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1960: Lady Chatterley's Lover sold out
Bookshops all over England have sold out of Penguin's first run of the controversial novel Lady Chatterley's Lover - a total of 200,000 copies - on the first day of publication.
DH Lawrence's sexually explicit novel was published in Italy in 1928 and in Paris the following year. It has been banned in the UK - until now.

Last month, after a dramatic and much-publicised trial, Penguin won the right to publish the book in its entirety.

For those who can manage to find a copy, it is available in paperback for 3s 6d.

Rush to buy

London's largest bookstore, W&G Foyle Ltd, said its 300 copies had gone in just 15 minutes and it had taken orders for 3,000 more copies.


the shop opened this morning there were 400 people - mostly men - waiting to buy the unexpurgated version of the book.

Hatchards in Piccadilly sold out in 40 minutes and also had hundreds of orders pending.

Selfridges sold 250 copies in minutes. A spokesman told the Times newspaper, "It's bedlam here. We could have sold 10,000 copies if we had had them."

Lady C, as it has become known, has also become a bestseller in the Midlands and the North where demand has been described as "terrific".

Novel on trial

The book tells of Lady Chatterley's passionate affair with Mellors, the family gamekeeper, and details their erotic meetings.

Last year the government introduced the Obscene Publications Act that said that any book considered obscene by some but that could be shown to have "redeeming social merit" might still published.

This prompted Penguin to print off and store 200,000 copies with the aim of completing a set of works by DH Lawrence to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death this year.

Penguin sent 12 copies to the Director of Public Prosecutions challenging him to prosecute, which he duly did.

The six-day trial at the Old Bailey began on 27 October and gripped the nation.

The defence produced 35 witnesses, including bishops and leading literary figures, such as Dame Rebecca West, EM Forster and Richard Hoggart.

The prosecution was unable to make a substantial case against the novel and at one point prosecution counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones shocked the jury by asking: "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?"


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Penguin are delighted the controversial book has sold out across the country


Lady Chatterley's Lover sells out at 'high speed'




In Context
Within a year Lady Chatterley's Lover had sold two million copies, outselling even the Bible.
The famous trial of Lady Chatterley was not only a victory for Penguin but for all British publishers, as from then on it became much more difficult to prosecute on grounds of obscenity.

The likes of Mary Whitehouse and her National Viewers' and Listeners' Association founded in 1964 turned their attention to violent and sexual scenes broadcast on television and in film.




http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witne...417788.stm



The Broadcasting Standards Council was set up in 1988 to monitor taste and decency.

In 1993 the BBC dramatised Lady Chatterley's Lover in a film directed by Ken Russell although the more explicit scenes were toned down.


Stories From 10 Nov
1995: Nigeria hangs human rights activists
1997: British au pair freed after appeal
1980: Michael Foot is new Labour leader
1982: Brezhnev rumours sweep Moscow
1960: Lady Chatterley's Lover sold out

1493 - Christopher Columbus discovered Antigua during his second expedition.

1871 - Henry Morton Stanley, sent out to Africa by his newspaper to find Scottish missionary David Livingstone, finally made contact with him at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika with the immortal words, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?'.

1885 - Paul Daimler, son of German engineer Gottlieb Daimler, became the first motorcyclist when he rode his father's new invention for six miles.

1928 - Emperor Hirohito took the throne of Japan as the 124th Japanese monarch.

1951 – Direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.

1958 – The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.

1969 - Sesame Street debuted on PBS television.

1970 - The Great Wall of China, created in the third century BC, was opened to visitors.

1997 - Louise Woodward, British child-minder, was freed from jail in the United States after her conviction for murdering a baby was reduced to manslaughter. Her sentence was cut to 279 days, the exact length of time she had already spent in jail.

2010 - There were violent scenes as tens of thousands of people protested against plans to treble tuition fees and cut university funding in England. Demonstrators stormed a building in Westminster housing the Conservative Party headquarters and outside a crowd of thousands surged as placards and banners were set on fire and missiles were thrown.

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2000: Skiers die in train tunnel inferno
At least 150 people are feared to have died in an intense fire on board a funicular railway in the Austrian Alps.
Most of those who died were weekend skiers, many of them children.

