On this day

Thanks for the daily history lessons Skully. Really informative and intriguing some of the things that happened on certain days.

752 BC – Romulus (first king of Rome), celebrates the first Roman triumph after his victory over the Caeninenses, following The Rape of the Sabine Women.

1692 – Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, beginning what would become known as the Salem witch trials.

1712 - The Stamp Act imposed a levy of one old penny (1d) per whole sheet on newspapers in England.

1872 – Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park.

1932 - The infant son of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was kidnapped from their home in New Jersey.

1946 - The British Government took control of the Bank of England, after 252 years.

1954 – Nuclear testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, is detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

1978 - Charlie Chaplin's coffin was stolen from a Swiss cemetery.

1995 – Yahoo! was incorporated.

2002 - NASA said its Mars Odyssey spacecraft had found evidence that vast regions of Mars may have had water.

2006 - English-language Wikipedia adds its one millionth article.

1969: Concorde flies for the first time
The supersonic airliner, Concorde, has made a "faultless" maiden flight.
The Anglo-French plane took off from Toulouse and was in the air for just 27 minutes before the pilot made the decision to land.

The first pilot, Andre Turcat, said on his return to the airport: "Finally the big bird flies, and I can say now that it flies pretty well."

The test flight reached 10,000ft (3,000m), but Concorde's speed never rose above 300mph (480kph). The plane will eventually fly at a speed of 1,300mph (2,080kph).

Mr Turcat, his co-pilot and two engineers taxied to the end of the runway at about 1530GMT. Strong winds meant the test flight was in doubt for much of the day.

Spontaneous applause

Two previous test flights had to be abandoned because of poor weather conditions.

Concorde sped down the runway and there was a spontaneous burst of applause from watching reporters and cameramen as the wheels lifted off the ground.

The noise from the four Olympus 593 engines, built jointly by the Bristol division of Rolls Royce and the French Snecma organisation, drowned out any noise from the crowd.

Less than half-an-hour later, the aircraft was brought back down to earth using a braking parachute and reverse thrust.

The crew emerged at the top of the steps, led by Mr Turcat, who gave the thumbs up signal with each hand.

The first British test pilot, Brian Trubshaw, who watched today's flight from the news stand, said, "I was terribly impressed by the way the whole flight was conducted. It was most professional and I would like to congratulate Andre on the way he handled this performance."

The British government has so far invested £155m in the project. It is hoped Concorde will begin flying commercially in 1973, when it will cut the flying time between London and New York from seven hours 40 minutes to three hours 25 minutes.




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Watch/Listen

The maiden flight lasted just 27 minutes



Shots of Concord taking off and landing




In Context
On 9 April 1969, Brian Trubshaw made his first flight in the British-built prototype. The 22 minute flight left from a test runway at Filton near Bristol and landed at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.
Concorde completed its first supersonic flight on 1 October 1969.

There were serious doubts at government level about the commercial viability of the Concorde project. Cabinet papers released under the 30 year rule warned the project would be a disaster, costing the UK £900m.

The first commercial flights took place on 21 January 1976 when British Airways flew from London Heathrow to Bahrain and Air France from Paris to Rio.

Concorde was launched at the height of the fuel crisis and a combination of its heavy fuel consumption and small tanks, which meant it could not enter the lucrative trans-Pacific market, made it uneconomic.

Concorde's image was further dented with the crash near Paris on 25 July 2000 in which 113 people died.

£17m was spent on safety improvements and the aircraft went back into commercial service in November 2001.

In April 2003 British Airways and Air France announced the plane would be retired due to falling passenger revenue and rising maintenance costs.

Concorde's final commercial flight was on 23 October 2003.








On This Day
26 September 1973
Concorde slashes Atlantic flight time

Just heard on the radio this morning that Ryan Giggs made his first appearance for United, 20 years ago today.

some details and pics
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footbal...nited.html

1807 - The U.S. Congress abolished the African slave trade.

1882 - An unsuccessful attempt was made by Scotsman Roderick Maclean to assassinate Queen Victoria.

1930 - David Herbert Lawrence (known as D.H. Lawrence), novelist and poet, died from tuberculosis in Vence, France at the age of 44. His books included Lady Chatterley's Lover, Women in Love and Sons and Lovers.

1933 - The motion picture King Kong, starring Fay Wray, had its world premiere in New York's Radio City Music Hall.

1949 – Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute.

1958 - The British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic expedition, led by Dr. Vivian Fuchs, completed the first surface crossing of the South Pole.

1972 – The Pioneer 10 space probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a mission to explore the outer planets.

1998 – Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

(01-03-2011 10:43 )skully Wrote:  1954 – Nuclear testing: The Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, is detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the worst radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

The Castle Bravo Test, held in the Bikini Atolls, was the first time the US had tested a "dry fuel" fission system. Much of the design work was theoretical and it was a theoretical error over the likely efficiency of the Lithium isotopes that led to such a huge detonation (it was originally expected to be only 4 - 6 megatons). Castle Bravo therefore (unintentionally) became the biggest US nuclear detonation of all time but only the fifth biggest ever, as the USSR later tested weapons of 21, 23, 27 and 50 megatons respectively.

