On this day

1864 – The Indian city of Calcutta is almost totally destroyed by a cyclone; 60,000 die.

1880 - The first ballpoint pen with its own ink supply and retractable tip was patented by Alonzo T. Cross.

1917 - Sir Arthur Lee donated Chequers in Buckinghamshire to the nation as a permanent country retreat for British Prime Ministers.

1947 – The first televised White House address is given by U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

1962 – Dr. No, the first in the James Bond film series, is released.

1969 - A Cuban defector entered U.S. airspace undetected and landed a MIG-17 at an Air Force base near Miami, Florida.

1974 - American David Kunst completed the first round-the-world journey on foot. It took four years and 21 pairs of shoes to accomplish the 14,450-mile journey across four continents.

Births:

1951 – Bob Geldof, Irish singer (The Boomtown Rats) and activist
1957 – Bernie Mac, American actor and comedian (d. 2008)
1960 – Daniel Baldwin, American actor
1966 – Terri Runnels, Former Wrestling manager and valet
1967 – Guy Pearce, Anglo-Australian actor
1974 – Rich Franklin, American Mixed Martial Artist
1975 – Parminder Nagra, English actress
1975 – Kate Winslet, English actress
1983 – Jesse Eisenberg, American actor
1983 – Nicky Hilton, American heiress
1983 – Mashrafe Mortaza, Bangladeshi cricketer
1984 – Kenwyne Jones, Trinidadian footballer
1985 – Nicola Roberts, English singer (Girls Aloud)

Deaths:

2004 – Rodney Dangerfield, American comedian (b. 1921)

1985: Policeman killed in Tottenham riots
A police officer has been stabbed to death during riots at the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, North London.
Another policeman was shot and injured after a night of horrific violence between the police and hundreds of black and white youths.

By midnight 58 policemen and 24 other people have been taken to hospital.

It is the first time shots have been fired in a British riot.

The trouble was sparked off by the death of local resident Cynthia Jarrett who died of heart failure after four policemen burst into her home during a raid yesterday.

Earlier today, her family met to discuss her death with the police and demanded an inquiry. They made it clear they did not want any kind of public disorder.

Britain's first black council leader, Haringey's Bernie Grant, issued a statement condemning the police for the way they searched Mrs Jarrett's house.

Bricks thrown from walkways

The trouble began at 1845 GMT when police were called to Mount Pleasant, Willan Road and The Avenue.

They were pelted with bottles and petrol bombs, cars were overturned and set alight as were shops and other buildings. There was widespread looting.

About 500 police with shields, helmets and truncheons battled with rampaging youths threw bricks, bottles and cans from walkways within the estate as fires turned the night sky red.

At around 2145 GMT several gunshots were heard and one officer was shot and seriously wounded in Griffin Road.

Half an hour later a police officer was stabbed in the neck, suffering serious injuries. He died later in hospital.

Ten minutes after the stabbing another officer was shot and slightly wounded.

One senior officer said: "This is not England. This is just madness. My men are being used as target practice."

He said three of his men had sufferd burns but that the police did not have the resources to tackle the intense violence.

"We haven't got the weapons to combat this kind of sickening violence."

Teargas equipment is on site but senior commanders are reluctant to use it for fear of harming residents trapped inside their homes.

Police have blocked entrances to the estate to contain the riot.

The Tottenham riots come just a week after violence erupted in Brixton, south London following the accidental shooting of Cherry Groce.


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Gunshots were heard in one of Britain's most violent riots


An all-out assault on police in one of London's worst riots







In Context
The police officer who was killed was named the following day as Sunderland-born Pc Keith Blakelock, aged 40 and a father of three.
He and his colleague Pc Richard Coombes had been trying to protect fire-fighters tackling a blaze when they were attacked by an angry mob.

Police in riot gear occupied the estate for two months after the riot, using police dogs, helicopters and surveillance equipment.

Three men - Winston Silcott, Engin Raghip and Mark Braithwaite - were convicted of murdering Pc Blakelock in 1987, but cleared on appeal four years later amid claims the evidence in the case may have been fabricated.

Pc Blakelock was posthumously awarded the Queen's Medal for Bravery.

Police in London began a review of his killing in 1999 after pressure from his widow, Elizabeth Johnson.

