On this day

1301 - Edward Caernarvon (later King Edward II) became the first Prince of Wales.

1497 – The bonfire of the vanities occurs in which supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn thousands of objects like cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy.

1886 - While building a cottage for a prospector in the Transvaal, South Africa, an Englishman, George Walker, found a clear streak of gold. It became the richest gold reef in the world.

1935 – The classic board game Monopoly is invented.

1937 - Britain's first dive-bomber, the prototype B-24 Skua, made its maiden flight over Yorkshire, piloted by Dasher Blake.

1940 – The second full length animated Walt Disney film, Pinocchio, premieres.

1947 - The main group of the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to about 150 BC-AD 68, was found in caves by the Jordan River.

1974 – Grenada gains independence from the United Kingdom.

1984 - U.S. Navy Captain Bruce McCandless became the first human being to fly untethered in space when he exited the U.S. space shuttle Challenger and maneuvered freely. Robert L. Stewart joined him in the feat.

1985 - Sports Illustrated released its annual swimsuit edition.

1999 – Crown Prince Abdullah becomes the King of Jordan on the death of his father, King Hussein.

2005 - Britain's Ellen MacArthur became the fastest person to sail solo around the world.

2009 – Bushfires in Victoria left 173 dead in the worst natural disaster in Australia's history.

1795 - Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified in order to overrule the decision of the Supreme Court in Chisholm vs Georgia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleventh_Am...nstitution

1812 - Charles Dickens born in Landport, Portsea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens

1904 - The Great Baltimore Fire - Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Baltimore_Fire

1907 - More than 3000 women participate in the 'Mud March' - a procession organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_March_(Suffragists)

1945 World War II - The Black Sea Talks - plans were drawn up by London, Washington and Moscow for the final phase of the war against Germany.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...517236.stm

(07-02-2012 12:46 )skully Wrote:  1999 – Crown Prince Abdullah becomes the King of Jordan on the death of his father, King Hussein.

Mariah Carey was one of the first celebrities to comment on the death of the King of Jordan. Mariah told CNN "I`m inconsolable at the present time, I was a very good friend of Jordan, he was probably the greatest basketball player this country has ever seen, we will never see his like again".

When told by reporters that it was King Hussein of Jordan who had died and not Michael Jordan, Mariah was then led away by her security in a state of "confusion".

1587 - After 19 years imprisonment, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for treason at Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire. She had been implicated in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

1601 - Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, rebelled against Queen Elizabeth I. The revolt was quickly crushed. Essex was found guilty of treason and was beheaded on Tower Green on 25th February 1601, becoming the last person to be beheaded in the Tower of London.

1836 - The first London railway train ran from Spa Road to Deptford. There were fears that the 'great speed' of 16 miles an hour would break passengers' necks.

1855 - The 'Devil's Footprints' mysteriously appeared in southern Devon when trails of hoof-like marks appeared overnight in the snow, covering a total distance of some 40 to 100 miles. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were allegedly travelled straight over, and the footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls, as well as leading up to and exiting various drain pipes with a diameter as small as 4 inches.

1904 - The Russo-Japanese War began when Japan launched a surprise naval attack against Port Arthur, a Russian naval base in China. This followed Russia's rejection of a Japanese plan to divide Manchuria and Korea into spheres of influence.

1924 - The first execution by lethal gas in the United States took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

1952 - Princess Elizabeth formally proclaimed herself Queen and Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith.

1960 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issues an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor".

1974 – After 84 days in space, the crew of Skylab 4, the last crew to visit American space station Skylab, returns to Earth.

1983 - Shergar, the Aga Khan's Derby winner, was kidnapped from a stable in County Kildare, Ireland. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of £2 million, which was never paid. The horse was never seen again.

1983 – The Melbourne dust storm hits Australia's second largest city. The result of the worst drought on record and a day of severe weather conditions, a 320 metres (1,050 ft) deep dust cloud envelops the city, turning day to night.

1993 – General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the next day.

2001 – Disney California Adventure Park opens to the public as part of the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California.

2010 – A freak storm in the Hindukush mountains of Afghanistan triggers a series of at least 36 avalanches, burying over two miles of road, killing at least 172 people and trapping over 2,000 travellers.