The US had intended to keep the test secret, but that proved rather difficult as the fireball and mushroom cloud could be seen 250 miles away and if that wasn't bad enough, the wind changed and blew the fallout over the Pacific islands of Rongerik, Rongglap and Utirik which had to be hastily evacuated. In all, an area of around 7,000 square miles suffered serious contamination and a number of US naval personnel suffered radiation sickness despite being over 30 miles away.

It also enveloped a Japanese fishing boat, the inappropriately named "Lucky Dragon No 5" which should have been in a safe area and had received no warning. One crewmember died and five others were seriously injured. This caused a serious diplomatic row between the Japanese and American Governments and the US eventually paid compensation to the fishermen's families of what would be about £30,000 each in today's money, and a further £1 million for the loss of the fishing grounds which had been wiped out for years to come.

Ironically, the scientist in charge of the firing, Dr Alvin Graves, had himself been badly injured by radiation in a serious lab accident at Los Alamos in 1946 which had taken the life of his fellow scientist Dr Louis Slotin, although the US hushed up the extent of the accident until the late 1950's.

Graves died in 1966 at the age of just 53, supposedly from a heart attack, but a follow up review in 1978 showed conclusively that his early death was brought on by radiation sickness from the two events.

(28-02-2011 12:52 )TheWatcher Wrote:  

(28-02-2011 12:38 )skully Wrote:  ~~~~
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1954 – The first-ever color television sets using the NTSC standard are offered for sale to the general public.
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NTSC was never as good as later systems such as PAL.
The joke was that NTSC stood for "Never The Same Colour"
or "Never The Same Color" if you were American.

The main problem with NTSC is the low definition (only 525 lines) and that is why the quality of the picture is affected but that didn't stop the BBC (on the Government's behalf) running the first test colour transmissions in the UK in NTSC at night after closedown in the early 1960's.

The one advantage NTSC has is that it can broadcast colour on VHF as well as UHF frequencies and therefore gives greater coverage. This is especially useful in hilly or rural areas like Scotland, Wales, Cornwall etc but the tests were not regarded as a success and NTSC was quietly dropped. Astonishingly, the BBC was then ordered to conduct the next series of tests not in PAL but in SECAM, which was the system designed by France (and later adopted by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Romania).

Ironically it was De Gaulle's "non" to Britain's attempts to join the Common Market in 1963 and fears of future bloody-mindedness and non-cooperation that caused the Government to distance itself from almost everything French and in the end Britain signed up to the German-designed Phase Alternate Line (PAL) system which began broadcasting colour on BBC2 in 1967 and on BBC1 and ITV in November 1969 (at first only in London, Midlands, Granada and Yorkshire regions with the others coming on-line over the next two years, except for Channel which did not get colour until 1984, due to a row with France over frequency allocations!).

1857 - Second Opium War: France and the United Kingdom declare war on China, using the killing of a missionary as the pretext.

1918 - Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, abandoning the Allied war effort and granting independence to its Polish and Baltic territories, the Ukraine, and Finland.

1931 - The Star-Spangled Banner officially became the national anthem of the United States.

1938 – Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia.

1969 - Apollo 9 was launched to test the lunar landing module.

1991 - After police pursuit, robbery parolee Rodney King was stopped and beaten, and the police brutality was captured on video.

1991 - The Queen needed three stitches in her hand after intervening in a corgi fight. Dog fighting...tut, tut Liz

1995 - A bill which would ban hunting with hounds in England and Wales became the first such proposal to get a second reading in parliament.

1997 – The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two and a half years of construction.

2005 – Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly an airplane non-stop around the world solo without refueling.

(03-03-2011 12:26 )skully Wrote:  1969 - Apollo 9 was launched to test the lunar landing module.

The Commander of Apollo 9 was David Scott. He went on to command Apollo 15 and became the seventh man to walk on the moon. Almost 30 years later (at the age of 67) he found himself back in the spotlight in the UK tabloids when he announced his engagement to former television newsreader Anna Ford, with whom he had been quietly living without publicity in London for several years. Unfortunately the relationship ended in 2002 and Scott returned to the US, where, now aged 78, he lives in retirement in Texas.

1681 - King Charles II granted a Royal Charter to William Penn, entitling him to establish a colony in North America called Pennsylvania.

1824 - The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) was formed by Sir William Hillary.

1877 - The Russian Imperial Ballet staged the first performance of Swan Lake in Moscow.

1890 – The longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland, measuring 1,710 feet (520 m) long, is opened by the Prince of Wales, who later becomes King Edward VII.

1918 – The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic.

1969 - The Kray twins, Ronald and Reginald, were found guilty of murder.

1989 - Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. announced plans to merge into the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerate.