The UK Babe Channels Forum

1863 - The world’s first heavyweight boxing championship took place at Wadhurst, Kent, between Tom King (England) and John C Heenan (US). The fight lasted for 24 rounds and King was the champion.

1864 - The Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon at Bristol, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was opened.

1941 - The US, Britain and Australia declared war on Japan following the Pearl Harbour attack the previous day. The attack sank 9 ships of the American fleet and 21 ships were severely damaged. The overall death toll reached 2,403, including 68 civilians. Of the military personnel lost at Pearl Harbour, 1,177 were from the American battleship Arizona.

1965 - The new Race Relations Act came into force making racial discrimination unlawful in public places.

1995 - Head teacher Philip Lawrence, aged 48, died after being stabbed outside his west London school while protecting a pupil who was being assaulted.

2004 – Dimebag Darrell, guitarist for Pantera and Damageplan is shot and killed at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio by paranoid schizophrenic Nathan Gale.

1783 - The first executions took place at Newgate Prison. Prior to this, public executions were carried out at Tyburn gallows, which involved carting the prisoners from Newgate Prison through the crowded streets.

1884 - Ball-bearing roller skates were patented by Levant M. Richardson.

1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.

1950 – Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union.

1960 - The first episode of Coronation Street was screened on ITV. The show is the world's longest-running television soap opera.

1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.

1992 - Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation.

1997 - There were problems for Richard Branson in his attempt to fly around the world in a hot-air balloon when the envelope (the balloon section) of his Virgin Global Challenger broke loose from the gondola and flew off on its own from Marrakech, Morocco.

(09-12-2011 13:50 )skully Wrote: [ -> ]1950 – Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union.

Klaus Fuchs fled Nazi Germany and did his PhD at Bristol University. He was interred for a while as an enemy alien when war broke out but was released andr recruited to work on "tube alloys" - the top secret codename for the British atom bomb project - before moving to the US in 1943. Fuchs previous membership of the German Communist Party was well known, but seems to have escaped the notice of those responsible for the security of one of the most secret projects of all time. The Soviet Union was classed as a "friendly nation" and when his espionage was discovered he was tried in the UK as a British Citizen and sentenced to the maximum penalty for passing secrets to a "friend" which under British law was 14 years. He was paroled in 1959, emigrated to East Germany and married an old student friend. He died in Dresden in 1988.

As an American tried in the US, Harry Gold was not so lucky. Under interrogation, Gold admitted that he had been involved in espionage since 1934 and had helped Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union by way of Soviet General Consul Anatoli Yakovlev. Gold's confession led to the arrest of David Greenglass. His testimony resulted in the arrest, trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, though in later trials he was revealed to be a somewhat unreliable witness.

Gold was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment and if not for his confession and co-operation might well have gone to the electric chair along with the Rosenbergs. He was paroled in May 1965, after serving just over half of his sentence and died in 1972 in Philadelphia.

1541 - Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were executed for having affairs with Catherine Howard, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII.

1719 - The first recorded sighting of the Aurora Borealis took place in New England.

1845 - The Scottish civil engineer, Robert Thompson, patented pneumatic tyres. He was one of Scotland’s most prolific, but now largely forgotten, inventors.

1868 - The first traffic lights were installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they used semaphore arms and were illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.

1884 – Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time.

1907 - Author Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was the first time it had been bestowed on an English writer.

1948 – The UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1968 – Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", is carried out in Tokyo.

1979 - Twenty year old stuntman Eddie Kidd accomplished a "death-defying" motorcycle leap when he crossed an 80ft gap over a 50ft sheer drop above a viaduct at Maldon, Essex. He jumped the Great Wall of China in 1993, but his career ended after he suffered serious head injuries in 1996 at a Hell's Angels rally in Warwickshire.

1282 – Llywelyn the Last, the last native Prince of Wales, is killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, south Wales.

1688 - James II was forced to abdicate after William of Orange had landed in England on 5th November.

1914 - The Royal Flying Corps, which later became the RAF, adopted the red, white and blue roundel to identify its aircraft more easily during World War I.

