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1956: Soviet troops overrun Hungary
The Soviet air force has bombed part of the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and Russian troops have poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive.
At least 1,000 Soviet tanks are reported to have entered Budapest and troops deployed throughout the country are battling with Hungarian forces for strategic positions.

The Soviet invasion is a response to the national uprising led by Prime Minister Imre Nagy, who has promised the Hungarian people independence and political freedom.

Mr Nagy's anti-Soviet policies, which include withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, have been worrying Eastern Bloc countries and Moscow has demanded his government's capitulation.

Appeal to the West

News of the attack came at 0515 local time on Radio Budapest in an urgent appeal by Mr Nagy himself for help from the West.

Despite an apparent withdrawal only last week, Soviet troops deployed outside Budapest swept back into the capital with Russian and Romanian reinforcements between 0400 and 0800 local time.

The Times newspaper reports that artillery units pounded Budapest from the surrounding hills as Soviet MIG fighters bombarded the capital from the air.

Sources say Soviet infantry units stormed the Parliament building, a key strategic and symbolic target, early this morning.

'Crushed'

Reports that Mr Nagy and other members of his cabinet were captured in the attack have not been confirmed.

But in an unscheduled newscast on Moscow radio shortly after 1200GMT, Russia claimed to have "crushed the forces of reactionary conspiracy against the Hungarian people".

Despite Moscow's claims, heavy fighting is reported to be continuing throughout the country for key installations such as railway stations and major bridges across the River Danube.

Moscow is now backing a new breakaway Hungarian government led by Janos Kadar, whose stated purpose is to destroy Mr Nagy's "counter-revolution".


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Hungarian "freedom fighters" forced back Soviet tanks and troops last week






In Context
The "de-stalinisation" process initiated by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave Soviet satellite countries like Poland and Hungary new hope of democratic freedom. This prompted mass anti-Soviet demonstrations in October 1956.
In Hungary the protests became a full-scale revolt. Ordinary Hungarians battled with Soviet troops and the hated state security police.

Thousands of political prisoners were freed and the Central Committee elected the popular Imre Nagy as prime minister. He began to dismantle the one-party state.

Encouraged by an apparent promise of help, Nagy appealed to the UN and Western governments for protection. But with the Suez crisis in full swing and no real appetite for fighting the USSR over a crisis in Eastern Europe, the West did not respond.

The Soviet military's response was swift and devastating. Some 30,000 people were killed in Budapest alone and about 200,000 Hungarians sought political asylum in the West.

Over the next five years, thousands were executed or imprisoned under Janos Kadar's puppet regime.

Nagy and others involved in the revolution were secretly tried and executed in June 1958.

Soviet troops finally withdrew from Hungary in 1991.


Stories From 4 Nov
1956: Soviet troops overrun Hungary
1995: Israeli PM shot dead
1979: Militants storm US embassy in Tehran
1980: Reagan beats Carter in landslide
1974: M62 bomber jailed for life

1862 - U.S. inventor Richard Gatling patented the machine gun.

1890 - The Prince of Wales travelled by the underground electric railway from King William Street to the Oval to mark the opening of what is now the City Branch of the Northern Line. It was the first electrified underground railway system.

1900 - Britain's first driving lessons were given, in London.

1922 - English explorers Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter discovered the Tomb of King Tutankhamen, in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt. It had been undisturbed since 1337 BC.

1946 - UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) was established, with its headquarters in Paris.

1960 – At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr. Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.

1962 – In a test of the Nike-Hercules air defense missile, Shot Dominic-Tightrope is successfully detonated 69,000 feet above Johnston Island. It would also be the last atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States.

1966 – Two-thirds of Florence, Italy is submerged as the River Arno floods; together with the contemporaneous flood of the Po River in northern Italy, this leads to 113 deaths, 30,000 made homeless, and the destruction of numerous Renaissance artworks and books.

1973 – The Netherlands experiences the first Car Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are deserted and are used only by cyclists and roller skaters.

