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1940: Germans bomb Coventry to destruction
The German Luftwaffe has bombed Coventry in a massive raid which lasted more than 10 hours and left much of the city devastated.
Relays of enemy aircraft dropped bombs indiscriminately. One of the many buildings hit included the 14th century cathedral, which was all but destroyed.

Initial reports suggest the number of casualties is about 1,000. Intensive anti-aircraft fire kept the raiders at a great height from which accurate bombing was impossible.

Reports say 4,330 homes were destroyed and three-quarters of the city's factories damaged.


The whole city was ringed with leaping flames, bathed in brilliant moonlight and a few searchlights were sweeping the smoke-filled sky.

People's War memories »

Other targets included two hospitals, two churches, hotels, clubs, cinemas, public-shelters, public swimming baths, a police station and a post office.

According to one report, some 500 enemy aircraft took part in the raid. Wave upon wave of bombers scattered their lethal payloads over the city. The night sky, already lit by a brilliant moon, was further illuminated by flares and incendiary bombs.

The German High Command has issued a communiqué describing the attack on Coventry as a reprisal for the British attack on Munich - the birthplace of the Nazi party.

The message continued: "Particularly heavy was the attack on Coventry, where numerous engine works and aero accessory factories as well as other targets of military importance were attacked with bombs of heaviest calibre, causing extensive damage."

The German Official News Agency described the raid on Coventry as "the most severe in the whole history of the war".

The bombing began at 1920 and did not cease until dawn. The all-clear was finally sounded at 0615 GMT.

The city's tram system was destroyed. Nearly all gas and water pipes were smashed and people have been advised to boil emergency supplies of water.

The cathedral Provost, the Very Reverend Dick Howard and a party of helpers attempted to deal with 12 incendiary bombs by smothering them with sand. But another shower of incendiaries accompanied by high explosives forced them to give up their efforts.

Mr Howard said: "The cathedral will rise again, will be rebuilt, and it will be as great a pride to future generations as it has been to generations of the past."

Troops have been drafted in to help clear up the streets. Rescuers have also been working to free those who lay buried in the rubble, often in the remains of their own homes.

Home Secretary Herbert Morrison was on the scene within hours of the all-clear. He met the mayor and other local officials and afterwards paid tribute to the work of the National Service units of the city, who had "stood up to their duty magnificently".


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Only the skeleton of the city's cathedral was left standing after the bombing






In Context
Two days later King George VI visited Coventry to see for himself the devastation caused by the German bombers.
There was a mass burial on 20 November and as further bodies were uncovered from the rubble another mass burial took place the following week.

Of the 500 enemy aircraft despatched to Coventry only 449 reached the city. This was by far the heaviest bombing raid on Coventry. Figures for the number killed on the night of 14 November vary between 380 and 554 people killed and several hundred injured.

The destruction of the city hastened rebuilding plans which included Europe's first pedestrian precinct. A further £50m refurbishment project was completed in December 2003.

A new cathedral was built after architect Basil Spence won a competition for its design. It was consecrated on 25 May 1962 and now stands alongside the skeleton of the war-damaged ruin.


Stories From 15 Nov
1940: Germans bomb Coventry to destruction
1985: Anglo-Irish agreement signed
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1951: Murder on Malay rubber estate
1977: Princess Anne gives birth to Master Phillips



http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/bri...z_01.shtml

1577 - English explorer and navigator Sir Francis Drake began his voyage to sail around the world.

1859 – The first modern revival of the Olympic Games takes place in Athens, Greece.

1889 – Brazil is declared a republic by Marechal Deodoro da Fonseca and Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.

1899 - Winston Churchill was captured by the Boers while covering the war as a reporter for the Morning Post. He escaped a few weeks later.

1966 – Gemini program: Gemini 12 completes the program's final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.

1968 - The liner Queen Elizabeth completed her final passenger voyage when she landed at Southampton.

1971 – Intel releases world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.

1997 - The all-female English pop group the Spice Girls released the album Spiceworld.

2007 – Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5000 people and destroyed the world's largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans.

1979: Blunt revealed as 'fourth man'
The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, has named Sir Anthony Blunt, a former security service officer and personal adviser on art to the Queen as the "fourth man" in the Cambridge spy ring.
The announcement - given in a written answer in the Commons - ends a 15-year cover-up.

Mrs Thatcher revealed he had confessed to the authorities in 1964 but under a secret deal was granted immunity from prosecution.

Minutes after the Prime Minister's statement Buckingham Palace said he was being stripped of his knighthood.

The news comes after renewed speculation about Professor Blunt's role in the defection in 1951 of spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, prompted by a new book The Climate of Treason.

In hiding



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_repor...444058.stm


Professor Blunt has gone into hiding. He is believed to have fled the country and gone to somewhere in southern Europe.

