On this day

49 B.C.E. - Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and invaded Italy.

1496 - Christopher Columbus left Hispaniola for Spain, concluding his second visit to the Western Hemisphere.

1629 - England's King Charles I dissolved Parliament, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.

1831 – The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call to his assistant Thomas Watson saying "Watson, come here. I need you".

1883 - The first electric trams began running in London.

1922 – Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released after nearly two years for an appendicitis operation.

1956 - British test pilot Peter Twiss was the first man to fly at more than 1,000 mph.

1969 - James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the assassination of African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, but his motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a new trial over the next 29 years.

1977 – Astronomers discover rings around Uranus. I'm sure there's a joke in that

2006 – The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.

Quote:1977 – Astronomers discover rings around Uranus. I'm sure there's a joke in that

LOL at that one Skully

1702 – The Daily Courant, England's first national daily newspaper is published for the first time.

1845 - Henry Jones (from Bristol, England) invented self-raising flour.

1851 – The first performance of Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi takes place in Venice.

1945 - The huge Krupps munitions factory in Germany was destroyed when 1,000 Allied bombers took part in the biggest ever daylight raid.

1983 – Pakistan successfully conducts a cold test of a nuclear weapon.

1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the Soviet Union's leader.

1988 - The Bank of England pound note, first introduced on 12th March 1797, ceased to be legal tender in Britain at midnight.
When the deadline for returning old notes was reached, it was estimated that some 70 million were still outstanding.

1990 - Lithuania proclaimed its independence from the USSR, the first Soviet republic to do so.

1990 - American tennis player Jennifer Capriati, aged 13, became the youngest-ever finalist in a professional contest.

2004 – Madrid train bombings: Simultaneous explosions on rush hour trains in Madrid, Spain, kill 191 people.

2011 – An earthquake measuring 8.9 in magnitude struck 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami.

1984 - 99 Red Balloons by Nena was Number One

1999: Violinist Yehudi Menuhin dies
One of the 20th century's finest musicians Yehudi Menuhin has died, aged 82.
Lord Menuhin was in Berlin, Germany, to conduct a concert when he fell ill with bronchitis. He died in hospital after a brief illness.

His musical career spanned more than seven decades. He made his debut in San Francisco as a child prodigy aged seven and by the age of 13, had performed in London, Paris and Berlin.

He was never just a musician, from very early on he wanted to do other things, to make his music work for humanity

Humphrey Burton
Biographer


He went on to develop his talents as a violinist, conductor and teacher, founding the Yehudi Menuhin School, in Surrey, for gifted young musicians in 1963.
Menuhin was born in New York of Russian Jewish parents. But he came to settle in Britain in 1985 - drawn, he said, by his love for the music of the English composer Sir Edward Elgar.

Human Rights campaigner

At the age of 16 the young violinist was conducted by Sir Edward in a now famous recording of the composer's violin concerto, made in 1932.

His performances of classical works, like Beethoven's violin concerto were rapturously received. Albert Einstein famously said after hearing him play: "Now I know there is a God in heaven."

But he was also keen to experiment and played duets with the renowned jazz violinist, Stephane Grappelli, as well as the sitar star Ravi Shankar.

Menuhin became a campaigner for human rights. His biographer, Humphrey Burton, said: "He was never just a musician, from very early on he wanted to do other things, to make his music work for humanity."

The violinist went to Germany after World War II to play for the survivors of the Belsen concentration camp and he was also the first Jew to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic after the war.

He married his second wife ballerina Diana Gould in 1947 and she is credited as being a guiding force in his work.

A minute's silence was held at the Yehudi Menuhin school today. One of the school's most famous pupils, violinist Nigel Kennedy, paid tribute to Sir Yehudi as an "inspiration".

The virtuoso told the BBC in 1997: "I really think music is a birthright that belongs to every child, I put it on the same level as breathing air."

He was knighted in 1987 and became a life peer in 1993.

E-mail this story to a friend

Yehudi Menuhin was one of the century's greatest violinists

In Context
Following his death, tributes were made by world leaders - including the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who praised Lord Menuhin as a musician and campaigner for world peace and human rights.
The Yehudi Menuhin School has expanded and now educates about 50 talented musicians between the ages of eight and 18.

As well as campaigning for human rights, Menuhin was a keen yoga practitioner and health food enthusiast, warning against the dangers of white rice, white bread and red meat. He also spoke of the dangers of pollution long before environmentalism became a buzz word.

He was survived by four children - Zamira and Krov from his first marriage to Nola Nichols whom he divorced and two sons by his second wife, Gerard and Jeremy.


Stories From 12 Mar
1993: Bombay hit by devastating bombs

1984: Miners strike over threatened pit closures

1964: Hoffa faces eight years behind bars

1969: Paul McCartney weds Linda Eastman

1999: Violinist Yehudi Menuhin dies



^^ back to top
Front Page

1609 - Bermuda became a British colony.

1881 – Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world's first black international football player and captain.

1894 - Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time.

1901 - Industrialist Andrew Carnegie offered the of New York City $5.2 million for the construction of 65 branch libraries.

1904 - Britain's first mainline electric train ran from Liverpool to Southport.

1918 – Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint Petersburg held this status for 215 years.

1930 - Mahatma Gandhi began his 300-mile march to the sea in protest against the British tax law securing a monopoly for salt. The march, which resulted in the arrest of Gandhi and 60,000 others, earned new international respect and support for the leader and his movement.