1991: Publisher Robert Maxwell dies at sea
The body of the millionaire newspaper publisher, Robert Maxwell, has been found in the sea off the coast of Tenerife.
Mr Maxwell's body was discovered at approximately 1800 local time (1700 GMT) and flown to Gran Canaria for identification.

The publisher had been cruising in the Canary Isles aboard his luxury yacht, the Ghislaine.

He is thought to have gone overboard early this morning but was not reported missing until about 1100 local time (1000 GMT) when he failed to answer a telephone call.

Two helicopters, rescue launches and a dozen ships were then sent to the area to assist in the search.

It is not yet known how Mr Maxwell ended up overboard.

The Prime Minister, John Major, has led the tributes to Mr Maxwell, calling him a "great character".

From humble beginnings in Czechoslovakia, Robert Maxwell became one of Britain's richest men.

He enlisted in the British army during World War II and was decorated for bravery.

He subsequently worked for the Foreign Office before building his business empire.

In 1984 he achieved a long-held ambition to own a national newspaper when he bought the Daily Mirror.

Earlier this year Mr Maxwell also purchased a New York paper, the Daily News, which had been on the brink of closure.

But at the same time he was being forced to sell off companies to reduce his debts, prompting criticism of his business methods and abrasive management-style.

Dealing in shares in Mr Maxwell's Mirror Group was suspended after the news of his disappearance became public.

Mr Maxwell's sons, Kevin and Ian, have been put in charge of his businesses.


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Robert Maxwell was reported missing this morning


Mirror Group Chairman Robert Maxwell is lost at sea




In Context
After Robert Maxwell's death it emerged that the Mirror Group's debts vastly outweighed its assets and £440m was missing from the company's pension funds.
In 1996, after an eight-month trial, Kevin and Ian Maxwell and another man, Larry Trachtenberg, were cleared of conspiracy to defraud Mirror Group pensioners.

In 2001 the Department of Trade and Industry released a report into the Maxwell affair which said "primary responsibility" for the collapse of the Maxwell business empire lay with its founder.

But it added that Kevin Maxwell and some leading City financial institutions also bore a "heavy responsibility" for the company's failure.

After Robert Maxwell's death campaigners for the 30,000 Mirror Group pensioners mounted a three-year campaign for compensation.

Their funds were largely recovered thanks to a £100m government payout and a £276m out-of-court settlement with City institutions and the remnants of Robert Maxwell's media group.


Stories From 5 Nov
1952: Landslide victory for Eisenhower
1991: Publisher Robert Maxwell dies at sea
1967: Forty die in Hither Green rail crash
1984: Sandinistas claim election victory
1978: Iran's PM steps down amid riots

1605 - Guy Fawkes was arrested when around 30 barrels of gunpowder, camouflaged with coal, were discovered in the cellar under Parliament. Robert Catesby’s small band of Catholic zealots who planned to blow up James I and Parliament were only arrested after Fawkes revealed their names when tortured on the rack.

1895 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.

1909 - Woolworths opened its first British store, in Liverpool.

1935 - Parker Brothers launched the game Monopoly.

1967 – The Hither Green rail crash in the United Kingdom kills 49 people. Survivors include Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.

2000 - Emperor Haile Selassie I was given an Imperial funeral by the Ethiopian Orthodox church.

2007 – China's first lunar satellite, Chang'e 1 goes into orbit around the Moon.

2009 – US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in the largest mass shooting at a US military installation.

1429 - Henry VI was crowned King of England, seven years after acceding to the throne at the age of eight months. Two years later, in Paris, he was also crowned King of France.

1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas.

1913 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.

1932 - In general elections held in Germany, the Nazis emerged as a party.

1935 - The RAF's first monoplane fighter, the Hawker Hurricane made its maiden flight.

1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

1962 - The United Nations condemned South Africa for its Apartheid policies. The General Assembly called on all member states to terminate economic and military relations with South Africa.

1970 - Three times Grand National hero Red Rum, the greatest ever steeplechaser, won his first ever race, a novice event at Doncaster, at odds of 100/7.

