On this day

1986: South African raids wreck peace bid
South African troops have launched raids on three neighbouring countries in an effort to destroy bases purportedly used by the anti-apartheid organisation the African National Congress (ANC).
At least three people are reported dead after this morning's co-ordinated attacks on cities in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana by South African warplanes, helicopters and commandos.

The raids have severely jeopardised diplomatic efforts by a Commonwealth mission now in South Africa.

The Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group had been trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement with South Africa's ruling National Party and Prime Minister PW Botha to bring an end to national strife caused by the apartheid regime.

Five of the seven delegates have already left Cape Town in protest.

Call for sanctions

Along with Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania, the three nations attacked today form the so-called "frontline states" that support the ANC in their struggle against white minority rule. But all three deny providing the ANC with military bases.

There has been widespread condemnation of South Africa in the West and across Southern Africa.

Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda called the raids a "dastardly, cowardly action". The government of Botswana issued a statement condemning "this naked act of aggression against our country".

And the Commonwealth Secretary General Sir Shridath Ramphal called the move "a declaration of war" and demanded immediate economic sanctions against South Africa.

But the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, while condemning the attacks are ignoring calls for early sanctions against Pretoria.

News of the raids - on Gaborone in Botswana, Zimbabwe's capital, Harare and Lusaka in Zambia - came in an announcement by the head of the South African Army, Lieutenant General AJ Liebenberg.

"The action taken against the terrorists should be interpreted as indicative of the firm resolve of the Republic of South Africa to use all the means at its disposal against terrorists wherever they may be," he said.


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Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda condemned "cowardly action"





In Context
In the 1980s, South Africa was in crisis, with widespread civil unrest among the majority black population. President PW Botha allowed the repeal of some apartheid laws, but he was determined to crush the outlawed ANC movement, both at home and abroad.
By the end of the decade, sanctions imposed by the US, most Commonwealth nations and the EC - except Britain - along with the international sporting boycott were starting to hurt.

The ruling National Party knew that it was time for change and in February 1989, PW Botha was forced to step aside as prime minister in favour of the more liberal FW de Klerk, although PW Botha remained president.

Later that year, the South African government approved a visit by Prime Minister de Klerk to Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, who supported the ANC.

The move prompted PW Botha to resign as president.

He left the National Party in 1990, the year that saw the release of Nelson Mandela, head of the ANC.

Four years later the ANC formed South Africa's first democratically elected government with Mr Mandela as the country's first black president.



Stories From 19 May
1980: Nine dead after Mount St Helens eruption

2004: Angry dads hit Blair with purple flour

1986: South African raids wreck peace bid

1974: Giscard d'Estaing voted French president

1997: Labour to stub out tobacco sponsorship





BBC News >>
Country Profile
Facts and figures about South Africa


PW Botha: 'The great crocodile'

1499 – Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. Catherine is 13 and Arthur is 12.

1536 - Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII's second wife, was beheaded in London. She was 29 years old.

1649 – An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth is passed by the Long Parliament. England would be a republic for the next eleven years.

1900 - The world's longest railroad tunnel, the 12-mile-long Simplon Tunnel linking Switzerland to Italy through the Alps, opened.

1935 - T E Lawrence, English soldier and writer (known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia) died from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.

1940 - Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister and called Nazism "the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny that has ever darkened and stained the pages of history."

1962 – A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's rendition of Happy Birthday.

1967 - The Soviet Union ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain banning nuclear weapons from outer space.

1996 - A large asteroid came within 281,000 miles of the Earth.

1191 - English King Richard I 'the Lion Heart' conquered Cyprus on his way to join the Crusaders in north west Israel.

1498 - Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama became the first European to reach India via either the Atlantic Ocean or Mediterranean Sea.

1867 - Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone for the Royal Albert Hall.

1874 - Levi Strauss began marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.

1883 – Krakatoa begins to erupt. The volcano's final and most notable explosion occurs on August 26.

1927 - Charles Lindbergh took off from Long Island, New York, aboard the Spirit of St. Louis, on his historic solo flight to Paris, France.