1941 - Islanders on the Hebrides hid thousands of bottles of shipwrecked Whiskey from government officials. The episode was celebrated in the film Whiskey Galore.

1951 - Dennis the Menace, created by cartoonist Hank Ketcham, made its syndicated debut in 16 newspapers.

1993 – North Korea nuclear weapons program: North Korea says that it plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors access to its nuclear sites.

1994 - The Church of England ordained the first women priests (32 in total) at Bristol Cathedral.

2011 – Several after shocks including one measuring 6.7 magnitude hit Japan after the devastating March 11 8.9 magnitude earthquake.

1842 - The death of the English army officer Henry Shrapnel, inventor of the battlefield weapon named after him.

1921 – Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declares its independence from China.

1927 - The lance ceased to be an official weapon in the British Army.

1935 - Voluntary driving tests were introduced in Britain and became compulsory in June of the same year.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

1988 – The Seikan Tunnel, the longest undersea tunnel in the world, opens between Aomori and Hakodate, Japan.

1996 - Thomas Hamilton, a lone gunman carrying 4 handguns killed 16 children and their teacher at a school in Dunblane, Scotland. The killer fired randomly around the school gym in an attack that lasted just three minutes, but caused carnage in the class of five and six year olds. He then turned the gun on himself.

2003 – Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy.

2007 - The Bank of England launched a new £20 banknote, featuring the Scottish economist Adam Smith.

1864 - English explorer Samuel Baker was the first European to see the lake he named Lake Albert after the recently deceased Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria.

1873 - The Insurance Institute of Manchester was born, the first insurance institute in the world.

1885 – The Mikado a light opera by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, had its first public performance in London.

1930 - A proposed tunnel linking England and France was approved by the Channel Tunnel Committee.

1945 - The 617 Dambuster Squadron of the RAF dropped the heaviest bomb of the war (the 22,000-pound Grand Slam) on the Bielefeld railway viaduct in Germany.

1960 - The Government announced plans for a Thames Barrier to protect London from flooding.

1967 – The body of President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.

1991 - The Birmingham Six, imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, were set free after a court agrees that the police fabricated evidence.

(14-03-2011 13:04 )skully Wrote:  1967 – The body of President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.

I know that a cemetery is a strange thing to have as a tourist attraction, but over FOUR MILLION people visit Arlington every year. The land it is built on was originally owned by the family of Confederate General Robert E Lee and to be strictly accurate, it isn't in Washington but over the state line and therefore in Virginia.

I was in Washington in 2005 but only had just over half a day for sightseeing and I can highly recommend the "Tourmobile". It is one of a number of officially licensed bus tours around the city, it runs from about 9.00 - 7.00 in the summer and 10.00 - 4.00 in the winter. It goes around all the sites (Whitehouse, Capitol, Smithsonian, Lincoln Memorial etc) and you can get on and off at any point as many times as you want in the day. It was about $20 IIRC but well worth it.

Arlington is huge - it is so big it has its own internal bus service! The Tourmobile drops you off at the visitor centre and you change onto a smaller bus.

John F Kennedy's grave and memorial is undoubtedly the main attraction, and there were about two to three hundred people milling around it when I was there. His brother Bobby is buried about thirty yards away. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is also popular.

Whilst many of the graves belong to people who were killed in action and unknown to those outside of their immediate familes as you wander around you'll see names that may be familiar to older forum members or those who follow US history or politics such as Marshall, Taft, Pershing and Renquist. Former World Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis is buried there, as are many politicians and most of the astronauts who were either killed in the Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle accidents or have subsequently died in the passage of time.

It really is a remarkable place and if you wander off into the quiet corners the peace and tranquility of a place so close to the hubbub of the nation's capital is astonishing. Over 300,000 people are buried there and the number is increasing by 7,000 a year, but at that rate they will soon by running out of room and the eligibility conditions are being reviewed.

Also, in recent years there have been several Senate enquiries into alleged mis-management and incompetence, following several unfortunate incidents where the wrong tombstones were placed on graves, and a row over media access to cover funerals.

2:52 am | 65° March 15, 2011 |
Valley & State
Type Size: A A APrintEmailMost Popular
Digg this.Quake 101: Japan moves 8 feet, Earth's axis shifts
by Clay Thompson - Mar. 15, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
.

Today we have, not surprisingly, a number of questions about the earthquake that struck Japan. The pictures and footage we see almost defy belief, don't they?

Let's get straight to them.
The earthquake in Japan moved the earth's axis 10 centimeters. How was this determined and what, if anything, does this mean for the environment?

First of all, for those of us who are metrically challenged, 10 centimeters is just shy of 4 inches.

That big earthquake not only shifted Earth's axis, but it also moved Japan itself by about 8 feet. That's something, isn't it?

Astronomers determined the axis shift by measuring the distance between Earth and the moon. At least that's the only explanation I could come up with.

As far as the impact on Earth goes, 4 inches really doesn't amount to much in the great scheme of things. It will have the effect of shortening our days by a tiny fraction of a second or by about a second over the next 100 years.


Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic...z1Gf1PBOyk

Just heard this today,and it gives you an idea how powerful nature can be,i would also like to say im in awe of the Japanese nation,they are so disciplined,they will be great again.