On this day

1461 - Henry VI was deposed by the Duke of York during the War of the Roses.

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.

1790 - The death of Flora Macdonald, the Scottish Jacobite heroine who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

1936 - The British fighter plane Spitfire made its first test flight from Eastleigh, Southampton, powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.

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

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.

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.

1899 - Aspirin was patented by chemist Felix Hoffman, Bayer registers it as a trademark.

1926 - The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford upon Avon was destroyed by fire.

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.

1964 – Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.

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

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 - A £650,000 Picasso (Tête de Femme) was stolen from a London art gallery. The thief escaped in a taxi. It was recovered a week later.

(06-03-2011 11:56 )skully Wrote:  1997 - A £650,000 Picasso (Tête de Femme) was stolen from a London art gallery. The thief escaped in a taxi. It was recovered a week later.

How on earth did the thief manage to steal a £650,000 Picasso and escape in a taxi? I applaud the thief though for leaving in a taxi. Some style that

1530 - When King Henry VIII's divorce request was denied by the Pope, Henry declared himself as the supreme head of the English church.

1869 - The Suez Canal, the waterway across Egypt connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, was opened.

1876 - The Scottish-born inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, patented the telephone.

1926 - The first transatlantic telephone call was made, from London to New York.

1933 - The board game Monopoly was invented by Charles Darrow.

1968 - The first news programme in colour was broadcast on BBC2.

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

1990 - malicious fan lost his virginity, i was only 14 at the time!

(07-03-2011 01:29 )The Narcissist Wrote:  

(06-03-2011 11:56 )skully Wrote:  1997 - A £650,000 Picasso (Tête de Femme) was stolen from a London art gallery. The thief escaped in a taxi. It was recovered a week later.

How on earth did the thief manage to steal a £650,000 Picasso and escape in a taxi? I applaud the thief though for leaving in a taxi. Some style that

....and what's an even bigger mystery is how he found a taxi driver prepared to go south of the river at that time of night !

1702 - Anne Stuart, sister of Mary II, becomes Queen regnant of England, Scotland and Ireland after William III died in a riding accident.

1765 - The British House of Lords passed the Stamp Act.

1801 - During the Napoleonic Wars, combined British and Ottoman forces successfully established a foothold in French-occupied Egypt.

1817 – The New York Stock Exchange is founded.

1910 - In Britain, the first man received a pilot's certificate, John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon, while in France, Mme Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to be issued a pilot's license.

1911 – International Women's Day is launched in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women's Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany.

1930 - In India, Mahatma Gandhi began the campaign of civil disobedience.

1950 - The USSR declared they had built an atomic bomb.

1965 - Around 3500 Marines landed at Da Nang in South Vietnam and became the first U.S. combat troops in Vietnam.

1972 - The Goodyear airship Europa flew over Britain. It was the the first airship over Britain in 20 years.

1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4.

2001 - Donald Campbell's boat, named Bluebird, was recovered from the bottom of Coniston Water in Cumbria.

1972: TWA jet explodes at Las Vegas airport
A bomb has exploded aboard a Trans World Airlines Boeing 707 at Las Vegas airport.
No-one was injured in the blast which destroyed the cockpit of the aircraft as it stood empty on the tarmac.

The explosion happened hours after an anonymous phone caller threatened TWA with a series of bomb attacks unless £760,000 was handed over.

The caller instructed airport officials at Kennedy Airport in New York to go to a locker where they found a note, which said there would be explosions at six hourly intervals on four of the company's aircraft.

Sniffer dogs found a bomb, which consisted of 3lb (1.36kg) of plastic explosives and a timing device, aboard a TWA aircraft at the airport in New York, 12 minutes before it was timed to explode.

It was found in a case labelled "crew" in the cockpit.

A few hours later police boarded a second TWA jet at the airport but nothing was found.

The aircraft which exploded in Las Vegas was thoroughly searched and left New York after the first bomb was discovered.

It flew to Las Vegas with only 10 passengers and was searched again once it landed.

The aircraft was then put under armed guard before the plane exploded seven hours later.

Debris was blown more than 100 feet (30 metres) away but two security guards escaped uninjured.

One of them said: "It sounded like dynamite. I could see pieces of the plane flying through the air."

The security department at the International Air Transport Association suspects that five people, who each hold Middle Eastern passports, may have been involved in the plot.


TWA has ordered worldwide checks on all 240 of its aircraft following the initial bomb threat.

US President Richard Nixon said that the government would mobilise all resources "until the current threat is crushed."



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TWA has ordered worldwide checks on all 240 of its aircraft




In Context
TWA never handed over the ransom money demanded by the the anonymous phone caller.
Following the threats, the Nixon Administration talked about introducing proposals to ban airlines from agreeing to pay ransoms to hijackers and extortionists.

Two more bomb threats were made to TWA in Europe in April 1972 but nothing happened.


No further threats were made to the airline.

TWA went bankrupt in 2001 and was taken over by American Airlines.



Stories From 8 Mar
1985: Beirut car bomb kills dozens

1972: TWA jet explodes at Las Vegas airport

1971: Post strike ends with pay deal

1950: Gas turbine car gets road test

2001: Donald Campbell's speedboat recovered











^^ back

1796 – Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais.

1822 - Charles M. Graham of New York City received a patent for artificial teeth.

1842 – The first documented discovery of gold in California occurs at Rancho San Francisco, six years before the California Gold Rush.

1891 - Four days of storms began off England's south coast, sinking 14 ships.

1946 - 33 fans were killed when a wall collapsed at the Bolton Wanderers' football ground.

1957 – A magnitude 8.3 earthquake in the Andreanof Islands, Alaska, triggers a Pacific-wide tsunami causing extensive damage to Hawaii and Oahu.

1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a human dummy nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich, and demonstrating that Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.

1964 - The first Ford Mustang rolled off the assembly line.

1973 - Northern Ireland voted in favour (90:1) of staying in the United Kingdom.

1997 – Comet Hale-Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia are treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permits Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day.

(09-03-2011 11:37 )skully Wrote:  1973 - Northern Ireland voted in favour (90:1) of staying in the United Kingdom.

The reason for such a one-sided result was because the Nationalist parties organised a boycott of the poll, and it is estimated that less than 1% of the Catholic population voted.