On this day

1956: US court victory for black students
The United States Supreme Court has upheld a ban on racial segregation in state schools, colleges and universities.
The University of North Carolina was appealing against an earlier ruling, in 1954, which ordered college officials to admit three black students to what was previously an all-white institution.

Until recently, black and white students have been educated in separate schools under the principle of "separate but equal" but the Supreme Court has now ruled this doctrine "has no place in the field of public education".

The BBC's Panorama programme has been to the southern US state of Virginia, where racial segregation in schools is still rigidly enforced. In other states, schools and colleges have begun to accept black and white pupils.


A very large proportion of Virginians would want to continue segregation of the races because we believe we can provide a better system of education by doing that

Thomas Stanley, Virginia state governor

In the Virginian state capital, Richmond, officials are looking at ways of getting round the new ruling. They are considering subsidising white pupils so they can go to racially segregated private schools - or even abolishing state or what are known as public schools in America.

The state governor, Thomas Stanley, said: "The feeling of the people of Virginia is rather unanimous - that it was unfortunate that this decision should have been handed down.

"I would say from the letters, telephone calls and telegrams this office has received, a very large proportion of Virginians would want to continue segregation of the races because we believe we can provide a better system of education by doing that."

Dr Tinsley, president of the Richmond branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, has welcomed the court's ruling as long overdue.

Dr Tinsley, who is a dentist, has branded the policy of segregation as "ridiculous, unreligious and unconstitutional".

He said segregation laws in Virginia meant black and white people could not sit down together in a hall where an entry fee had to be paid. Blacks are also forced to sit at the back in buses.

Asked how black people felt at this treatment, he said: "We are plenty angry."

Not all whites object to the ban. Dr Marion, Director of the Council of Human Relations, rejected claims black students were educationally inferior to their white counterparts. He said segregation had imposed a "second-class citizenship" on the black population.


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Rosa Parks is fingerprinted for violating anti-segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama last month


Reaction in Virginia to the segregation ban







In Context
An 1896 Supreme Court decision first established the "separate but equal" principle. It permitted separate trains or carriages for white and black passengers as long as they were equal in nature.
In 1954 the US Supreme Court declared racial segregation in schools and colleges unlawful. Its decision launched the legal movement to desegregate American society.

The 1956 decision upheld the earlier ruling - but racial segregation was still a major problem in many southern states. In 1957 troops were sent into Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the ban.

In 1964 the Civil Rights Law prohibited racial discrimination in education, employment or in public places.

However, the move to desegregate schools received a setback in 1974 when a Supreme Court decision banned plans to mix schools across city-suburban boundaries. It has meant central city schools have become increasingly attended by non-white students.

A Harvard University study in August 2002 found schools across the US were once again becoming more racially segregated.


Stories From 5 Mar
1966: Passenger jet crashes into Mount Fuji
1953: Soviet leader 'on brink of death'
1973: Mid-air collision kills 68
1956: US court victory for black students
1993: Johnson gets life ban from athletics

363 – Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a campaign which would bring about his own death.

1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus's book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is banned by the Catholic Church

1770 - The Boston Massacre took place. British soldiers, who had been taunted by colonists (Patriots) and hit with snowballs, opened fire and killed five people.

1836 – Samuel Colt makes the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.

1850 – The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales is opened.

1872 – George Westinghouse patents the air brake.

1912 – Italian forces are the first to use airships for military purposes, employing them for reconnaissance behind Turkish lines.

1931 – The British Viceroy of India, Governor-General Edward Frederick Lindley Wood and Mohandas Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) sign an agreement envisaging the release of political prisoners and allowing salt to be freely used by the poorest members of the population.

1933 – Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections. This later allows the Nazis to pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship.

1936 - The British fighter plane Spitfire made its first test flight from Eastleigh, Southampton, powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. It was designed by Reginald Mitchell and was the fighter plane that helped to win the Battle of Britain.

1943 - The first flight of the Gloster Meteor jet aircraft. It was the first British jet fighter and the Allies' first operational jet. The Meteor's development was heavily reliant on its ground-breaking turbojet engines, developed by Sir Frank Whittle.

1960 - Elvis Presley returned to civilian life after two years in the U.S. Army.

1960 – Cuban photographer Alberto Korda took his iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.

1979 – Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the American solar satellite Helios II all are hit by "off the scale" gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.