The cable train was in a steep, narrow underground tunnel nearly two miles (3km) long which carries skiers up Mount Kitzsteinhorn in the ski resort of Kaprun, south of Salzburg.

It was less than half a mile (600 metres) inside the tunnel when fire broke out.

The cause is not yet known, although there has been speculation it may have been due to an electrical fault.

Tourist victims

A press spokeswoman for the Kaprun resort told journalists: "We believe German, British and Americans were among the dead, but no names or nationalities can yet be confirmed."

Just eight people escaped from the train after a German man managed to smash a rear window with a ski pole.

Because they were at the back of the train and escaped downwards, they avoided the poisonous smoke rushing upwards through the tunnel.

One of the survivors gave a harrowing account of the scene inside the train.

"People were crying and screaming in fear for their lives," he said.

"They tried to tear open the closed doors and smash the windows. I only managed to save myself in the last seconds because a window had been kicked in."

'Explosion'

Peter Johnson, an American holidaymaker waiting with his wife at the bottom of the mountain to catch the next train, described seeing a cable snap and fly up into the air a few feet away from him.

"Everyone ran away from the station, and then there was this massive explosion, like when they dynamite a mountain, or like an avalanche," he said.

Rescuers said the narrowness and steepness of the tunnel transformed it into a giant chimney, sucking in air which fuelled the flames.

Soon after the fire broke out, smoke surged into the station at the top of the tunnel with such intensity that three people waiting there were also killed.

The fire in the tunnel was so fierce that when rescuers finally reached the site only the train's twisted metal base remained.

Austrian police said it could be up to two weeks before the dead are identified.


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The fire was so intense only the train's twisted metal base remained



In Context
The death toll rose to 155, including German world champion freestyle skier Sandra Schmitt and a group of children on a ski club outing. There were 12 survivors.
More than half of the victims were Austrians; the others included 37 Germans, 8 Americans and a British man. Thirty-seven of the victims were under the age of 20.

The tragedy was blamed on a faulty heater. A report by seven experts found the heater, at the back of the train, ignited oil dripping from a system for hydraulic brakes. The fire then spread to the plastic-coated floor.

In 2004 a court in Austria acquitted 16 people charged over the fire - mainly train operators, suppliers and inspectors.

The judge in Salzburg ruled there was insufficient evidence to find them to blame for the blaze.

There was an outraged reaction to the verdict, and in September 2005 eight of the 16 went to a retrial on appeal.

Separate trials are under way in the US and Germany, where lawyers are seeking billions of dollars in compensation for relatives of the victims.

The railway was never re-opened. Instead, it was replaced by a new above-ground gondola cableway opened in December 2001.

The tragedy remains the worst-ever Alpine skiing disaster.


Stories From 11 Nov
2004: Veteran leader Yasser Arafat is dead
2000: Skiers die in train tunnel inferno
1965: Rhodesia breaks from UK
1992: Church of England votes for women priests
1975: Divided Angola gets independence
1954: Pensioners demand more money
1987: Van Gogh fetches record price

1869 – The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act is enacted in Australia, giving the government control of indigenous people's wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations.

1880 – Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol.

1918 - At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ended; a war that had lasted for 4 years and 97 days. Germany, bereft of manpower, supplies and food, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies. The war left 9 million soldiers dead and more than 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, some 6 million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

1919 - Britain introduced a two minute silence at 11:00 a.m. to remember those who died in World War I.

1921 - The British Legion held its first Poppy Day for wounded World War I veterans.

1926 – U.S. Route 66 is established.

1987 - An unidentified person bought Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Irises" from the estate of Joan Whitney Payson for $53.9 million at Sotheby's in New York.

1992 – The General Synod of the Church of England votes to allow women to become priests.

1993 - A bronze sculpture was dedicated in Washington, D.C. to the 11,500 U.S. women who served in the Vietnam War.

2006 – Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II unveils the New Zealand War Memorial in London, United Kingdom, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand Army and the British Army.

2008 – RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) sets sail on her final voyage to Dubai.

1980: Saturn's rings caught on film
The Voyager 1 space probe has reached the ringed planet, Saturn and sent back the first vivid photographs of the planet.
Scientists have been delighted and overwhelmed by the stream of data that has flooded back from the planet 950 million miles (1530 million km) away from Earth.