1971 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.

1975 - UK punk rock group, the Sex Pistols, gave their first public performance at London's St Martin's College of Art. College authorities cut the concert short after a mere 10 minutes.

1976 - King Hassan II of Morocco launched the Green March, a mass migration in which over 300,000 unarmed Moroccans marched into the newly sovereign nation of Western Sahara to settle.

1988 - Six thousand U.S. 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.

2002 - A jury in Beverly Hills convicted actress Winona Ryder of stealing $5,500 worth of merchandise from a Saks Fifth Avenue store.

1492 – The Ensisheim Meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France.

1637 - Anne Hutchinson, the first female religious leader in the American colonies, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy. She preached that faith alone was sufficient for salvation, and therefore that individuals had no need for the church or church law.

1783 - The last public hanging in Britain took place when John Austin, a forger, was executed at Tyburn, near Marble Arch in London.

1872 – The ship Mary Celeste sails from New York, eventually to be found deserted.

1908 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are reportedly killed in San Vicente, Bolivia.

1929 – In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art opens to the public.

1967 - British heavyweight champion Henry Cooper beat challenger Billy Walker to become the only boxer to win three Lonsdale Belts outright.

1988 - Sugar Ray Leonard knocked out Canadian Donny Londe, completing his collection of world titles at five different weights.

1990 – Mary Robinson becomes the first woman to be elected President of the Republic of Ireland.

1996 - A team of British, American and Australian scientists reported evidence that life on Earth originated some 350 million years earlier than previously believed.

2000 - Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first First Lady to win public office, defeating Republican Rick Lazio for a U.S. Senate seat from New York.

A bomb has exploded during a Remembrance Day service at Enniskillen in County Fermanagh, killing 11 people.
It is the highest death toll in a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland for five years.

At least 63 people were injured in the blast, nine of them seriously.

The device went off without warning at 1045 GMT at the town's cenotaph where people had gathered to pay their respects to the war dead.

The bomb is believed to have been hidden in a nearby hall.

It blew out one of the building's walls, showering the area with debris and burying some people in several feet of rubble.

The dead included three married couples, a retired policeman and a nurse.


It's really desecrating the dead and a blot on mankind

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Thirteen children are among the injured.

The Queen has sent her "heartfelt sympathy" to the people of Enniskillen.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has said the bombing was "utterly barbaric".

"It's really desecrating the dead and a blot on mankind," Mrs Thatcher said.

The head of the Church of Ireland, Archbishop Robin Eames, who was at Enniskillen said he "wished the bombers could have seen what I have seen".

As yet no organisation has said they planted the device but the chief constable of Northern Ireland has said he has no doubt the bomb was the work of the IRA.

Enniskillen is a town with a long military tradition having sent many soldiers to the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars.

Its proximity to the border with the Irish Republic, a ready escape route, means it is an easy target for the IRA.



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The IRA has been blamed for the blast


Bomb explodes during remembrance day silence







In Context
In the aftermath of the bombing a tone of forgiveness was set by Gordon Wilson whose daughter, Marie, was killed and who was himself injured in the attack.
"I bear no ill will. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie," Mr Wilson said.

A group called Enniskillen Together was set up to further the cause of reconciliation in the area.

The IRA lost support worldwide after the bombing.

On Remembrance Day 1997 the leader of the IRA's political wing, Gerry Adams, formally apologised for the bombing.

In December 2000 the last victim of the Enniskillen bomb died.

Ronnie Hill, 68, went into a coma two days after being injured and never regained consciousness.


Stories From 8 Nov
1987: Bomb kills 11 at Enniskillen
1974: Police hunt Lord Lucan after murder
2000: Bush and Gore fight to the finish
1957: Inquiry publishes cause of nuclear fire
1990: Ireland elects first woman president

1605 – Robert Catesby, ringleader of the Gunpowder Plotters, is killed.

1745 – Charles Edward Stuart invades England with an army of ~5000 that would later participate in the Battle of Culloden.

1793 - The Louvre opened as a museum in Paris, though only part of the collection could be viewed.