1936 - After ruling for less than one year, Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne. Edward planned to marry divorcee Mrs. Wallis Simpson and, before he left for France, he made a final radio broadcast to the nation.

1967 - The Concorde, created by the British and French and the world's first supersonic airliner, was unveiled in Toulouse, France.

1972 – Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon.

1987 - Charlie Chaplin’s famous cane and bowler were sold at Christie’s in London. His cane went for £82,500 and his boots for £38,500.

2005 – The Buncefield Oil Depot catches fire in Hemel Hempstead, England.

2008 – Bernard Madoff is arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

1941: Germany and Italy declare war on US
Germany and Italy have announced they are at war with the United States. America immediately responded by declaring war on the two Axis powers.
Three days ago, US President Franklin Roosevelt announced America was at war with Japan, the third Axis power, following the surprise attack on its naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Today Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, made his declaration first - from the balcony over the Piazza Venezia in Rome - pledging the "powers of the pact of steel" were determined to win.

Then Adolf Hitler made his announcement at the Reichstag in Berlin saying he had tried to avoid direct conflict with the US but, under the Tripartite Agreement signed on 27 September 1940, Germany was obliged to join with Italy to defend its ally Japan.

"After victory has been achieved," he said. "Germany, Italy and Japan will continue in closest co-operation with a view to establishing a new and just order."

He accused President Roosevelt of waging a campaign against Germany since 1937, blamed him for the outbreak of war in 1939 and said he was planning to invade Germany in 1943.

Over in Washington, President Roosevelt told Congress the free world must act quickly and decisively against the enemy.

"The forces endeavouring to enslave the entire world now are moving towards this hemisphere.

"Delay invites danger. Rapid and united efforts by all peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will ensure world victory for the forces of justice and righteousness over the forces of savagery and barbarism."

Resolutions against Germany and Italy were passed without debate. The only person who did not vote for war was pacifist Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin who had also voted against war with Japan.

In the Senate the vote was unanimous.

Both Democrats and Republicans have agreed to "adjourn politics" for the duration of the war and focus on national defence.

They have passed a new law which allows US servicemen to fight anywhere in the world.

Following the shock of Pearl Harbor, American citizens are flocking to volunteer for the US Navy and Marine Corps which do not take conscripts.

The US Army has already grown tenfold since the draft was introduced last year.


E-mail this story to a friend




Watch/Listen

President Roosevelt announced the US is at war with the Axis Powers


Roosevelt's declaration of war re-read by Irving Swanson







In Context
Ten days later, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington for the so-called Arcadia conference which resulted in the decision to pool British and US resources and develop a strategic policy that would win the war for the Allies.
They also agreed to dispatch US troops to Northern Ireland and Iceland, and finalised the United Nations Declaration which was issued on 1 January 1942.

In retrospect Hitler's decision to declare war on a major world power such as the US seems like a major strategic error.

But he could no longer ignore the amount of economic and military aid America was giving the UK and the Soviet Union via the lend-lease programme.

The German Navy had even fought US warships protecting British supply ships in the Atlantic. The US destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine U-562 on 31 October 1941.

Hitler had been hostile to the USA since the early 1930s. He saw USA as an ideological enemy , racially mixed and therefore inferior.

He also assumed America would be busy fighting Japan while Germany concentrated on taking over the USSR. He would then tackle the British and Americans.


Stories From 11 Dec
1941: Germany and Italy declare war on US
1994: Russian troops storm into Chechnya
2005: Massive fire at Buncefield oil depot
1979: Rhodesia reverts to British rule
1975: Attack on British vessels heightens Cod War
2001: 30,000 postal jobs 'to be cut'
1986: BBC Aids slogan angers church



http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/categ...ndex.shtml

(11-12-2011 14:33 )bombshell Wrote: [ -> ]1975: Attack on British vessels heightens Cod War

Aah the cod war, a war that claimed many lives.

1896 - Marconi gave the first public demonstration of radio at Toynbee Hall, London.

1899 - The golf tee was patented by George F. Grant of Boston.

1901 - Marconi carried out the first transatlantic radio transmission from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St John’s, Newfoundland, a distance of 1800 miles.