Detectives are still trying to gather fresh evidence on the murder. In October 2004 the blood-stained, slashed uniform he was wearing was removed from Scotland Yard's Black Museum for DNA testing.

Soon after the riots Labour council leader Bernie Grant was condemned from all sides for saying, "What the police got was a bloody good hiding."


Stories From 6 Oct
1981: Egypt's President Sadat assassinated
1986: Nuclear technician missing after secrets leak
1973: Arab states attack Israeli forces
1985: Policeman killed in Tottenham riots
2000: Milosevic quits, street celebrations continue
1953: Britain sends troops to Guiana

1769 - English explorer Captain James Cook, aboard the Endeavour, discovered New Zealand.

1847 - Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre was published in London.

1883 - The Orient Express completed its first run from Paris to Constantinople (now Istanbul) it took nearly 78 hours.

1889 – Thomas Edison shows his first motion picture.

1961 - U.S. president John F. Kennedy, advised Americans to build or buy a bomb shelter to protect them from atomic fallout in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

1979 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit the White House.

1997 - Britain's first astronaut, Michael Foale, returned safely to earth aboard the space shuttle Atlantis after four and a half months on MIR, the Russian space station.

(06-10-2011 11:15 )skully Wrote:  1997 - Britain's first astronaut, Michael Foale, returned safely to earth aboard the space shuttle Atlantis after four and a half months on MIR, the Russian space station.

Although Foale was technically Britain's first "astronaut", he wasn't the first Briton to go into space.

That distinction fell to Helen Sharman, who was launched in May 1991 on board Soyuz SM-12, so strictly speaking she was a "cosmonaut". Sharman was born in Sheffield in 1963; she received a B.Sc. in chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 1984 and a Ph.D. from Birkbeck, University of London. She worked as an engineer for GEC in London and later as a chemist for Mars Incorporated working with flavourant properties of chocolate. She worked with chocolate because she liked chocolate and wanted to explore the further flavours and scents of pure alpine chocolate.

Colin Michael Foale was born in Lincolnshire to English father Colin and American mother Mary. A member of the Air Training Corps, he studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, receiving a doctorate in laboratory astrophysics in 1982. When he left university he: "owned two pairs of jeans, a donkey jacket, a bicycle and a pilot’s licence; which shows I had my priorities absolutely right.”. He has spent almost all of his life since then in the United States and as he has dual-nationality joined the space programme through the standard NASA application process as any other American would and so is not as well known as Sharman, who won a publicly-run contest specifically to select a UK astronaut ("Project Juno").

Foale made his first of six trips into space some ten months later than Sharman in March 1992 aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, but it was his 1997 flight that made him famous in the US, and a hero in Russia. As a member of a joint US-Russian team he was on the Mir with cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliev and Sasha Lazutkin in June 1997 when the unmanned supply module smashed into it. Impact speed was only 18mph, but it punctured the hull, causing depressurisation and threatening the oxygen supply. The crew fought frantically to isolate the damaged section, chopping cables and sealing hatches, but the collision had sent Mir spinning out of control and, with its solar panels turned away from the sun, power had been lost.

Using little more than his thumb and a working knowledge of astronomy he put his thumb to the window, and, timing the passage of stars, estimated the rate of roll accurately, thereby allowing Russian ground controllers to fire thrusters to counteract it. The complex geometry of Mir, a collection of spacecraft bolted together at odd angles, made it a mental exercise that only physicists could undertake, but eventually the lifesaving solar arrays were facing the sun again.

Although a number of other astronauts have British connections (Greg Johnson was born in the UK to American parents who were serving in the US military; Nick Patrick and Piers Sellars were both born in the UK but their work took to the US where they took out American citizenship long before they joined the space programme; space tourist Richard Garriott was born in England but has dual US nationality and fellow space tourist Mark Shuttleworth was born in South Africa but has dual UK citizenship and lives on the Isle of Man) Sharman is the only "true Brit" to date.



Michael Foale and Helen Sharman

1765 - Twenty-eight delegates from nine American colonies met at the Stamp Act Congress in New York City to protest Parliaments' British Stamp Act, which imposed a direct tax on the colonies to raise revenue for a standing army in America.

1806 - The first carbon paper was patented by its English inventor, Ralph Wedgwood.