1895 - William Röntgen discovered X-rays during an experiment with electricity at the University of Wurzburg.

1920 - Rupert Bear made his first appearance in the Daily Express.

1960 – John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the twentieth century to become the 35th president of the United States.

1965 - The bill abolishing the death penalty became law.

1994 - In Oregon, U.S, Measure 16, which permitted euthanasia in regulated circumstances for the terminally ill, was voted in.

1997 - Chinese engineers diverted the Yangtze River to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.

2004 – War in Iraq: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

2006 - Microsoft releases Windows Vista.

1989: Berliners celebrate the fall of the Wall
The Berlin Wall has been breached after nearly three decades keeping East and West Berliners apart.
At midnight East Germany's Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.

They surged through cheering and shouting and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side.

Ecstatic crowds immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile (45-kilometre) barrier.

It had been erected in 1961 on the orders of East Germany's former leader Walter Ulbricht stop people leaving for West Germany.

Since 1949 about 2.5 million people had fled East Germany.

After 1961, the Wall and other fortifications along the 860-mile (1,380-kilometre) border shared by East and West Germany have kept most East Germans in.

Many of those attempting to escape have been shot dead by border guards.

Exodus

The first indication that change was imminent came earlier today when East Berlin's Communist party spokesman, Gunther Schabowski, announced East Germans would be allowed to travel directly to West Germany.

The move was intended to stem an exodus into West Germany through the "back door" which began last summer when the new and more liberal regime in Hungary opened its border.

The flow of migrants was intensified last week when Czechoslovakia also granted free access to West Germany through its border.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has hailed the decision to open the Wall as "historic" and called for a meeting with East German leader, Egon Krenz.


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The Wall was built in 1961


The Berlin Wall comes down







In Context
The opening of the Berlin Wall was preceded by a series of momentous events in East Germany.
They included the removal of the country's hardline Communist leader, Erich Honecker, and the resignation of the entire cabinet.

East Germany's new leader, Egon Krenz, called for free democratic elections.

But it was not enough to turn the tide and once the Berlin Wall was breached, East Germany disintegrated.

On 3 October 1990 the two Germanys merged to form a new united country.

In 1997 Egon Krenz received a six-and-a-half year jail sentence for the manslaughter of people killed by border guards when trying to escape to the West.


Stories From 9 Nov
1985: America welcomes Charles and Diana
1960: Narrow victory for John F Kennedy
1979: Paperboy's killers convicted
1989: Berliners celebrate the fall of the Wall
1970: France mourns death of de Gaulle


http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witne...241641.stm

1494 – The Family de' Medici are expelled from Florence.

1847 - In Edinburgh, Dr James Young Simpson delivered Wilhelmina Carstairs while chloroform was administered to her mother, the first child to be born with the aid of anaesthetics.

1872 - A fire spread in windy weather, destroying nearly 800 buildings in Boston.

1888 - At 3:30 a.m. in London's Whitechapel, 25-year-old Mary Kelly became Jack the Ripper's last known victim.

1907 - The Cullinan Diamond, the largest diamond yet found, was presented by the Transvaal to King Edward VII.

1918 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.

1953 – Cambodia becomes independent from France.

1965 - The Great Northeast Blackout took place in all of New York State, portions of seven neighboring states, and parts of eastern Canada, as they were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13.5 hours.

1967 – Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

1967 – The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published.

1972 - Bones discovered by the Leakey family of anthropologists set human origins 1 million years earlier than previously determined.

1983 - Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, was kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million.

1992 - Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr Michael Stroud set out on their unassisted crossing of the Antarctic. For 97 days they fought pain, starvation and snow blindness until they were eventually airlifted out after completing the first and the longest, unsupported journey in Polar history. They walked more than 1,350 miles across some of the most hostile terrain in the world, averaging more than 14 miles a day at temperatures as low as -45°C.

1998 – Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, is completely abolished for all remaining capital offences.

2007 – The German Bundestag passes the controversial data retention bill mandating storage of citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause.