tomorrow during her whistle-stop world tour.


E-mail this story to a friend





Mrs Thatcher and Zhao Ziyang formally agree the handover






In Context
A bloody crackdown by troops on protests in the Chinese capital, Beijing, in June 1989, known as the "Tiananmen Square massacre" soured relations between Britain and China.
The British Government, fearing for the colony's future, responded by granting British passports to 50,000 Hong Kong heads of families, building a new international airport, and introducing a Bill of Rights.

Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong introduced democratic reforms in 1992 which the Chinese Government opposed.

A series of diplomatic meetings between the two governments in 1995 and 1996 improved relations.

On 1 July 1997 a spectacular ceremony in Hong Kong celebrated a new era in its political life as it transferred to Chinese control.


Stories From 19 Dec
1984: Britain signs over Hong Kong to China
2003: Libya gives up chemical weapons
1972: Amin ultimatum to Uganda Britons
1956: Thick fog causes death on roads
1997: Tory leader weds



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pa...721029.stm

1843 – Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol goes on sale.

1916 – World War I: Battle of Verdun – On the Western Front, the French Army successfully holds off the German Army and drives it back to its starting position.

1924 – The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.

1932 – BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service

1941 – World War II: Adolf Hitler becomes Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the German Army.

1941 – World War II: Limpet mines placed by Italian divers severely damage the HMS Valiant (1914) and HMS Queen Elizabeth (1913) in Alexandria harbour.

1946 – Start of the First Indochina War.

1956 – Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients. Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.

1967 – Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt is officially presumed dead.

1972 – Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.

1983 – The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro.

2001 – A record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Khövsgöl Province, Mongolia.

Full Story http://uk.news.yahoo.com/golden-eagle-sn...zE-;_ylv=3