1913 - The Ford Motor Company started operation of the first assembly line. It could turn out a car in three hours.

1920 - The first women were admitted to study for full degrees at Oxford University

1958 – The U.S. manned space-flight project is renamed Project Mercury.

1959 – U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 transmits the first ever photographs of the far side of the Moon.

1982 – Cats opens on Broadway and runs for nearly 18 years before closing on September 10, 2000.

1992 - The first Braille cash dispenser was installed, by the Northern Rock Building Society in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear

2003 - Arnold Schwarzenegger, was elected governor of California. The election was a recall of Gov. Gray Davis just 11 months into his second term due to the state's perilous financial condition.

2008 - UK banking shares plunged on fears that more financial institutions would need government assistance to stay solvent. HBOS dropped 42%, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) fell 39%, Barclays shed 9% and Lloyds TSB was down 13%. Six central banks, including the Bank of England, cut interest rates by half a percentage point in an effort to steady the faltering global economy.

Births:

1931 – Desmond Tutu, South African archbishop and Nobel Laureate
1952 – Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister and former President of the Russian Federation
1957 – Jayne Torvill, British figure skater
1959 – Simon Cowell, English recording executive
1967 – Toni Braxton, American singer
1968 – Thom Yorke, English singer (Radiohead)
1969 – Bobbie Brown, American actress, model
1973 – Dida, Brazilian footballer
1973 – Sami Hyypiä, Finnish footballer
1975 – Terry Gerin, American professional wrestler (Rhyno)
1975 – Damian Kulash, American musician (OK Go)
1975 – Tim Minchin, Australian comedian and musician
1976 – Gilberto Silva, Brazilian footballer
1978 – Alesha Dixon, British pop singer
1978 – Jake Humphrey, English television presenter
1982 – Madjid Bougherra, Algerian footballer
1982 – Jermain Defoe, English footballer
1984 – Salman Butt, Pakistani cricketer
1986 – Bree Olson, American pornographic actress

1973: Commercial radio joins UK airwaves
Britain's first independent radio station began broadcasting today on VHF and medium wave.
LBC (London Broadcasting Company) joined the airwaves with a signature tune followed by a two hour 'news-feature' programme presented by former BBC reporter David Jessel.

The radio station is the first to challenge the BBC's 50-year radio monopoly. LBC'S intended target audience will be listeners of BBC Radio 4 and BBC London.

The station will broadcast news and features programmes 24 hours a day and present a news service syndicated to other commercial stations.

Details of the station's application for the broadcasting contract were released earlier today by the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

In the application LBC's remit was to produce news "presented without the slightest editorialising...but not without opinion or comment".

LBC pledges that each personal comment will be "prefaced by the statement that a personal viewpoint or prejudice is about to be expressed".

LBC's revenue will come almost entirely from advertising, though critics say its agenda could discourage advertising agencies who may prefer to back commercial stations with younger listeners.

But managing director Michael Levete claims support from advertisers has been most encouraging:

"If the first week's commercial bookings can be repeated throughout the year the company stands to gross £1 million a year," he said.

Increased competition

LBC has a budget of more than £1 million but the company predicts its setup costs will offset any profit in its first few years.

Other commercial radio stations opening later this year will compete with BBC regional audiences.

Next week Capital Radio starts broadcasting as a general music and entertainment station for London and is expected to draw in BBC Radio 1 and pirate radio listeners.

The new stations are hoping to capture a big share of the estimated 26 million people listening to radio at any one time during the week - and even draw away some TV audiences.


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The voice of independent radio


David Jessel opens the airwaves for LBC's first broadcast







In Context
LBC's debut was deemed a success: in its first three days 8000 listeners called in to have their say on phone-in programmes.
In its 1980s heyday it had 2.4 million listeners.

Broadcasters' voices such as Janet Street-Porter's apparently evoked "a positive response in the ears of the listeners".

LBC hosted the likes of Angela Rippon, Michael Parkinson and Brian Hayes.

It broadcast the first official advertisement on British radio - Birds Eye frozen food.

LBC changed hands a number of times since 1973 and is currently owned by Chrysalis who are revamping it with a new FM licence.