1911 – Delhi replaces Calcutta as the capital of India.

1913 - The Mona Lisa, stolen in 1911 from the Louvre in Paris, was recovered in Florence, Italy.

1948 - Britain introduced National Service for all men aged between 18 and 26. It extended the British conscription of World War II into peacetime.

1955 - Christopher Cockerell patented his prototype of the hovercraft. He had tested his theories using a hair-dryer and tin cans and found his work to have potential, but the idea took some years to develop.

1972: New offer for Thalidomide victims
More than 300 British Thalidomide victims are being offered a new compensation deal said to be worth £11.85m, over 10 years.
The pharmaceutical branch of the Distillers' Company is proposing to set up a trust fund with an initial deposit of £5m for the 340 children born with physical deformities.

The deal by the large drinks company means its offer of £5m compensation, which was made last month, would not be increased.

Instead, it proposes that sum could be more than doubled if placed in a trust at a rate of £500,000 per year over 10 years for children born with physical disabilities caused by the drug taken during pregnancy.

Charitable trust

Distillers' has made the offer on condition the government passes legislation granting the 10-year fund the same taxation status as a charitable trust.

A statement said: "Unless the government agree to the taxation conditions which the company seeks the offer shall lapse."

It has led to accusations the difference between the £5m deposited and the £11.85m which will become available will be met by the tax payer.

It is not yet known if families of the victims will welcome the decision.

But pressure has been growing for a settlement to be reached and end the ongoing battle which has been discussed for 10 years.

The drug became notorious in the 1960s when it was prescribed to pregnant women to ease morning sickness.

It was later found to cause severe birth defects by limiting the blood flow to developing limbs.

Many children across the world were born limbless or with severely shortened limbs.

Last month, the government announced it was making £3m of public money available for the benefit of congenitally disabled children, including those sufferings the after-effects of the thalidomide drug.

But this was criticised by charity groups as being too low to make a real difference to victims' lives.


E-mail this story to a friend





The drug was used for morning sickness



In Context
Families rejected the offer and called for the Distillers' Company to provide another £3.4m to bring its "increased" offer of almost £12m up to £20m, if the government agreed to the tax concession.
Jack Ashley, the Labour MP who led the parliamentary campaign at the time for the children suffering with deformities from Thalidomide, said the company was acting "as a Scrooge in the guise of Santa Claus".

The company came under a great deal of pressure from its own shareholders and workers to offer more money to the victims.

A year later the 11-year battle over Thalidomide compensation ended with a £20 million court settlement.


Stories From 13 Dec
1995: Riots break out in Brixton
2001: Suicide attack on Indian parliament
1981: Military crackdown on Polish people
1972: New offer for Thalidomide victims
1958: Monkey lost after space flight



http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...566217.stm

1577 - Francis Drake set sail from Plymouth with his flagship Pelican, plus 4 other ships and 160 men, on an expedition to the Pacific. His other ships were lost or returned home shortly after the voyage began but the Pelican, renamed the Golden Hind, pushed on alone up the coast of Chile and Peru. Continuing northwards, the California coast was claimed in the name of Queen Elizabeth. He crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and eventually returned to Plymouth on September 26th 1580 with treasure worth £500,000. He became the first Englishmen to sail around the world and the Queen knighted him aboard his ship at Deptford, on the river Thames.

1903 - Molds for ice cream cones were patented by Italo Marcione of New York.

1904 - The first electric train came into service on London's Metropolitan Railway.

1960 – While Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia visits Brazil, his Imperial Bodyguard seizes the capital and proclaim him deposed and his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Emperor.

1973 - Great Britain cut the work week to three days to save energy.

1991 - North Korea and South Korea signed a treaty of reconciliation and nonaggression, formally ending the Korean War 38 years after fighting ceased in 1953.

2002 – Enlargement of the European Union: The European Union announces that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia will become members from May 1, 2004.

2003 - A tip led U.S. soldiers to a farm outside Tikrit, Iraq, where they found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole and arrest him; the capture is announced to the world the following day.

2006 – The Baiji, or Chinese River Dolphin, is announced as extinct.