On this day

Of all the casualties on the Titanic, the wealthiest and most famous was John Jacob Astor IV.

Astor (b 1864) was the Bill Gates of his day. A businessman, real estate builder, investor, inventor and writer, he had an estimated fortune that in today's money would be worth around £70 billion. His interests were so diverse that he had written a best selling science fiction novel, patented a revolutionary new type of bicycle brake, designed a turbine engine and built the Astoria hotel in New York (the neighbouring hotel was owned by his cousin Waldorf and they eventually combined to become the Waldorf-Astoria). He had seen action in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and was a prominent member of the Republican Party.


In 1909 Astor divorced his first wife Ava after what was generally regarded as an unhappy marriage. Divorce was still regarded as a taboo in many circles but Astor's wealth and position in society protected him from most of the fallout. Or at least it did, until in 1911 the 47 year old Astor announced that he was remarrying, this time to the 18 year old Madelaine Force. His new wife was younger than his son.

This was a step too far for the great and the good in New York Society and no matter how much money he had, the Astors found themselves being shunned by the social elite. Many even declined invitations to the wedding so the newlyweds embarked on a year-long extended honeymoon around Europe and Egypt whilst the fuss died down. Unfortunately, as things turned out, Madelaine fell pregnant whilst abroad and it was the desire that the child be born in America that caused them to cut short their trip and return home early.

Madelaine survived, having been put in a lifeboat by her husband who waved goodbye to her and promised that he would follow in a later boat, but Astor never made it off the ship.

His body was found by one of the recovery vessels on April 22nd. The post-mortem concluded that he had probably been killed outright by a large falling object which landed on his head as the ship listed.

The log of his personal possessions found on his body makes interesting reading:

"EFFECTS – Gold watch; cuff links, gold with diamond; diamond ring with three stones; £225 in English notes; $2440 in notes; £5 in gold; 7s. in silver; 5 ten franc pieces; gold pencil; pocketbook."

The bulk of his estate was left to his son. Madelaine was left two houses and a substantial trust fund which would have given her a very comfortable living but it came with the proviso that she did not remarry. Their baby was born in August 1912 and named John Jacob after his father, but five years later she married the industrialist William Dick and gave up her claim to the Astor fortune. That marriage lasted for 15 years but ended in divorce in Reno in 1933.

Madelaine married for a third time in 1936 to the boxer-turned-actor Enzo Fiermonte but that marriage only lasted for a couple of years before a another trip to Nevada was on the cards.

She died of heart disease in 1940 at the age of 47. The same age as John Jacob Astor when he died on the Titanic.

15 April 1989, 15:06, Hillsborough Stadium Sheffield



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster

Many people, not just those from Liverpool, are unhappy with the findings as to what happened at Hillsborough that fateful day and I for one hope that they will one day they get the justice they deserve.

I have always seen this case to show how sometimes the law is an ass,child molesters,and murderers are sentenced to much less.

1964: 'Great Train Robbers' get 300 years
Some of the longest sentences in British criminal history have been imposed on men involved in the so-called "Great Train Robbery".
Sentences totalling 307 years were passed on 12 men who stole £2.6m in used bank notes after holding up the night mail train travelling from Glasgow to London last August.

The judge at Buckinghamshire Assizes in Aylesbury, Mr Justice Edmund Davies, said it would be "positively evil" if he showed leniency.

The robbery was the biggest-ever carried out in Britain.

The scale and style of the theft led to comparisons with rail robberies of the Wild West and the hunt for the perpetrators captured the public imagination.

But the judge said the robbers' crime had in no way been "romantic" and was obviously motivated by greed.

The attack on train driver Jack Mills was proof of their violent tendencies, he added.

"Anybody who has seen that nerve-shattered engine driver can have no doubt of the terrifying effect on law-abiding citizens of a concerted assault by armed robbers," the judge said.

Ringleader

Seven of the defendants - Ronald Biggs, Charles Wilson, Douglas Goody, Thomas Wisbey, Robert Welch, James Hussey and Roy James - were jailed for 30 years each.

Four were sent to prison for terms of between 20 and 25 years.

Another defendant, solicitor John Wheater, 41, was sent to prison for three years.

Wheater obtained the robbers hide-out - Leatherslade Farm in Bedfordshire.