Voyager 1, launched in 1977, passed within 77,000 miles (124,000 km) of the clouds which surround Saturn. It was just 12 miles (19 km) off course after its epic journey.

The photographs show bands of yellow and orange clouds circling the planet at several hundred miles an hour.

Spectacular

The probe took a close look at the spectacular rings which surround Saturn, and discovered them to be more complex than Earth-based telescopes had suggested.

Scientists have counted more than 100 separate rings, instead of the six broad bands visible from Earth.

Dr Bradford Smith, leader of the Voyager photo-interpretation team, said: "The mystery of the rings, the structure and the mechanism that governs the structure, keeps getting deeper and deeper."

Voyager has already sent back data leading to some ground-breaking discoveries, including a 15th moon and a scan of Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons.

It is the only moon in the Solar System big enough to hold on to an atmosphere, mainly because of its size - it is bigger than the planet Mercury.

Scientists say Titan bears a close chemical resemblance to the Earth when life began on our planet about 4,000 million years ago.

Revolutionary

Tomorrow Voyager will continue past Saturn, visiting several of the smaller moons on the way.

Voyager 1, along with its sister craft, Voyager 2, have already sent back revolutionary new images of Saturn's sister planet, Jupiter.

The missions were only possible because of an event which occurs about every 175 years - when the outer planets of the Solar System came into an alignment which allowed a spacecraft to travel to each in turn.

The two probes are each carrying a time capsule containing images, natural sounds and music from Earth in case they should encounter extra-terrestrials during their journey into outer space.

Voyager 2, is due to reach Saturn in August next year.


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Voyager 1 took stunning pictures of Saturn and its moons (picture: Nasa)






In Context
Voyager 2 flew by Saturn in August 1981.
Nasa scientists extended the Voyager missions, sending Voyager 2 to the next planets in the Solar System - Uranus and Neptune.

The probe passed Uranus in January 1986, and Neptune in August 1989.

Voyager 1 continued towards deep space. In 1998 it became the most distant man-made object in the universe, and in 2003 reached the edge of the Solar System.

It is expected to reach the heliopause - where the sun's influence ends - in 2013.

The probes' power sources will run out in 2020, but they will carry on travelling into interstellar space. Voyager 2 is expected to pass four light years from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, about 290,000 years from now.

It is expected that both probes will outlive the Earth itself.

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, a joint project between Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, arrived at Saturn in July 2004.

It will spend four years in orbit around the planet. In January 2005, the Huygens probe landed on Titan. It sent back scientific data and extraordinary pictures of the surface.

The moon was revealed to be locked in a deep freeze, with temperatures as low as -179 degrees C, and criss-crossed by rivers of liquid methane.


Stories From 12 Nov
1982: Solidarity leader Walesa released
1984: Quid notes out - pound coins in
1954: New York's Ellis Island closes
1980: Saturn's rings caught on film
1997: 'Great Train Robber' escapes extradition again
2001: Greece holds plane-spotting 'spies'




http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_repor.../71828.stm

1847 - The first public demonstration of the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic was given by James Simpson, at the University of Edinburgh.

1912 - The remains of English explorer Robert Scott and his companions were found in Antarctica.

1918 - A day after World War I ends, Austria and Hungary were declared independent republics, and Emperor Charles I, ruler of Austria-Hungary since 1916, was forced to abdicate.

1933 - The first photograph of the ‘Loch Ness monster’ was taken by Mr Hugh Gray. He managed to take five pictures altogether but after processing, four of them were blank and the fifth was not confirmed as being Nessie.

1954 - Ellis Island closed after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in the New York Harbor in 1892.

1974 - A salmon was caught in the Thames, the first since around 1840. It was an 8lb 4 1/2oz female and she was discovered entangled in the protective nets around West Thurrock power station It was regarded by Thames Water authority as a vindication of the £100m they had spent on effluent control.

1978 – Pope John Paul II takes possession of his Cathedral Church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, as the Bishop of Rome.

1984 - It was announced, by Chancellor Nigel Lawson, that the pound note (in circulation for more than 150 years) would be phased out and replaced with the pound coin.