1932 - Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

1956 – In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1993 - Britain ratified the Maastricht Treaty which allowed greater co-operation between members of the European Union.

1966: Cooper loses to world champ Clay
American Cassius Clay has beaten Britain's Henry Cooper in the sixth round of a fight in London to retain the world heavyweight championship.
Cooper's hopes of bringing the title back to the UK were dashed one minute and 38 seconds into the sixth round when the referee stopped the fight - a deep gash over his left eye forced him to concede victory to 24-year-old Clay.


There were two right-hand punches but it was his head that did the damage


Jim Wicks, Henry Cooper's Manager


About 40,000 spectators watched at the Arsenal football ground in Highbury, north London as Cooper, aged 32, fought bravely with his big left hooks to battle against Clay's quick footwork and fast punches.

After the fight Cooper was sent to Guys Hospital where he had 12 stitches for the cut that dashed his hopes of world victory.

His manager Jim Wicks, said Clay had butted Cooper with his head and should be disqualified.


Clay, a committed Muslim, has recently changed his name to Mohammed Ali.

'I am the greatest!'

The 1960 Olympic champion, famed for proclaiming "I am the greatest!", took the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston in 1964.

He was left unmarked by the fight apart from some swelling on the cheekbone under his left eye - the result of one of Cooper's best punches.

After his win, he went to Cooper's dressing room to see him and said: "I hate to spill blood. It's against my religion."

His manager and "spiritual adviser" Herbert Muhammed said Clay should be proud of his performance.

"It was a wonderful punch," he said. "The same one that broke Liston. It's terrible to see a man destroyed like that. I think the referee should have stopped the fight before."



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The referee stopped the fight in the sixth round




In Context
Slow motion footage of the fight later showed Mohammed Ali had won the fight legitimately and not from a clash of heads.
The following year, he lost his boxing licence in the US after he refused to be drafted into the army on religious grounds.

In 1970 Mohammed Ali won back his right to box at the Supreme Court. But in 1971 he was beaten by Joe Frazier.

He took back the title of world champion in 1974 in a famous fight against George Forman in Zaire known as the "rumble in the jungle". He lost it again briefly to Leon Spinks in 1978 and then won it back the same year to become the only boxer to win the title three times.

During the mid-1980s he contracted Parkinson's disease as a result of blows to the brain.

He was voted BBC Sporting Personality of the Century in 1999.

Henry Cooper retired in 1971, became a TV commentator and was knighted in 1999.



Stories From 21 May
1991: Bomb kills India's former leader Rajiv Gandhi

1961: Freedom Riders spark Montgomery riots

1966: Cooper loses to world champ Clay

1950: Tornado sweeps southern England

1958: Trunk dialling heralds cheaper calls

1471 - Henry VI, King of England, was murdered in the Tower of London where he had been imprisoned by Edward IV.

1840 - Britain claimed complete sovereignty over New Zealand.

1851 - Gold was first discovered in Australia.

1927 – Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

1932 – Bad weather forces Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and she thereby becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

1972 – Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is damaged by a vandal, the mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist Laszlo Toth.

1998 – In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics are hit by a butyric acid attacker.

2005 – The tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka opens at Six Flags Great Adventure.

