On this day

(11-03-2012 13:21 )skully Wrote:  1851 – The first performance of Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi takes place in Venice.

Generally regarded as Verdi's greatest piece of work in the second half of his career, Rigoletto came in at number 10 on the operabase list of most frequently performed operas worldwide.

The best known song from Rigoletto is "La donna e mobile" ("Womankind is Fickle"), here sung by Luciano Pavarotti:

1664 - New Jersey became a British colony as King Charles II granted the land to his brother James, the Duke of York.

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.

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

1930 – Mahatma Gandhi leads a 200(+) mile march, known as the Salt March, to the sea in defiance of British opposition, to protest the British monopoly on salt.

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 at Bristol Cathedral.

2009 – Financier Bernard Madoff plead guilty in New York to scamming $18 billion, the largest in Wall Street history.

2011 – A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melts and explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after Japan's earthquake.

1845 - Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is played for the first time in Leipzig, Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_Conc...ndelssohn)

1956 - RCA Records issue the first album and extended play release by Elvis Presley.
http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/

1996 - The Dunblane Massacre. 16 children and their teacher are killed by gunman Thomas Hamilton.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...543277.stm

2006 - The Sex Pistols refuse to attend their own induction in to the US Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Instead, they release a handwritten statement on their website branding the event "Urine In Wine".
http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/

1639 – Harvard College is named for clergyman John Harvard.

1781 – William Herschel discovers Uranus.

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

1926 - Alan Cobham landed at Croydon Aerodrome, near London, after a 16,000-mile flight to Cape Town and back to establish a commercial air route across Africa.

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.

1974 - The five-month oil embargo by Arab countries was lifted. The embargo was in retaliation for the U.S. support of Israel during the 1973 Middle East war.

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

1991 – The United States Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

1997 – The Phoenix lights are seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television.

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

Sorry, I know its late in the day. Got a few bits and pieces for you:-

1794 - American inventor Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, the first ever machine able to seperate cotton fibres from seed pods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney

1931 - Alam Ara, the first Indian film with sound is released.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alam_Ara

1958 - Prince Albert of Monaco is born. He is the son of former actress Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...840933.stm

1960 - The British radio telescope at Jodrell Bank set a new space record by making contact with the American Pioneer V satellite.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...566961.stm

1991 - The "Birmingham Six" have their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...543613.stm

44 BC – Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

1493 – Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.

1672 – Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.

1824 - Building work started on the London Bridge designed by John Rennie.

1892 - American inventor Jesse Reno patented the first escalator.

1909 - Selfridges (named after owner Gordon Selfridge) was opened in London's Oxford Street.

1956 – My Fair Lady premiered on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.

1961 – South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.

1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the first President of the Soviet Union.

2004 – French President Jacques Chirac signs the law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools, commonly known as the headscarf ban.

37 – Caligula becomes Roman Emperor after the death of his great uncle, Tiberius.

1244 – Over 200 Cathars are burned after the Fall of Montségur.

1802 – The Army Corps of Engineers is established to found and operate the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1815 – Prince Willem proclaimes himself King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the first constitutional monarch in the Netherlands.

1910 - Harry Houdini became the first man to fly an airplane in Australia.

1926 – Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

1935 - The first driving test pass slip was presented to Mr. R. Beene of Kensington, a pupil of the British School of Motoring.

1942 - The first German V-2 rocket test launch took place, it exploded at lift-off. Eventually, over 3000 V-2s were launched against Allied targets. The attacks resulted in the death of an estimated 7000 military personnel and civilians. 12,000 forced labourers were killed producing the weapons.

1945 – Ninety percent of Würzburg, Germany is destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers. 5,000 are killed.

1958 – The Ford Motor Company produced its 50 millionth automobile, the Thunderbird, averaging almost a million cars a year since the company's founding.

1968 – Vietnam War: In the My Lai massacre, between 350 and 500 Vietnamese villagers (men, women, and children) are killed by American troops.

1978 – Supertanker Amoco Cadiz split in two after running aground on the Portsall Rocks, three miles off the coast of Brittany, resulting in the 5th-largest oil spill in history.

1988 – Halabja poison gas attack: The Kurdish town of Halabjah in Iraq is attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents on the orders of Saddam Hussein, killing 5000 people and injuring about 10000 people.

2001 - According to a health survey, 16th March 2001 was the only day between 1993 and 2002 when nobody in the United Kingdom killed themselves.

2005 – Israel officially handed over Jericho to Palestinian control.

(16-03-2012 14:02 )skully Wrote:  1926 – Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

Robert H Goddard (born in Massachusetts in 1882) was at various times called a "crank", a "nut" and in 1920 was publically ridiculed by The New York Times over his ideas of rocketry and spaceflight but it was later realised that he had been a visionary 50 years ahead of his time.