1971: American probe orbits Mars
The American space probe, Mariner 9, has become the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars without a hitch.
An engine burn at 2337 GMT put the craft into an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet set to take it within 800 miles (1,290 km) of the surface.

Three previous missions, Mariners 4, 6 and 7, have flown past Mars, but none has gone nearer than 2000 miles (3,200 km).

Mariner 9 is due to circle the planet twice a day for three months, sending back more than 5000 pictures covering 70% of the surface.

Dust storm

It's hoped it will map the planet's white polar caps, believed to consist of carbon dioxide, as well as provide vital clues about the possible existence of life.

However, the first photographs, taken on the approach to the planet, have been disappointing.

A vast dust storm which began on 22 September has been sending huge red clouds at high speeds across much of the planet's surface.

The setback led to a groundbreaking exercise by Nasa scientists, who had to re-program the space probe over millions of miles of space to wait until the dust storm had abated before continuing with its mission.

Geologists hoping for a closer look at the features on Mars are dismayed, but atmospheric scientists are delighted.

Dr Bradford Smith, one of the Mariner investigators, said the storm was "unprecedented", and said it was "an unusual opportunity to study a dynamic atmospheric phenomenon on Mars".

Mountains

Experts say the storm is beginning to clear, however, and already some features are visible through the gloom.

Some of the first to be released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which runs the Mariner missions, show four striking black dots rising above the mist.

Scientists say they are mountain peaks near the south polar cap.

The Soviet authorities have informed Nasa that two Russian probes, Mars 2 and Mars 3, will, as had been suspected, attempt a landing on Mars once they arrive.

The two probes have been trailing closely behind Mariner 9 on its five-month journey to the planet.

For the first time, a "hot line" has been set up between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Soviet Academy of Sciences to exchange important findings.

The Americans are due to attempt their first landing on Mars with the Viking mission in 1976.


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The first pictures showed several black dots above the storm (picture: Nasa)






In Context
It was another month before the storm died away and scientists saw the first truly clear pictures of the surface of Mars.
They showed a planet of huge seismic activity, with gigantic volcanoes over twice the height of the largest found on Earth, and a grand canyon stretching 3000 miles (4800km) across its surface - the largest in the solar system.

There were also channels which suggested that water once flowed on Mars.

Mariner 9 orbited the planet for far longer than expected. Its two television cameras returned 7329 photographs before contact ended on 27 October 1972.

The Soviet probe, Mars 2, arrived shortly before Mariner 9 and crashed due to the dust storm. Mars 3 touched down on the surface, but malfunctioned after 20 seconds.

The first successful landing on the Martian surface was carried out by Viking 1 five years later in 1976.

Another period of intense exploration of Mars began when the Mars Observer arrived in 1993.

The most successful was the Mars Odyssey in 2001, which drew up the most detailed geological map of the planet ever, transforming our knowledge of what Mars is made of.


Stories From 13 Nov
1985: Volcano kills thousands in Colombia
1995: Ecstasy pill puts party girl in coma
1971: American probe orbits Mars
1969: Quintuplets born at London hospital
1979: Times returns after year-long dispute

1093 - Malcolm III of Scotland, son of King Duncan, died at Alnwick, Northumberland, during his fifth attempt to invade England.

1835 - Texans officially proclaimed independence from Mexico and called it the Lone Star Republic.

1916 - The Battle of the Somme (World War 1) ended. By the end of the battle, the British Army had suffered 420,000 casualties including nearly 60,000 on the first day alone. The French lost 200,000 men and the Germans nearly 500,000. The battle epitomised the futility of trench warfare and the indiscriminate slaughter of so many men.

1947 – Russia completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles

1969 - Britain's first live quintuplets this century were born at Queen Charlotte's maternity hospital in London.

1970 - A 20-foot tidal wave and a cyclone struck East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and washed over 100 islands near the coast.

1985 – The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupts and melts a glacier, causing a lahar (volcanic mudslide) that buries Armero, Colombia, killing approximately 23,000 people.

1994 – In a referendum voters in Sweden decide to join the European Union.

