On this day

(12-01-2011 12:32 )skully Wrote:  ~~~~
1879 - The British-Zulu War began.
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From the very funny "The Pub Landlord's Book of British Common Sense", which I am reading at present

1893 - Britain's Independent Labor Party (a precursor to the current Labor Party) held its first meeting. It was formed by Keir Hardie.

1921 - Mills Munitions of Birmingham registered the patent for windscreen wipers.

1942 – Henry Ford patents a plastic automobile, which is 30% lighter than a regular car.

1958 - In Scotland, the serial killer Peter Manuel was arrested after a series of attacks over a two year period that left nine people dead.

1964 - Capitol Records released the Beatles' first single in the USA; "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" sold one million copies in the first three weeks.

1968 – Johnny Cash performs live at Folsom Prison.

1992 - Japan apologized for forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

1993 - American, British and French planes bombed a series of targets over southern Iraq. The action was taken in response to repeated Iraqi breaches of the 'no fly zone' implemented after the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

1993 – Space Shuttle program: Endeavour heads for space for the third time as STS-54 launches from the Kennedy Space Center.

2000 - Microsoft chairman Bill Gates stepped aside as chief executive and promoted company president Steve Ballmer to the position.

2004 - Harold Shipman, who is believed to have killed more than 200 patients, was found hanged in his prison cell.

1129 – Formal approval of the Order of the Templar at the Council of Troyes.

1784 - The United States ratified The Treaty of Paris with England, ending the Revolutionary War.

1878 - Queen Victoria watched a demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

1896 - The first public screening of a film in Britain, it was at the London headquarters of the Royal Photographic society.

1914 - Henry Ford started his first manufacturing assembly line.

1954 - Baseball hero Joe DiMaggio married film star Marilyn Monroe.

1973 – Elvis Presley's concert Aloha from Hawaii is broadcast live via satellite, and sets a record as the most watched broadcast by an individual entertainer in television history.

2002 - After three months of no cases being reported, the United Kingdom was finally declared free from the 'Foot and Mouth' infection, after a crisis that started in 2001 in which millions of cows and sheep were destroyed.

2005 – Landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan.

Wikipedia is 10 years old today

1493 – Christopher Columbus sets sail for Spain from Hispaniola, ending his first voyage to the New World.

1559 - Elizabeth I was crowned Queen of England at the age of 26. She was the daughter of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn.

1759 - The British Museum opened, at Montague House, Bloomsbury, London.

1797 - The first top hat was worn by John Hetherington, a London haberdasher. He was fined £50 the first time he wore his new creation, 'for causing a disturbance'.

1870 - Britain's first woman doctor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, passed the final exam of the Medical Faculty of the Sorbonne and became a fully qualified MD.

1943 - Work was completed on the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense.

1947 – The brutalized corpse of Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia) is found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles.

1974 - Happy Days premiered on American television.

1991 – Elizabeth II, in her capacity as Queen of Australia, signs letters patent allowing Australia to become the first Commonwealth Realm to institute its own separate Victoria Cross award in its own honours system.

2005 – ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron, and other surface elements on the moon.

2009 – US Airways Flight 1549 makes an emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. All passengers and crew members survive.

1412 – The Medici family is appointed official banker of the Papacy.

1547 - Ivan the Terrible was crowned Czar of Russia.

1572 – Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk is tried for treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England.

1707 - The Act of Union was passed, merging the English and Scottish parliaments and paving the way for the new country of Great Britain.

1909 - Ernest Shackleton's British expedition reached the area of the South Magnetic Pole.

1920 - Prohibition began in the United States as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America took effect; it was later repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.

1957 - The Cavern Club opened in Liverpool. It provided a showcase for many young rock 'n' roll musicians, among them the Beatles.

1969 – Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.

1982 - Britain and the Vatican resumed full diplomatic relations after a break of exactly 447 years.

1991 - The Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) began, with the first fighter aircraft launched from Saudi Arabia and off U.S. and British aircraft carriers on bombing missions over Iraq. The goal was to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Highlanders won the battle of Falkirk. It was to be their last victory in the 'forty-five' Jacobite uprising, as three months later they were defeated at Culloden.

1773 - Captain Cook's ship Resolution became the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle.

1871 - San Franciscan Andrew Smith Hallidie patented the first cable car.