Stories From 8 Oct
1952: Many die as three trains crash at Harrow
2003: The Terminator takes on California
2005: Powerful quake hits South Asia
1987: Zeebrugge disaster was no accident
1973: Commercial radio joins UK airwaves
1990: Britain's first full day in ERM

1908 - The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame's classic children's book, was published. It has never been out of print in its entire history.

1915 - The Battle of Loos, one of the fiercest of World War I, ended with virtually no gains for either side. Almost 430,000 French, British and Germans were killed. The British used poison gas for the first time in the battle.

1945 - President Harry Truman announced that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada.

1967 – Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia.

1978 – Australia's Ken Warby sets the current world water speed record of 317.60mph at Blowering Dam, Australia.

1991 – Croatia votes to sever constitutional relations with Yugoslavia, making the country fully independent

2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security.

2005 – Kashmir earthquake: Thousands of people are killed by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in parts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

(08-10-2011 08:21 )bombshell Wrote:  Stories From 8 Oct
1952: Many die as three trains crash at Harrow

The crash was the worst railway disaster in England and the worst peacetime railway crash in Great Britain, surpassed only by the 1915 accident at Quintinshill, Scotland, in which a troop train collided with a stationary passenger train and another express train ran into the wreckage.

The crash, which took place at 08.19, was a double collision involving three trains. The 07.31 local passenger train from Tring to Euston station was standing at the up fast platform of Harrow & Wealdstone station when it was hit in the rear at 50–60 mph by the overnight express sleeper train from Perth.

Seconds after the first collision, the double-headed 08.00 express from Euston to Liverpool and Manchester, which was travelling at about 50 miles per hour, ran into the wreckage strewn across the down main line. Its locomotives were deflected to the left, ploughed across the down fast platform and came to rest across the electrified local lines opposite. Its carriages, which overran the wreckage from the first collision, brought down part of the station footbridge. All six lines through the station were blocked by the collision.

Rescue work took several days, as survivors had to be extricated from the piled-up wreckage of three trains. 112 people died and 340 were injured in the accident. The dead included 108 passengers (including 39 railway employees en route to their jobs) and four on-duty railwaymen.

The first collision was attributed to the Perth express passing a colour light distant signal at "caution" and the outer and inner semaphore home signals at "danger". The reason for this error is unknown, as the driver and fireman of the Perth express were killed, but possibly fog or smoke from a passing train might have impaired visibility at a crucial moment. There was no evidence of brake or engine malfunction, nor was there any evidence that Driver Robert S. Jones might have been incapacitated. He had clearly been alert only minutes before, when he braked the train to a standstill for signals at Watford and a post mortem revealed no sudden illness, nor any trace of alcohol, drugs or anything else in his system that could have affected his judgement.

The crewmen on the down express were unable to avoid the second collision.

The official report on the accident noted that 16 railway vehicles (coaches, vans, and kitchen cars) were essentially destroyed, and 13 of these vehicles were compressed into a space 45 yards long, 18 yards wide and 30 feet high. The last three coaches of the local train were completely destroyed, as were the two vans and first three passenger coaches of the Perth train. The second, third and fifth coaches of the Liverpool train were destroyed, the first and fourth damaged beyond repair (the roof of the fourth being torn off, probably by contact with the station footbridge), and the sixth and seventh were heavily damaged as they overrode the wreckage in front and ended up on top of the pile, some thirty feet above the rails.

It was believed that 64 fatalities occurred in the local train, 23 in the Perth express and seven in the Liverpool train. Another 14 could not be ascertained, but probably occurred among passengers on the station platforms or footbridge at the time of the collisions. The driver of the lead engine of the Euston to Liverpool express was killed, but the fireman had a remarkable escape, being thrown clear and coming to a few minutes after the accident lying on wreckage from the engine behind, the crew of which also survived.

The accident would almost certainly have been prevented if Automatic Warning System (AWS) had been installed on the engine of the Perth express. This crash, together with the Lewisham accident five years later, accelerated the introduction of AWS throughout Britain's railways.

A memorial plaque concerning the disaster was placed above the main entrance on the eastern side of the station to mark the 50th anniversary in 2002. A mural was also created along the bordering road featuring scenes from Wealdstone's history. It was completed by children from local Harrow schools and dedicated to the victims' memory.