1649 - The funeral of the executed King Charles I. His personal dignity during his trial and execution had won him much sympathy and he was laid to rest at Windsor rather than Westminster Abbey to avoid the possibility of public disorder at his funeral.

1801 - The Holy Roman Empire came to an end with the signing of the Peace of Luneville between Austria and France.

1895 – William G. Morgan creates a game called Mintonette, which soon comes to be referred to as volleyball.

1900 - American collegian Dwight Filley Davis challenged British tennis players to come across the Atlantic Ocean and compete against his Harvard team, which was the beginning of the Davis Cup competition.

1942 - The Normandie, thought by many to be the most elegant ocean liner ever built, burned and sank in New York Harbor during its conversion to an Allied trip transport ship.

1943 – World War II: Allied authorities declare Guadalcanal secure after Imperial Japan evacuates its remaining forces from the island, ending the Battle of Guadalcanal.

1959 – The R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, becomes operational at Plesetsk, USSR.

1964 - Seventy three million Americans tuned in to the Ed Sullivan Show to watch four youths from Liverpool (the Beatles) appear in America for the first time.

1969 – First test flight of the Boeing 747.

1994 - Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.

1995 – Space Shuttle astronauts Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and Michael Foale become the first African American and first Briton, respectively, to perform spacewalks.

1996 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army declares the end to its 18 month ceasefire and explodes a large bomb in London's Canary Wharf.

2001 - Lance Corporal Roberta Winterton became the first serving soldier to pose topless on Page Three of The Sun newspaper.

(09-02-2012 13:51 )skully Wrote:  2001 - Lance Corporal Roberta Winterton became the first serving soldier to pose topless on Page Three of The Sun newspaper.

Roberta Winterton joined the army at 16 and served in Bosnia. She hoped that her appearance on page 3 would lead to a glamorous career as a model but things didn't turn out that way.

The army were furious, as they had been promoting a campaign to show that women could serve on the front line and were not just stereotypes. Not only that, she had been refused the time off to go to the photo-shoot and so went AWOL.

This led to a court-martial and a dishorourable discharge.

After the initial publicity, Winterton found that her 15 minutes of fame was over very quickly, the hoped for modelling contracts never materialised and she was last heard of working as a postman on a council estate.

1983: British police on trail of mass murderer
Police have launched a mass murder investigation in London after discovering human remains in drains.
They are looking for a total of 16 victims who they describe as male and probably young and homeless.

Scotland Yard has confirmed the remains of three men have been found on the premises of a terraced house in Muswell Hill, north London.

A police spokesman has named one of the dead men as Stephen Neil Sinclair, 20, of no fixed address.

A man has been arrested in connection with the bodies and is expected to be charged with murder tomorrow.

Gruesome discovery

Plumber Michael Cottran alerted the police yesterday (Wednesday) after realising the 10 inch blockage he had discovered in the drain at 23 Cranley Gardens was some kind of flesh.

New occupants of the Muswell Hill address called him out the day before to investigate a smell coming from their drain.

Mr Cottran made the gruesome discovery under a manhole cover outside the house when it was too dark to identify it properly.

Pathologist Professor David Bowen examined the tissue as a team of six police officers began searching the blue and white painted house and questioning its occupants and their neighbours.

They found two human heads inside the property and took one man away for further questioning from a neighbouring house.

The investigation - headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Geoffrey Chambers - is to be extended to 195 Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, where police expect to find another 13 bodies.

The semi-detached house, in north-west London, was only converted into two flats last year - from single rooms and bedsitters - when builders described it as virtually derelict.


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The search has been extended to a second house



In Context
Civil servant Dennis Andrew Nilsen, 37, was charged with the murder of a homeless man - Stephen Sinclair - just after 1900GMT the next day.
Over the following days and weeks police recovered bones from about eight different bodies from the land around Melrose Avenue.

In spite of initially admitting to 16 murders Nilsen denied six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder in the Central Criminal Court in October.

Later in 1983 he was charged with 12 murders and sentenced to six life sentences.

He lured his victims - many of them gay - back to his flats from clubs and bars and strangled them in their sleep.