As both theorist and engineer, Goddard's work anticipated many of the developments that made spaceflight possible. Two of Goddard's 214 patents — one for a multi-stage rocket design (as early as 1914), and another for a liquid-fuel rocket design (also in 1914) — are regarded as important milestones toward spaceflight. His 1919 monograph, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, is considered one of the classic texts of 20th century rocket science. Goddard successfully applied three-axis control, gyroscopes and steerable thrust to rockets, all of which allow rockets to be controlled effectively in flight.

Goddard received little public support for his research during his lifetime, and combined with the negative publicity he became protective of his privacy and his work. In all his team launched 34 rockets between 1926 and 1941, largely due to help from his friend Charles Lindburgh who believed in his ideas and secured financial backing from the Guggenheim Foundation.

He was the first not only to recognize the scientific potential of missiles and space travel but also to bring about the design and construction of the rockets needed to implement those ideas. Goddard also foresaw the rise of fascism in Europe and his refusal to meet with or discuss his ideas with German scientists in the 1930s was probably one of the most valuable contributions to the war effort by any individual.

With the coming of the space age Goddard was recognised as the father of modern rocketry and in 1959 the US Congress issued a Gold Medal in his honour, and the Goddard Space Flight Centre was established in Maryland.

Sadly, he never got to see any of this or the use of his technology in the success of the space programme. He had died of cancer in 1945 at the age of 62.

His widow and the Guggenheim later sued NASA and the US government for breach of patent and in 1961 won a settlement in excess of $1 million dollars, at that time a record amount for patent infringement.

On July 21st 1969, the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, The New York Times published a correction and apology for mocking Goddard 49 years earlier, concluding: "Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error."

1337 – Edward, the Black Prince is made Duke of Cornwall, the first Duchy in England.

1899 - The first-ever radio distress call was sent, summoning assistance to a merchant ship aground on the Goodwin Sands, Kent.

1948 – Benelux, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO.

1978 - The oil tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground on the coast of Brittany. Over 220,000 tons of crude oil seeped out of the crippled ship, causing serious pollution in Britain and France.

1985 – Serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, commits the first two murders in his Los Angeles, California murder spree.

1992 – A referendum to end apartheid in South Africa is passed 68.7% to 31.2%.

2000 – More than 800 members of the Ugandan cult Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in what is considered to be a mass murder and suicide, orchestrated by leaders of the cult.

2003 – Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Robin Cook, resigns from the British Cabinet in disagreement with government plans for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

1967: Supertanker Torrey Canyon hits rocks
Supertanker Torrey Canyon has run aground on rocks between Land's End and the Scilly Isles and is leaking its cargo of oil into the sea.
The 974-ft (297m) tanker, which was carrying 100,000 tons of crude oil, hit Pollard's Rock in the Seven Stones reef.

The oil patch already forming is believed to be the biggest ever to threaten the West Country coastline.

There are fears that the beaches of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset could be hit by the slick.

Cornish beaches

The Navy is plotting the direction of the oil, which is heading slowly towards the French coast, but say a slight change in wind direction could send it towards Cornish beaches.

Troops will regularly patrol around the coastline to give some indication of where the oil might be heading.

The 2nd Infantry Brigade, stationed at Plymouth, is standing by to assist if the oil threatens beaches.

A Penzance lifeboat official said the position was "serious" because the oil could cover the whole of the south-west coast for the next year.

The crew of the Seven Stones lightship, two miles off the reef, said they realised the tanker was in danger when she was still a mile from the disaster.

There are also fears that the supertanker could catch fire or break-up in heavy seas.

Up to 10,000 gallons of oil detergent are on their way from Grangemouth in Scotland to Falmouth.


E-mail this story to a friend




Watch/Listen

The oil slick spreading from the Torrey Canyon could reach Cornish beaches


Ariel shots of stricken tanker (mute)




In Context
The crew of the Liberian-registered Torrey Canyon were rescued by helicopters and lifeboats although the captain and three of his crew initially stayed on board.
In the weeks that followed the accident, oil escaped and spread along the shores of the south coast of England and the Normandy coast of France.

Worst hit were the Cornish beaches of Marazion and Prah Sands, where sludge was up to a foot deep. Up to 70 miles (113km) of beaches were seriously contaminated.

More than 20,000 sea birds were contaminated by the oil as a result of the disaster.

Maurice Foley, Under Secretary for the Navy, said that it was the biggest problem of its kind ever faced by any nation and announced the Government would spend £500,000 on the south-west and Scilly Isles.

The vessel was bombed for two days until it finally sank on 30 March 1967 and the oil slick was eventually dispersed by favourable weather.


Stories From 18 Mar
1967: Supertanker Torrey Canyon hits rocks
1979: Three die in Golborne mine blast
1974: Violent border clashes at Golan Heights
1992: South Africa votes for change
1950: Government falls as Belgians vote for king
1982: Judge halts 'obscenity' trial




http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...819369.stm