On this day

1987: Ban lifted on MI5 man's memoirs
An Australian court has lifted the ban on the publication of Peter Wright's autobiography, Spycatcher.
The ruling from the New South Wales judges also said the British Government should pay the legal costs of the former MI5 officer.

The Crown's case was rejected largely because the secrets contained in the book "are already out" - a reference to its publication in the United States.

Within hours of the judgment Downing Street said it would appeal against the verdict and take the case to the highest court in Australia.

In doing so the government will face mounting costs and a possible action for damages from Mr Wright.


I've not done anything to hurt British interests

Peter Wright

British High Commissioner to Australia John Leahy said there was an important point of principle at stake and told reporters the former spy had an obligation to confidentiality.

But Mr Wright said there was nothing wrong with the book, which recounts his 20 years working in the UK's secret service.

"I've not done anything to hurt British interests at all - and let them prove otherwise," he said.

MPs on all sides have questioned continuing the legal fight - which has so far cost at least £250,000 - against a book that has sold over half a million copies in the US and Canada.

Spycatcher can also be freely brought into the UK through customs.

George Foulkes, the Labour MP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, said Downing Street should not mount any further challenges.

"It has been published and pursuing the action any further brings the government into ridicule and contempt," he said.


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Wright's book is freely available in the US and Canada






In Context
The British Government's appeal in the Australian high court failed in June 1988.
Four months later it also lost its fight to prevent Spycatcher being published in the UK.

The long running legal battle is estimated to have cost £2m and succeeded only in being a source of embarrassment for the government and generating publicity for the book.

Peter Wright died in Tasmania on 27 April 1995, aged 78.


Stories From 23 Sep
2000: Redgrave wins fifth Olympic gold
1951: King has lung operation
1976: British warship blaze kills eight
1997: Peace talks wobble after Unionist outburst
1952: Charlie Chaplin comes home
1987: Ban lifted on MI5 man's memoirs

1817 - Spain signed a treaty with Britain to end slave trade.

1846 – Neptune is discovered by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier and British astronomer John Couch Adams; the discovery is verified by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle.

1889 – Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) is founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda.

1909 – The Phantom of the Opera (original title: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra), a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux, is first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois.

1941 – World War II: The first gas chamber experiments are conducted at Auschwitz.

1952 - The star of the silent movies, Charlie Chaplin, returned to his native England after 21 years in the US.

1973 - Former Argentine president Juan Peron returned to power after an 18-year exile in Spain.

1974 - The world's first Ceefax teletext service was begun by the BBC.

1983 – Gerrie Coetzee of South Africa becomes the first African boxing world heavyweight champion.

1999 – NASA announces that it has lost contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter.

2002 – The first public version of the web browser Mozilla Firefox ("Phoenix 0.1") is released.

1975: First Britons conquer Everest
Dougal Haston and Doug Scott have become the first Britons to reach the summit of the world's highest mountain.
The men arrived at the top of Mount Everest via the previously unclimbed south-west face, 33 days after establishing their base camp.

The team succeeded on a difficult direct route which has repulsed five other attempts and set a record for the fastest time up the peak.

Expedition leader Chris Bonington reported the pair had reached the 29,028ft (8,848m) summit safely and were now on their way down the mountain.

He also said they were ahead of schedule and hoped more of the 18-strong group would be able to reach the top.

The south-west face of Everest has been regarded as one of the most difficult challenges in mountaineering because of its length and exposure to high-level winds.


I knew Doug would do it one day

Jan Scott

Mr Haston, who runs the International School of Mountaineering in Switzerland, and Mr Scott, a mountain lecturer from Nottingham, had failed twice to conquer the route.

The Queen sent a message to the team offering her warmest congratulations on a "magnificent achievement".

Jan Scott, who is planning to fly out to Nepal to meet her husband, said she was overjoyed by his success.

"It's wonderful - I knew Doug would do it one day," she said.


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The British team took a difficult direct route up the mountain's south-west face


Doug Scott and Dougal Haston describe the Everest climb







In Context
The 1975 south-west face expedition was marred by the disappearance of Mick Burke four days later on his way to the summit.
Doug Scott and Chris Bonington became two of Britain's most well-known mountaineers, making hundreds more difficult ascents and lecturing about the sport to make a living.