Stories From 10 Feb
1996: Docklands bomb ends IRA ceasefire
1983: British police on trail of mass murderer
1962: Russia frees US spy plane pilot
1952: India passes first test of democracy
1955: US evacuates Pacific islands
2005: Charles and Camilla to be married

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1881734.stm

Dennis Nilsen had, while in Whitemoor top security prison, written his life story. Titled "The Drowning Man", in 2001 he had sent it to a book publisher. The prison authority seized the manuscript and refused to return it to him.

Nilsen took his fight to be allowed the right to publish to the high court in London and initially he won the case. Mr Justice Elias said Nilsen, could seek a judicial review to challenge the decision not to return the manuscript to him so he could edit it. Nilsen has stated that all proceeds of the book will go to charity.

In 2002, Dennis Nilsen lost the legal battle over his planned autobiography. The High Court said the Prison Service had the right to read - and possibly censor - the manuscript before his solicitors are allowed to return it to him so he can continue working on it. His barrister Flo Krause argued the home secretary and prison authorities had no powers to vet the manuscript, currently held by his solicitors, before it was handed to him.

Ms Krause said the authorities would be breaching Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. She argued it would be irrational and a "disproportionate" action breaching his right to respect for family life, home and correspondence. It would also breach Article 10, protecting freedom of expression, argued Ms Krause.

Rejecting the challenge, Mr Justice Crane ruled that the home secretary was "fully entitled to require that the manuscript be stopped and read". Ms Krause said Nilsen, now held at Full Sutton prison, near York, could have had the book published before now, but wanted to do further work on it. She insisted he was not being underhand in any way. Nilsen says the book, called "Nilsen: History of a Drowning Man", is a serious work about his life and imprisonment. The manuscript, which he started working on in the early 1990s, was taken out by Nilsen's then solicitor in 1996 whilst he was being held at Whitemoor prison. The prison authorities said it was taken without their knowledge and authority.

Nilsen, who was given legal aid, was refused permission to appeal. An anthology of poems and tapes of music he recorded in prison were also blocked.

1306 - In front of the high altar of Greyfriars Church, Dumfries, Robert the Bruce murdered John Comyn, his leading political rival, sparking revolution in the Scottish Wars of Independence.

1567 – An explosion destroys the Kirk o' Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland. The second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, Lord Darnley is found strangled, in what many believe to be an assassination.

1763 - France ceded Canada to England under the Treaty of Paris, which ended the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years' War).

1840 - Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, both aged 20, were married in St James' Palace, London.

1863 - The fire extinguisher was patented by Alanson Crane.

1906 - Britain's first modern & largest battleship, HMS Dreadnought, was launched. It established the pattern of the turbine-powered warship, a type that dominated the world's navies for the next 35 years.

1992 - Boxer Mike Tyson was convicted in Indianapolis of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss Black America contestant.

1995 - The first Briton to walk in space was Cambridge educated Dr. Michael Foale.

1996 – The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov for the first time.

2005 – North Korea announces that it possesses nuclear weapons.

2009 – The communication satellites Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251 collide in orbit, destroying both.

660 BC – Traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

1531 – Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England.

1542 - Catherine Howard, the fifth queen consort of Henry VIII, was confined in the Tower of London to be executed three days later.

1752 – Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the United States, is opened by Benjamin Franklin.

1929 - The Lateran Treaty was signed with Italy, recognizing the independence and sovereignty of Vatican City.

1939 – A Lockheed XP-38 flies from California to New York in 7 hours 2 minutes.

1971 - Eighty-seven countries, including the UK, the United States and the USSR, sign the Seabed Treaty. It outlawed nuclear weapons on the ocean floor in international waters.

1981 – 100,000 US gallons (380 m3) of radioactive coolant leak into the containment building of TVA Sequoyah 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee, contaminating 8 workers.

1990 – Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.

1993 - Queen Elizabeth II and the Prince of Wales both volunteered to pay income tax and capital gains tax on their private income. The Queen also took over civil list payments to junior members of the royal family.

2006 - Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shoots a friend during a quail hunting trip on a southern Texas ranch.

2011 – Egyptian Revolution culminates in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to the Supreme Military Council after 18 days of protests.