1979 – America's Voyager 1 spacecraft has its closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles.

1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world.

2004 - Martha Stewart was found guilty on four counts of obstruction of justice, stemming from her December 2001 sale of shares of biotech stock ImClone.

(04-03-2012 12:06 )bombshell Wrote:  1969: Kray twins guilty of McVitie murder

Many people wonder how the Kray twins got away with so much for so long, as at times in the 1960's they seemed above the law, but it later became clear that their success at avoiding justice wasn't down to just blackmail, bribery and intimidation, they had friends in high places.

In their youth they had been more than capable boxers, and had 13 fights between them as professionals, winning 11. They both boxed at lightweight (like so many of us only putting on the pounds in later life!), with Reggie having a 7 + 0 record and Ronnie 4 + 2.

Unfortunately, their licences were withdrawn after they were both given dishonourable discharges from the army where their National Service was littered with disciplinary offences, periods AWOL, jail terms, fights, thefts and assaults. They had the dubious distinction of being some of the last people ever to be held at The Tower of London after being captured in the capital when AWOL.

In the 1960s it wasn't just that witnesses were too terrified to testify against them (people had a nasty habit of disappearing without trace), they had the appearance of being successful businessmen with a celebrity status which saw them photographed by David Bailey and in the company of politicians and personalities of the day like Diana Dors and Judy Garland. Frank Sinatra even hired 18 bodyguards from their "security" company when on a UK tour.

It is now in the public domain that Reggie once had a one-night stand with Barbara Windsor but it was Ronnie's relationships that gave them protection from on high. Ronnie Kray was openly bisexual and had had an affair with Conservative politician Lord Boothby. Boothby, who was himself bisexual, had had a long standing affair with the wife of former Prime Minister Harold MacMillan! However, the Labour Party were in no position to make political capital out of this as Ronnie had also had an affair with their former party chairman and suspected KGB-agent the MP Tom Dreiberg. Both parties therefore turned a blind eye - and indeed hushed up - what was happening for fear of the bad publicity that would ensue.

Eventually, they were brought down largely by the efforts of one man - Inspector Leonard "Nipper" Read of Scotland Yard, and with the help of a quick thinking Justice Melford Stevenson who, correctly suspecting that the jury might have been "got at", switched them with one scheduled to hear another case literally five minutes before the trial was due to begin.

(04-03-2012 12:06 )bombshell Wrote:  1969: Kray twins guilty of McVitie murder
The Kray twins, Ronald and Reginald, are facing life sentences after being found guilty of murder at the Central Criminal Court.

-SNIP-

The Piranha Brothers, a Monty Python sketch was based on the Kray twins.

The brothers were finally captured by Superintendent Harry 'Snapper' Organs (played by Terry Jones) of Q Division, who pursued them in a series of disguises including Blind Pew from Treasure Island, the Earl of Gloucester from King Lear, Sancho Panza from Man of La Mancha, and Ratty from Toad of Toad Hall, but these performances were met with lukewarm critical reception. However, the Piranha Brothers later escaped, and presumably returned to their life of absurd crime.

Read more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranha_Brothers

And we shouldn't leave the topic of the Krays without a final word about the judge who sent them down, Melford Stevenson. Once described as "the worst judge since the war", in 1978 Stevenson was reprimanded by the then Lord Chancellor Elwyn Jones for calling the Sexual Offences Act 1967 a "buggers' charter". But he polarised opinion, and for every critic he had an equally staunch supporter.

He had been a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials and in 1955 he had been Ruth Ellis's defence barrister during her trial.

Of the Krays, he once said that they had only told the truth twice during the trial - when Reggie referred to a barrister as "a fat slob" and later when Ronnie accused the judge of being biased.

A character an a half (he physically threw his first wife out of their marital home for having an affair with Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of the French section of the Special Operations Executive) there was an element of Prince Philip about him, saying of a husband in a divorce case:

“He chose to live in Manchester, a wholly incomprehensible choice for any free man to make“.

To a man acquitted of rape he commented, “I see you come from Slough. It is a terrible place. You can go back there“.

He died in 1987 aged 85.

1834 - The city of York in Canada was incorporated as Toronto.

1836 – Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo – After a thirteen day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.

1899 - Aspirin was patented by chemist Felix Hoffman.