2001 - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban relinquished the capital of Kabul without a fight, allowing the U.S.-backed northern alliance to take over the city.

1973: IRA gang convicted of London bombings
Six men and two women have been convicted of exploding two IRA car bombs in London in March this year.
All eight were active members of the Provisional IRA.

A ninth defendant, 18-year-old Roisin McNearney, was acquitted.

One person died and almost 200 were injured in the two bombs. One blew up outside the Old Bailey criminal court, while the other went off outside Scotland Yard.

Strict security

The 10-week trial at Winchester Crown Court has seen some of the strictest security precautions in British legal history.

The court was heavily guarded throughout, and as the verdict was delivered, four rows of plain-clothes detectives sat bethind the dock and at least 15 prison officers surrounded the defendants. All doors to the court were bolted.

First, the jury returned a not-guilty verdict on Roisin McNearney, a known IRA activist who is believed to have helped the police identify the other conspirators.

As her verdict was handed down, the other defendants began to hum the Dead March from Saul, and one threw a coin at her, shouting "Take your blood money with you" as she left the dock in tears.

A number of threats have already been made to members of her family and she has said she is unlikely ever to be able to return to her native Belfast.

'Murderous enterprises'

As the eight guilty defendants were led to the cells below the court several gave clenched fist salutes to relatives and friends in the public gallery, who shouted "Keep your chins up" and "All the best".

The judge then addressed Miss McNearney, saying, "You have learned a bitter lesson and I hope it has taught you and others like you not to dabble in murderous enterprises."

He then ordered that she be given police protection.

The two women defendants, Dolours and Marian Price, were believed to have played the most important role in the conspiracy, along with a third defendant, Hugh Feeney. All three were student teachers in Belfast.

The other conspirators were Gerald Kelly, 19; Robert Walsh, 24; Martin Brady, 22; William Armstrong, 29, and Paul Holmes, 19, all from Belfast.

A tenth person, William McLarnon, 19, left the dock on the first day of the trial after pleading guilty to all charges.


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Gerry Kelly, 19, was one of eight known IRA members to be convicted






In Context
The eight conspirators were jailed for life, and almost immediately began a hunger strike, demanding to be transferred to prisons in Ireland.
The four ringleaders - the Price sisters, Gerry Kelly and Hugh Feeney - continued their strike for several months, force-fed by prison authorities. They were finally transferred to Irish jails in 1975.

Marian and Dolours Price were released from jail early on medical grounds, both suffering from anorexia nervosa.

Marian Price now chairs the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association and is active in the political wing of the Real IRA, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement.

Dolours Price married Protestant Republican actor Stephen Rea.

Gerry Kelly escaped from the Maze Prison in 1983, but was recaptured in 1986.

He was a member of Sinn Fein's negotiating team for the Good Friday Agreement, and also served as a Sinn Fein Assembly Member for North Belfast in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Hugh Feeney spent time in America working for the Irish Republican Movement after his release from prison.

Roisin McNearney was given a new identity so that she could not be traced.


Stories From 14 Nov
1991: US accuses Libyans of Lockerbie bombing
1973: IRA gang convicted of London bombings
1977: Firefighters strike over pay claim
1973: Crowds cheer marriage of Princess Anne
2000: Fuel protesters rally for tax cut



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1770 - James Bruce, Scottish traveller and travel writer, discovered what he believed to be the source of the Blue Nile. Bruce admitted that the White Nile was the larger stream but that the Blue Nile was the Nile of the ancients and thus he was the discoverer of its source.

1851 - Herman elton's novel Moby Dick was first published in the United States.

1889 - Newspaper reporter Nellie Bly set off to attempt to break Jules Verne's imaginary hero Phileas Fogg's record of voyaging around the world in 80 days. She beat the record, needing just over 72 days for the trip.

1911 - George V and Queen Mary landed at Gibraltar, the first time a reigning British monarch had visited a British Commonwealth country.

1940 - In one raid, 449 German Luftwaffe bombers dropped 503 tons of bombs and 881 incendiaries onto the City of Coventry, killing over 500 civilians and destroying the medieval cathedral.

1969 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon.

1973 – In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey.

1991 – American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.

2002 – Argentina defaults on an $805 million World Bank payment.