Bonington's book about the climb was called Everest the Hard Way - a reference to the fact it was the hardest route up the mountain to date.

Dougal Haston was killed in a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps in 1977.


Stories From 24 Sep
1975: First Britons conquer Everest
1980: Iraq bombs Iran as hostilities increase
1976: White rule in Rhodesia to end
1992: Mellor resigns over sex scandal
1988: Gold for Johnson in 100m sprint

622 - Mohammed and his followers commenced the Hegira from Mecca to Medina, where he founded Islam.

1852 – The first airship powered by a steam engine, created by Henri Giffard, travels 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to Trappes.

1948 – The Honda Motor Company is founded.

1957 – Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, is opened in Barcelona.

1960 - USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was launched at Newport News, Virginia.

1967 - The two 'Queens' of the Cunard Line, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, passed each other in the Atlantic for the last time.

1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.

2008 – The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago is topped off at 1,389 feet (423 m), at the time becoming the world's highest residence above ground-level.

And it would have been Jim Henson's 75th birthday.



Google have dedicated their homepage to him.

(24-09-2011 12:33 )Charlemagne Wrote:  And it would have been Jim Henson's 75th birthday.

Wouldn't it be great if one of the babechannels had Statler and Waldorf sitting up in their box looking down and commenting on the girls performance.....

1957: Troops end Little Rock school crisis
Nine black children have finally been able to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. But they had to be surrounded by more than 1,000 US paratroopers to protect them from segregationist whites.
On the orders of President Dwight D Eisenhower, the troops arrived last night in full battledress with fixed bayonets and rifles and took over from local police following three weeks of disturbances.

The children, six girls and three boys, had to walk through a cordon to get to the school building.

Outside about 1,500 whites demonstrated and at least seven were arrested.

Inside, students were warned by the commanding officer, General Walker, that anyone who disrupted the school day would be handed over to local police.

Symbol of southern resistance

In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional.

The decision was prompted by a case brought by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) on behalf of a black schoolgirl from Kansas forced to attend a blacks-only school.

But Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus refused to abide by the ruling.

Little Rock became of symbol of southern resistance to government attempts to desegregate American society.

On 2 September this year the governor ordered Arkansas state troops to stop the nine black children attending school. Three weeks later he was forced to withdraw them by a federal judge.

But a white mob took over the streets and the mayor of the city appealed to the president to help to control the situation.

The southern governors are meeting today to find a way of persuading the president to withdraw the troops.

After yesterday's disturbances, the city was calm.

But once the troops are gone it is feared the white mob may retaliate against the 30,000 black residents at Little Rock, especially leaders of the NAACP.


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Soldiers in full battle dress escorted nine schoolchildren to class


America's President Eisenhower warns against mobs race actions







In Context
A year later Little Rock's white residents voted to close the high schools rather than keep them open on a desegregated basis.
They re-opened as desegregated schools in 1959 after the Supreme Court refused to allow them to be turned into private schools and therefore be exempt from desegregation.

Governor Faubus' resistance to integration was popular with locals and he remained governor for the next ten years. In 1986 he ran for governor once more but was beaten by Bill Clinton.

In 1964 the Civil Rights Law prohibited racial discrimination in education, employment or in public places.

However, the move to desegregate schools received a setback in 1974 when a Supreme Court decision banned plans to mix schools across city-suburban boundaries. It has meant central city schools have become increasingly attended by non-white students.


Stories From 25 Sep
1957: Troops end Little Rock school crisis
1950: Seoul in UN hands
1983: Dozens escape in Maze break-out
1996: Taleban gains threaten Kabul
2003: Hutton Inquiry hears final arguments

1066 – The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England.

1493 - Christopher Columbus embarked on his second voyage to the New World.

1513 – Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches what would become known as the Pacific Ocean.

1687 - Sir Isaac Newton published his theories on gravitation.

1818 - The first blood transfusion using human blood, as opposed to earlier attempts with animal blood, took place at Guy's Hospital in London.

1906 – In the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of the remote control.

1926 - Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company announced the 8-hour, 5-day work week.