Judge Davies said Wheater had no knowledge of the robbery until after it had been committed but should then have informed the police.

"I realise the consequences of your conviction are disastrous, professionally and personally," the judge told Wheater.

Three men involved in the robbery are still at large including the man said to be the ringleader, Bruce Reynolds.


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Ringleader Bruce Reynolds has so far evaded capture






In Context
All the three remaining gang members were eventually caught.
In 1969 the robbery's mastermind, Bruce Reynolds, was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

In the meantime two gang members had made dramatic escapes from prison.

One of them, Charlie Wilson, was recaptured in Canada in 1968.

The other, Ronnie Biggs, was free for nearly 40 years before he returned voluntarily to Britain from Brazil.

An impoverished Biggs, 71, came back to the UK in 2001 to receive free medical treatment after having suffered a series of strokes.

He was immediately taken to a top-security prison to serve the remaining 28 years of his sentence.


Stories From 16 Apr
1964: 'Great Train Robbers' get 300 years
1993: UN makes Srebrenica 'safe haven'
1970: Paisley victory rattles NI parliament
1987: MP on gay sex charges
1953: Queen launches Royal Yacht Britannia

1520 - Citizens of Toledo, Castile stage a revolt against the ruling King Charles' government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Comuneros

1853 - The first passenger rail line opens between Bombay and Thane in India.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railways

1919 - The Polish-Soviet War - Polish forces capture Vilnius in what is now Lithuania.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilna_offensive

1953 - The Queen launches the royal yacht Britannia at the John Brown and Co dockyard in Clydebank.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...846801.stm

1194 - Richard the Lionhearted returned to England and was crowned for the second time after his epic journey and victory in the Third Crusade.

1397 – Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) the start of the book's pilgrimage to Canterbury.

1492 - Christopher Columbus and a representative of Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella signed a contract, giving Columbus a commission to seek a western route to the Indies.

1897 – The Aurora, Texas UFO incident.

1941 - Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter liftoff, in Stratford, Connecticut.

1949 - At midnight 26 Irish counties officially left the British Commonwealth. A 21-gun salute on O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, ushered in the Republic of Ireland.

1951 - The Peak District became the United Kingdom's first National Park.

1961 - About 1500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.

1964 - Ford Motor Company unveiled the Mustang.

1964 - The British pop group The Rolling Stones released their first album.

1970 – Apollo program: The ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely.

1986 – The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly ends.

1775 - At the start of the War of American Independence, US patriot Paul Revere rode from Charleston to Lexington, warning people that British troops were advancing.

1881 - The Natural History Museum in London was opened.

1881 – Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico.

1899 - The St. Andrew's Ambulance Association was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria. The Association seeks to preserve the lives of people in Scotland by the provision of education and emergency first aid at events throughout Scotland.

1906 - A devastating 8.3 earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires, killing an estimated 3,000 people.

1912 – The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

1924 - Simon and Schuster, Inc. published the first crossword puzzle book.

1949 - The first 'Bob-a-Job week' began when 440,000 British Scouts started a nationwide campaign to raise the £22,000 needed to cover the deficits of the Scout movement.

1980 – The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President. The Zimbabwe Dollar replaces the Rhodesian Dollar as the official currency.

1996 – In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shell the UN compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

(18-04-2012 13:08 )skully Wrote:  1980 – The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President.

Although not well-known outside Southern Rhodesia before independence, Canaan Sodindo Banana had had an honourable career as an opponent of the Smith regime, and as a radical theologian. He was an ordained Methodist minister, and Head of the Department of Religion at the University of Zimbabwe. He served as the country's president, a largely ceremonial position, from March 1980 to December 1987, when he was effectively forced out by the increasingly autocratic Robert Mugabe, who took over as executive president, after serving as prime minister.

Banana might have expected to spend the rest of his days as his country's respected elder statesman, especially as he had been appointed as his country's representative to the Organisation of African Unity, but his retirement was rudely interrupted by a sexual scandal which led to his trial on charges of sodomy.

The story broke in February 1997 when a former bodyguard, Jefta Dube, who was on trial for murder, pleaded in mitigation that he had been systematically raped and sodomised by Banana over a three-year period when Banana was president, and that he (Dube) had been taunted by the murdered man as "Banana's wife".