Ministers admitted the professor's lawyer had been warned in advance about the prime minister's statement - although he was not told exactly what it would say.

He had been part of a Cambridge spy ring made up of Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Harold "Kim" Philby - who was in charge of British intelligence's anti-communist counter-espionage from 1944-46.

Burgess and Maclean defected in 1951 following a tip-off from Philby. He defected himself in 1963.

Professor Blunt became a Marxist under the influence of his Cambridge friend Guy Burgess.

In World War II he served as an officer in MI5 between 1940 and 1945. The authorities were aware of his Marxist views but did not consider him to be a security risk.

Professor Blunt's name emerged during investigations into the defection of Burgess and Maclean. He was interviewed 11 times but did not confess.

In 1964 new information came to light which implicated Blunt in the Cambridge spy ring. The Attorney General decided the only way to get to the truth of the affair was to persuade Blunt to confess by offering him immunity from prosecution.

He admitted he had become an agent of Russian intelligence and talent-spotted for them at Cambridge in the 1930s.

While with MI5 he used his old contacts in the Russian intelligence service to assist in the arrangements for Burgess and Macleans' defection.

During this time Blunt was allowed to remain art adviser to the Queen. The security services did not want to risk losing his co-operation by forcing him to resign.

Andrew Boyle, author of the book The Climate of Treason, published ten days ago, said he had known Professor Blunt was the fourth man for three years.


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Anthony Blunt was art adviser to the Queen until he retired in 1972


Anthony Blunt:"I acted according to my conscience"







In Context
The following day it was revealed Professor Blunt had not left Britain - as widely reported at the time - although he had gone into hiding.
A friend and former student of the spy, Brian Sewell, told the media Professor Blunt was "appalled" by Mrs Thatcher's statement.

Professor Blunt made his own statement to the media on 20 November in which he claimed the decision to grant him immunity from prosecution was taken by the then prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

He said he had come to "bitterly regret" his spying activities, but, at the time, he had done so out of idealism.

He died in disgrace three years later.

It is thought some former colleagues from MI5 were angry that he continued to enjoy such a privileged life despite his treachery and they set out to expose him.

They leaked details of his spying career to the author Andrew Boyle who then wrote a book, in which Professor Blunt's character was thinly disguised as someone called Maurice.

Rumour persisted about a "fifth man" in the ring. He was named in 1990 by a KGB defector as John Cairncross.


Stories From 16 Nov
1983: England fans rampage in Luxembourg
1979: Blunt revealed as 'fourth man'
1976: Bank robbers jailed for 100 years
1960: TV star famed for rudeness dies
1995: Queen mum hip op 'successful'

1532 - The fall of the Inca Empire: Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Inca Emperor Atahualpa.

1824 - Australian explorer Hamilton Hume discovered the Murray River, the longest river in Australia.

1848 - Frederic Chopin gave his last public performance at London’s Guildhall. He played on, despite illness and an uninterested audience who spent most of the evening in the refreshment areas.

1907 – Cunard Line's RMS Mauretania, sister ship of RMS Lusitania, sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.

1938 – LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.

1940 – World War II: in response to the leveling of Coventry, England by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe two days before, the Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg.

1945 – UNESCO is founded.

1976 - Seven men who took part in an £8m bank robbery raid at the Bank of America in Mayfair, London, received jail terms totalling nearly 100 years. Only £1/2m was recovered. The judge said the sentence ensured that the thieves would not enjoy the fruits of their haul.

2010 – Prince William and the Kate Middleton announced their engagement at Clarence House.

1558 - Elizabeth I ascended the English throne upon the death of Queen Mary I at 42, thus beginning the Elizabethan Age.

1603 - The trial of Sir Walter Raleigh began. Falsely accused of treason, he had been offered a large sum of money by Lord Cobham, a critic of England’s King James I, to make peace with the Spanish and put Arabella Stuart, James’s cousin, on the throne. Raleigh claimed he turned down the offer, but Lord Cobham told his accusers that Raleigh was involved in the plot.

1820 – Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica (the Palmer Peninsula is later named after him).

1839 - Italy's Giuseppe Verdi debuted his first opera, Oberto.

1855 – David Livingstone becomes the first European to see the Victoria Falls in what is now present-day Zambia-Zimbabwe.

1882 - The Royal Astronomer witnessed an unidentified flying object from the Greenwich Observatory. He described it as a circular object, glowing bright green.

1945 - H.J Wilson of the RAF set a New world air speed record 606 mph.

1947 – American scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain observe the basic principles of the transistor, a key element for the electronics revolution of the 20th Century.

1970 – Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.

1997 – In Luxor, Egypt, 62 people are killed by 6 Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut, known as Luxor massacre (The police then kill the assailants).

2003 - Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as the 38th governor of California.

1307 – William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head.