1983 – Maze Prison escape: 38 republican prisoners, armed with 6 handguns, hijack a prison meals lorry and smash their way out of the Maze prison. It is the largest prison escape since WWII and in British history.

1992 – NASA launched a $511 million probe to Mars in the first U.S. mission to the planet in 17 years. Eleven months later, the probe would fail.

2009 – U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a joint TV appearance for a G-20 summit, accused Iran of building a secret nuclear enrichment facility.

Born today:-

Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) 60 today
Will Smith 43 today
Catherine Zeta Jones 42 today
Micheal Douglas 67 today
Heather Locklear 60 today

1944: Airborne troops retreat from Arnhem
British and Polish soldiers withdrew from Arnhem last night south across the Rhine. Those still trapped in the Dutch town have surrendered, according to the Germans.
They had held the northern end of the bridge that crossed the Lower Rhine for nine days, the last three without water.

British reinforcements have not been able to secure the south bank of the river and a German counteroffensive has managed to take the town of Elst to the south of Arnhem.

The failure of the daring airborne operation designed to take the rivers Rhine, Waal and Maas and open the way for an Allied assault on Germany itself has ruled out an early end to the war.


When the noise stopped we got worried, because then the troops would be coming in.

People's War memories »

Nevertheless the Allies hold crossings over the River Waal at Nijmegen and the River Maas at Eindhoven, securing the defence of the port of Antwerp liberated earlier this month.

There were high hopes of success when on 17 September two US and one British airborne division flew out to the Netherlands in excellent weather conditions.

The US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions landed north and south of the Meuse, and secured the crossings of the Meuse and Waal as well as the road south into Belgium.

The British 1st Airborne Division dropped 10km (six miles) west of Arnhem, the most northerly of the three positions, aiming to secure the road bridge in Arnhem and the rail bridge to the west of the town.

They were to wait for reinforcements from the 12th, 30th and 8th Corps of the British Second Army - but their progress was held up by German flank attacks all along the narrow Eindhoven-Nijmegen road.

By the time the Polish airborne brigade was dropped on the south bank the British at Arnhem were completely outflanked and were running low on ammunition and supplies.

Most supplies that were dropped by the RAF have landed in enemy-held territory.

The German news agency reported 600 British surrendered today in a small village west of Arnhem and that, over the last few days, had given up 1,400 wounded men to the Germans.

It said: "Of the remnants of the airborne troops west of Arnhem five officers and 120 men have been made prisoners. These were still amply supplied with weapons but in a state of complete physical exhaustion and hunger."

It went on to say that a small group of airborne troops were still defending themselves in the ruins of the village.


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The Germans say most of the British Airborne division has surrendered


Arnhem airborne troops finally get food and artillery







In Context
The Battle of Arnhem was part of Operation Market-Garden (17-26 September), a joint land-airborne operation devised by British General Sir Bernard Montgomery designed to outflank German defences by crossing the River Rhine and opening the way for an Allied thrust towards the Ruhr and an early end to the war.
It was intended that the ground forces would link up with the airborne forces that had captured the bridges.

The total amount of men in the initial drop was more than 16,500 paratroops and 3,500 troops in gliders.

The Allies believed that German defences in the area were relatively poor. In fact, two divisions of 1st SS Panzer Corps were in the area and had been practising how to tackle an airborne attack.

The American landings were a success, but the British were dropped too far from their bridges, losing the element of surprise.

The British paratroops succeeded in capturing the north end of only one bridge at Arnhem and were soon pinned down under a fierce attack.

Bad weather and German attacks delayed the arrival of vital reinforcements and on 25 September Montgomery gave the order to withdraw from Arnhem.

On the night of 25 September, about a quarter of the 10,000 airborne troops who had landed managed to withdraw across the river. In total 1,130 paratroops were killed and 6,450 were captured. The Germans estimated their dead and wounded at 3,300.

It would be another four months before the Allies crossed the Rhine again and captured the German industrial heartland.


Stories From 26 Sep
1944: Airborne troops retreat from Arnhem
1960: Kennedy and Nixon clash in TV debate
1984: UK and China agree Hong Kong handover
1997: Earthquakes rock central Italy
1973: Concorde slashes Atlantic flight time