(21-05-2011 10:45 )skully Wrote:  ~~~~
~~~~
1998 – In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics are hit by a butyric acid attacker.
~~~~
~~~~

I had to look that one up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid

(21-05-2011 10:45 )skully Wrote:  1998 – In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics are hit by a butyric acid attacker.

Sounds like a bit of a dirty job to me.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/05/2...0007.shtml

(21-05-2011 08:14 )bombshell Wrote:  1966: Cooper loses to world champ Clay
American Cassius Clay has beaten Britain's Henry Cooper in the sixth round of a fight in London to retain the world heavyweight championship.
Cooper's hopes of bringing the title back to the UK were dashed one minute and 38 seconds into the sixth round when the referee stopped the fight - a deep gash over his left eye forced him to concede victory to 24-year-old Clay.

Henry Cooper's recent death received a lot less media coverage than would have been expected as it co-incided with the killing of Osama Bin-Laden.

Cooper's enduring fame came from his previous fight with Clay/Ali in 1963 when he floored the American at the end of the fourth round with a left-hook so hard Ali later said that "my ancestors felt it back in Africa". Had the punch come 30 seconds earlier, Cooper would probably have won, but the bell saved Ali, and Cooper's propensity to cut easily led to his undoing yet again, the fight being stopped in the next round.

An urban myth has grown up over the years that Ali's recovery was aided by a greatly extended break after the fourth round as Manager Angelo Dundee had deliberately made worse a small split in Ali's glove, requiring it to be replaced, but the BBC coverage clearly shows that the interval was extended by no more than a few seconds, not the "three or four minutes" claimed by some.

Cooper was a very good boxer, but his popularity somewhat blinded people to his limitations on the world stage in what was a golden era for the heavyweight division. His boxing weight was usually no more than 14st, more of a Cruiserweight than a Heavyweight (he later claimed that he had lead put in his boots before the weigh-in of his first fight against Ali as he was barely 13st at the time). Apart from his problems with cuts, he had something of a glass jaw, being knocked out by Ingemar Johannson, Zora Foley and Floyd Patterson.

In 1959 he had had the opportunity to fight Patterson for the World title but turned it down (Brian London took the fight instead, being knocked out in the 11th round). Unfortunately for Cooper, Sonny Liston became World Champion soon after and Cooper's manager, Jim Wicks, wouldn't let Cooper anywhere near a fight with the then invincible Liston. Wicks once said that "you wouldn't want to meet Liston walking down the street, let alone in a boxing ring". All this meant that Cooper didn't get the chance to fight for the title when he was at the peak of his career, and he was already 31 by the time he eventually fought Ali for the title in 1966, the fight being stopped in the 6th due to a bad cut with Cooper ahead on all three judges scorecards.

In 1968 he added the European title to his British and Commonwealth crowns when he beat the German Karl Mildenburger. He made several successful defences but in 1971 lost a controversial points decision to Joe Bugner, and retired soon after at the age of 36. It was one fight too many for Cooper, but Bugner got the "blame" for ending Cooper's career and the British public never forgave him for it.

Joe Bugner genuinely was a world class heavyweight, twice going the distance with Ali, once with Joe Frazier and beating Jimmy Ellis. At his peak Bugner was ranked number 4 in the world behind just Ali, Frazier and George Foreman, but the British public never took to him and he had a largely unhappy and unfulfilled career. Eventually he emigrated to Australia, bitter and resentful at his perceived treatment.

334 BC – The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus.

1176 – The Hashshashin (Assassins) attempt to murder Saladin near Aleppo.

1840 - Britain ended the practice of sending convicts to the penal colony of Australia.

1897 – The Blackwall Tunnel under the River Thames is officially opened

1906 – The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent for their Flying Machine.

1939 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini signed a "Pact of Steel" forming the Axis powers.

1960 – An earthquake measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, now known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, hits southern Chile. It is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.

1969 – Apollo 10's lunar module flies within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the moon's surface.

1980 – Namco releases the highly influential arcade game Pac-Man.

1981 - Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, was sentenced to life imprisonment after the judge described him as 'an unusually dangerous man'. He was found guilty of killing 13 women and the attempted murder of 7 others.

2001 - The original manuscript of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" was bought at auction for $2,430,000, a world record price.

1430 - Burgundian troops captured Joan of Arc and delivered her to the English.

1533 - Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.

1701 - At London's Execution Dock, British privateer Captain Kidd was hanged for piracy and murder. Commissioned by the British crown in 1695 to apprehend pirates in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, Kidd apparently turned to piracy himself in 1697.

1785 - Benjamin Franklin announced his invention of bifocals.

1805 – Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Cathedral of Milan.

1934 - Nylon was first produced by Dr. Wallace Carothers, a chemist at Du Pont.

1934 – American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana.

1966 - The British government declared a state of emergency a week after the nation's seamen strike began. Ooh er missus lol.