1893 - Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown by a group of American businessmen and sugar planters, forcing Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate. Hawaii was organized into a formal U.S. territory and in 1959 entered the United States as the 50th state.

1917 – The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.

1929 – Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Segar, first appears in the Thimble Theatre comic strip.

1946 – The UN Security Council holds its first session.

1995 - More than 6000 people were killed when an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 devastated the city of Kobe, Japan. A year earlier, a 6.7 earthquake hit southern California, killing 61.

1997 – A Delta 2 carrying a GPS2R satellite explodes 13 seconds after launch, dropping 250 tons of burning rocket remains around the launch pad.

2000 - British pharmaceutical companies Glaxo Wellcome PLC and SmithKline Beecham PLC agreed to a merger that would create the world's largest drugmaker.

2007 – The Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea nuclear testing.

1778 - English navigator Captain James Cook became the first European to visit the Hawaiian Islands. He named them the Sandwich Islands, after Lord Sandwich, who was then first Lord of the Admiralty.

1788 - A British fleet of eleven ships and 800 convicts landed at Botany Bay, Australia. They created the first British penal colony, in Port Jackson - Sydney.

1896 – The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time.

1911 - The first landing of an aircraft on a ship took place as pilot Eugene B. Ely flew onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor.

1919 - Bentley Motors was established in London, but the manufacturer did not make a complete car for 27 years, only engines and chassis.

1967 - Albert DeSalvo, who claimed to be the Boston Strangler, was convicted in Massachusetts of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses. He was sentenced to life and killed by a fellow inmate in 1973.

1977 – Scientists at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.

1981 – Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield parachute off a Houston skyscraper, becoming the first two people to BASE jump from objects in all four categories: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs).

2005 – The Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, is unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France

1419 – Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his reconquest of Normandy.

1649 - The Puritan parliament began the trial of Charles I for treason. Charles refused to plead, saying that he did not recognise the legality of the High Court.

1746 - Bonnie Prince Charlie's troops occupied Stirling.

1783 - William Pitt became the youngest Prime Minister of England at age 24.

1793 - King Louis XVI was tried by the French Convention, found guilty of treason and sentenced to the guillotine.

1825 - Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kensett patented a process for canning food in tin containers.

1883 – The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.

1915 - More than 20 people were killed when German zeppelins bombed England for the first time. The bombs were dropped on Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn.

1963 - The first disco, called "Whiskey-a-go-go," opened in Los Angeles.

1966 - Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister of India.

1977 – Snow falls in Miami, Florida. This is the only time in the history of the city that snow has fallen. It also fell in the Bahamas.

1988 - Christopher Nolan, a 22-year-old Irish writer, won the £20,000 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for his autobiography, Under the Eye of the Clock. Completely paralysed, Nolan used a 'unicorn' attachment on his forehead to write the novel at a painfully slow speed.

1999 – British Aerospace agrees to acquire the defence subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc, forming BAE Systems in November 1999.

2006 – The New Horizons probe is launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto.

1265 - England's first Parliament met at Westminster Hall in London, convened by the Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort.

1783 - The British and U.S. commissioners signed a preliminary "Cessation of Hostilities," which led to the Treaty of Paris and Treaty of Versailles, thus ending the Revolutionary War.

1841 - The island of Hong Kong was ceded to Great Britain, it returned to Chinese control in July 1997.

1882 - A draper's shop called Coxon & Company, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, became the first shop in the world to be lit by incandescent electric light. It used Swan lamps.

1887 - The U.S. Senate approved an agreement to lease Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a naval base.

1936 - George V died and was succeeded by Edward VIII who abdicated 325 days later because of his insistence in marrying American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

1961 - John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States of America.

1986 - France and Britain finally decided to undertake the Channel Tunnel project, promising that trains would run under the Channel by 1993.

1987 - The Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy to Lebanon, Terry Waite, was kidnapped in Beirut whilst attempting to win freedom for Western hostages.

1997 - Her Majesty's Royal Yacht Britannia began her final voyage, to Hong Kong, before being decommissioned.

2007 – A three-man team, using only skis and kites, completes a 1,093-mile (1,759 km) trek to reach the southern pole of inaccessibility for the first time since 1958 and for the first time ever without mechanical assistance.