Banana had allegedly spotted Dube playing for the police football team, the Black Mambas, in late 1983 and invited him to join his household. Dube described how Banana drank, danced and played cards with him before drugging him and raping him on the carpet of the State House Library.

Dube had complained at the time to the country's police commissioner, but was told that nothing could be done. When he asked Banana to stop, Banana refused, telling him: "I am the final court of appeal."

Banana denied the allegations, claiming that the charges had been trumped up by his opponents. But by May, Dube had been joined by a veritable army of accusers, including dozens of former students of the University of Zimbabwe (where Banana had been Chancellor from 1983 to 1988), several members of the State House football team, the Tornadoes (who testified that their patron's fascination for scoring extended beyond the pitch), and assorted policemen and air force officers. There was, in addition, testimony of sex with cooks, gardeners and several aides, a jobseeker and a hitch-hiker.

Homosexuality was (and still is) is regarded as beyond the pale in Zimbabwe and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. In 1995, President Mugabe had famously described homosexuals as "worse than pigs and dogs" and urged Zimbabweans to turn them over to the police. Banana's arrest contributed to growing public disillusionment with the regime, since rumours of Banana's sexual profligacy had been rife in the capital for many years and it was generally assumed that Mugabe must have known, but had done nothing to stop it.

In 1998 Banana was found guilty on 11 charges of sodomy, attempted sodomy and and other "unnatural acts" with men. The case took a further dramatic twist when, shortly before sentencing, Banana went on the run to South Africa after receiving a tip-off that Mugabe intended to have him assassinated. After meeting Nelson Mandela, he returned to Zimbabwe, where he was sentenced to 10 years in jail, of which nine were suspended.

Banana had some difficulty investing the office of president with the required aura of reverence and in 1982 a law was passed in Zimbabwe forbidding jokes about the president's name, though it continued to invite cheap jibes, illustrated later in such headlines as "Man raped by Banana" and "Mugabe Slips on Banana".

After the scandal broke, Banana lost his university chair of theology, religious studies and philosophy, was stripped of his clerical rank by the Methodist church in Zimbabwe and was dropped by the OAU. When, as president of the Zimbabwe Football Association, he went on to the field to meet the players he was booed by the crowd. His wife had stood by him at the trial, but later admitted that he had committed "indiscretions" and she later sought political asylum in the UK.

Banana died of cancer in 2003 aged 67.

1967 - Jimi Hendrix is among the artists appearing at the Odeon in Birmingham playing two shows. Other artists appearing are Engelbert Humperdink, the Walker Brothers and Cat Stevens.
http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/upload/hen...r_6207.JPG

1971 - The first space station, Salyut 1, is launched from Kazakh in the USSR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_1

1984 - "Advance Australia Fair" officially becomes the new national anthem of Australia. It was composed by Scotsman Peter Dodds McCormick in 1878.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Australia_Fair

1995 - At least 80 people murdered in a car bomb attack at the Alfred Murrah government building in Oklahoma City. Among the dead are 17 children from a nursery.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...733321.stm

2005 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected the new Pope. He takes the name Pope Benedict XVI and is the eighth German to take the role.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...896970.stm

1587 - The English naval commander Sir Francis Drake sailed a small number of ships into Cadiz Harbour and sank most of the Spanish fleet. The incident became known as 'singeing the King of Spain's beard'.

1770 – Captain James Cook sights the eastern coast of what is now Australia.

1775 - The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Troops under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Percy, played "Yankee Doodle" as they marched from Boston to reinforce British soldiers already fighting the Americans.

1782 – John Adams secures the Dutch Republic's recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague, Netherlands becomes the first American embassy.

1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.

1882 - Charles Darwin, the English biologist who developed the theory of evolution, died at his home in Kent.

1928 - The 125th and final section of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

1951 - The first Miss World Contest was won by Kiki Haakonson, a 21 year old from Sweden.

1956 - U.S. actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco in a civil ceremony. (moved)

1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders.

1975 – India's first satellite Aryabhata is launched.

1987 – The Simpsons premieres as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show

1993 - The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended. A fire destroyed the structure after federal agents moved in; dozens of people including the leader, David Koresh, were killed.

2005 – His Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected the 265th Pope of the Catholic Church following the death of Pope John Paul II. The new Pope takes on the regnal name Benedict XVI.