1477 - William Caxton set Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers, the first book to be printed in England. Caxton went on to print almost 100 books in England, including the Canterbury Tales.

1626 – St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.

1916 - General Douglas Haig called off the first Battle of the Somme in Europe after five months of futile battle, which included the first use of tanks. The Allied advance of just 125 square miles claimed 420,000 British and 195,000 French casualties. German losses were over 650,000.

1926 – George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize".

1928 - The first animated talking picture, Steamboat Willie, starring Mickey Mouse, was screened in the U.S. Today is also considered Mickey Mouse's birthday.

1963 – The first push-button telephone goes into service.

1987 - The worst fire in the history of the London Underground killed 30 people. The blaze began in the machinery below a wooden escalator in King’s Cross Underground station and soon filled the tunnels with dense, choking smoke and intense heat.

1991 - Church envoy Terry Waite was freed by the Islamic extremists who kidnapped him in Beirut in 1987.1991 - The Shi'ite Muslim faction Islamic Jihad freed Church of England envoy Terry Waite and U.S. university professor Thomas Sutherland.

1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).

1620 - The ship Mayflower arrived at Cape Cod, America. Its 87 passengers were members of a Protestant sect, known as The Pilgrim Fathers.

1881 – A meteorite lands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.

1930 – Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow commit their first robbery, the first in a long series of robberies and other criminal acts.

1947 – George VI of the United Kingdom creates Philip Mountbatten the Duke of Edinburgh in preparation for his wedding to George's elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the next day.

1949 - Monaco held a coronation for its new ruler, Prince Rainier III, the 30th monarch of Monaco.

1960 - The first VTOL (vertical take off and landing) aircraft made by the British Hawker Siddeley Company was flown for the first time.

1969 - U.S. astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr. and Alan Bean became the third and fourth humans to walk on the surface of the Moon after their landing module, Intrepid, touched down as part of the Apollo 12 mission.

1969 – Football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.

1987 - A 1931 Bugatti Royale was sold for £5.5 million at an auction at the Royal Albert Hall, a record at that time for a car.

1990 – Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It's True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.

1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.

1996 - A fire broke out in the Channel Tunnel, injuring 34 people and interrupting rail services.

1998 – Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for $71.5 million USD.

1906 - Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce formed Rolls-Royce.

1944 - World War II: The end of the 'blackout' in London. After five years in the dark, the lights were switched back on in Piccadilly Circus, the Strand and in Fleet Street.

1945 – Nuremberg Trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg.

1947 - Princess Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth II) married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten (Duke of Edinburgh) at Westminster Abbey. The BBC made the first tele-recording of the event, which was broadcast in the US 32 hours later.

1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.

1970 - The ten-shilling note (50p) was officially withdrawn by the Bank of England.

1992 – In England, a fire breaks out in Windsor Castle, badly damaging the castle and causing over £50 million worth of damage.

164 BC – Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.

1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

1905 – Albert Einstein's paper, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?, is published in the journal "Annalen der Physik". This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc².

1936 - The world's first gardening programme, 'In Your Garden, with Mr. Middleton', was broadcast by the BBC.

1953 – The British Natural History Museum announces that the "Piltdown Man" skull, initially believed to be one of the most important fossilized hominid skulls ever found, is a hoax.

1958 - Work began on the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland. It was the longest suspension bridge outside the United States and the fourth-largest in the world at the time of its construction. It was awarded Historic Scotland's Category A, listed structure status in 2001.

1980 - Approximately 83 million people tuned in to find out who shot J.R. on the TV show Dallas.

1980 – A deadly fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada (now Bally's Las Vegas). 87 people are killed and more than 650 are injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.

2003 - An acoustic guitar on which the late Beatle George Harrison learned to play, fetched £276,000 at a London auction.

1718 – Off the coast of North Carolina, British pirate Edward Teach (best known as Blackbeard) is killed in battle with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

1869 – In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched – one of the last clippers ever built, and the only one still surviving today.

1906 - The SOS distress signal was adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention.

1935 – The China Clipper, the first transpacific mail and passenger service, takes off from Alameda, California for its first commercial flight. It reaches its destination, Manila, a week later.

1946 - The first Biro ballpoint pen went on sale, invented by Hungarian Laszlo Biro and manufactured by a British company.

1963 – In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is later captured and charged with the murder of both the President and police officer J. D. Tippit. Oswald is shot two days later by Jack Ruby while in police custody.

1977 - British Airways inaugurates a regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service, when he world's first supersonic airliner, was given permission to fly into New York's Kennedy Airport following an agreement over noise levels.

1986 – Mike Tyson defeats Trevor Berbick to become youngest Heavyweight champion in boxing history.

1988 – In Palmdale, California, the first prototype B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is revealed.

1997 - Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of Australian rock band INXS and partner of British television star Paula Yates, was found dead in a hotel in Sydney.