1930 - Clarence Birdseye's first frozen foods went on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1944 - 658 U.S. bombers began a daylight attack on Berlin from bases in Britain and dropped 2,000 tons of bombs.

1946 – Ho Chi Minh signs an agreement with France which recognizes Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.

1957 - Ghana became independent, the first British colony to do so.

1987 - The British owned ferry the 'Herald of Free Enterprise' left Zeebrugge, Belgium, it capsized killing 193 passengers, as its bow doors were left open.

1992 - The Michelangelo computer virus was designed to infect MS-DOS systems and remain dormant until March 6, the birthday of Renaissance artist Michelangelo.

1997 - Picasso's painting Tête de Femme is stolen from a London art gallery, and is recovered a week later.

(06-03-2012 14:38 )skully Wrote:  1957 - Ghana became independent, the first British colony to do so.

-SNIP-

What about the USA in 1776?

1965 - State Police and volunteer officers in Alabama break up a demonstration for civil rights. 50 people were injured in the march from Selma to Montgomery.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...318021.stm

1968 - Vietnam War - "Operation Truong Cong Dinh" begins - A military sweep operation to clear the area surrounding the Mekong Delta river and the village of My Tho of suspected Viet Cong soldiers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Truong_Cong_Dinh

1969 - Israel elects Golda Meir as prime minister. She is the first female leader of Israel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...205843.stm

1985 - The supergroup USA For Africa, releases the charity single "We Are The World". It would go on to sell over 20 million copies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_World

321 – Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire.

1530 - When King Henry VIII's divorce request was denied by the Pope, Henry declared himself (not the Pope) as the supreme head of the English church.

1778 - Explorer Captain James Cook's log reported the sighting of Oregon, on the west coast of the United States. They were the first Europeans to visit Oregon for more than 200 years.

1804 - John Wedgwood, son of the pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood founded the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society.

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone.

1926 - The first successful trans Atlantic radio telephone conversation took place, between New York City and London.

1936 - Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany.

1969 - Queen Elizabeth II opened the new Victoria Line on London's Underground.

1989 – Iran and the United Kingdom break diplomatic relations after a row over Salman Rushdie and his controversial novel.

1990 - The Egyptian Fayed brothers were allowed to keep Harrods despite an official report that branded them liars during their £615m takeover bid of the House of Fraser Stores.

2007 – The British House of Commons votes to make the upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected.

2009 – The Kepler space observatory, designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, is launched.

(07-03-2012 13:38 )skully Wrote:  1876 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone.

An urban legend has grown up over the years that Bell arrived at the patent office an hour or two before his rival Elisha Gray, and that Gray lost his rights to the telephone as a result, but under US patent law at that time, it was the first to invent, not the first to file, that won the day so that actually made no difference.

The other conspiracy theory was that Bell stole Gray's invention, as the patent examiner, Zenas Fisk Wilber, was an alcoholic who allegedly showed Gray's notes to Bell's lawyer and was paid $100 for his trouble. A number of legal actions were heard over the next fifteen years but Bell won out in the end.

The idea for a "speaking telegraph", as it was originally known, had been around for more than 30 years and had first been put forward by Innocenzo Manzetti in the 1840's. The first successful tests were for transmitting musical tones but it was transmitting voice that prove the stumbling block, until just three days after the patent was granted when Bell said to his assistant in the next room “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”

However, the real "hero" of the development of the telephone was the Hungarian engineer Tivadar Puskás who invented the switchboard. Until then, anybody wanting a telephone could only have it between two fixed points eg your home and your shop, and you had to arrange for a contractor to install the line between the two places. If you wanted to talk to more than one location you needed a separate line and a pair of phones for each one!

Puskas installed the world's first switchboard in Boston and later ran Edison's European operations out of Paris. In 1887 he introduced the multiplex switchboard, which was a revolutionary step in the development of telephone exchanges. His next invention was the "Telephone News Service" that he introduced in Pest, which announced news and "broadcast" programmes and was in many ways the forerunner of the radio. According to a contemporary scientific journal, at most 50 people could listen to Edison's telephone at the same time. With Puskás's apparatus, by contrast, half a million people could clearly hear the programme coming from the exchange.

Puskas received very little recognition during his lifetime, and when he died in 1893 at the age of just 49 his brother sold all his rights. However, in 2008 the Hungarian National Bank issued a commemorative coin to acknowledge his achievements.