|
1st |
Lisbon
Earthquake reduced two-thirds of Lisbon to
rubble and resulted, according to accounts, in the death of 60,000 people in
1755.
|
|
2nd |
In 1871,the 'Rogues'
Gallery
was started, when photographs of all prisoners in Britain
were first taken. |
|
3rd |
Democrat
William J. Clinton
('Bill') Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, won the US
presidential election with 370 electoral college votes in 1992.
|
|
4th |
Yitzhak Rabin
prime minister of Israel, was assassinated today in
1995, attending a
peace rally in Tel Aviv, by Jewish law student Yigal Amir.
|
|
5th |
The
Gunpowder
Plot, to blow up the House of Lords during James I's
state opening of Parliament, was discovered today in 1605 |
|
6th |
In
1988, six thousand US Defense Department computers
were
crippled by a virus;
the culprit was the 23-year-old son of the head of the
country's computer security agency. |
|
7th |
Mary Celeste,
the ill-fated brigantine, sailed from New York to be
found mysteriously abandoned near the Azores some time later in 1872. |
|
8th |
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen discovered X-rays during an experiment at the
University of Wurzburg today in 1895. |
|
9th |
In 1837;
Sir
Moses Montefiore became the first Jew to be knighted in
England. |
|
10th |
Henry Morton Stanley, the Welsh adventurer who had
been sent to track down missing explorer David Livingstone, met him at Ujiji,
on Lake Tanganyika in 1871. |
|
11th |
Ned Kelly Australian outlaw in saucepans, was hung
today in 1880. |
|
12th |
King Canute (the Great), king of England and
Denmark dies today died today in 1035. |
|
13th |
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish writer of
adventure stories, was born today in 1850. |
|
14th |
Defence Secretary
Heseltine announced the arrival of the first Cruise missiles at Greenham
Common today in 1983. Full report at:
Cruise and the Common. |
|
15th |
Winston
Churchill, British politician, was captured by the Boers in 1899, while
covering the war as a reporter for the Morning Post. More at
Churchill (the Early and Journalist Years). |
|
16th |
The
Suez Canal,
which had taken
ten years to build, was formally opened today in 1869. |
|
17th |
In 1922, the
last Ottoman sultan of Turkey;
Muhammad VI, was deposed by Kemal Atatürk. |
|
18th |
William Caxton's The
Dictes or Sayinges of the Philosophres was published in 1477– the
first printed book
in England bearing a date. |
|
19th |
In
1942, the Red Army counter-attacked and surrounded the German army at
the
Battle of Stalingrad.
|
|
20th |
The British
fleet under Admiral Hawke defeated the French at the in 1759, at 'The
Battle of Quiberon Bay'
thwarting an invasion of
England.
|
|
21st |
It was 41 years
late in 1953, that the discovery of the
Piltdown Man
skull by Charles Dawson in Sussex in 1912 was finally revealed as a hoax |
|
22nd |
Edward Teach (Blackbeard)
feared and possibly insane
English navigator, later pirate was hung today 1718.
|
|
23rd |
A television
landmark today in 1963, as the first episode of the BBC TV serial
Doctor Who was broadcast, with William Hartnell as
Dr Who and Anna Ford as his female companion. |
|
24th |
In 1859; Darwin's
"Origin of Species"
was
published. Then as now, many religious fanatics believe it to be blasphemous.
|
|
25th |
The
longest-running play,
The
Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, opened in London, at
the Ambassador's Theatre 1952: |
|
26th |
Emlyn Williams,
Welsh actor and
dramatist born today in 1905. |
|
27th |
1582:
,William
Shakespeare aged 18, married Anne Hathaway |
|
28th |
1520:
Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan
sailed through the Straits at the tip of South
America and reached an ocean which he named the Pacific. |
|
29th |
1864:
Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Massacre
took place when over 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who had surrendered
and were disarmed were killed by US cavalry. |
