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1866 - Mary Baker Eddy miraculously cures her injuries by opening a bible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Baker_Eddy

1968 - Immigrants continue to flee Kenya for Britain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...738629.stm

1973 - International inspection teams continue to monitor the Vietnam truce agreed between the major parties in Paris.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...528261.stm

1976 - Opening ceremony of the 12th Winter Olympics takes place in Innsbruck, Austria.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Winter_Olympics

1953: Sweet rationing ends in Britain
Children all over Britain have been emptying out their piggy-banks and heading straight for the nearest sweet-shop as the first unrationed sweets went on sale today.
Toffee apples were the biggest sellers, with sticks of nougat and liquorice strips also disappearing fast.

One firm in Clapham Common gave 800 children 150lbs of lollipops during their midday break from school; and a London factory opened its doors to hand out free sweets to all comers.

Adults joined in the sugar frenzy, with men in the City queuing up in their lunch breaks to buy boiled sweets and to enjoy the luxury of being able to buy 2lb boxes of chocolates to take home for the weekend.

Stocks 'sufficient'

The government and manufacturers have been quick to reassure the public that there would be no repeat of the first attempt to de-ration sweets, in April 1949, when demand far outstripped supply and they were put back on ration after just four months.

This time, the Minister of Food, Major Gwilym Lloyd-George, has told the House of Commons that he has no doubt that stocks are sufficient. He has ordered a one-off allocation of extra sugar to manufacturers to help them meet the anticipated surge in demand.

Sugar still rationed

Sugar itself, though, still remains rationed, and manufacturers say the Ministry of Food should have freed sugar supplies as well as those of sweets and chocolate.

As it is, they will have to make enough sweets to meet the demand of a de-rationed market, but with only 54% of the sugar supplies they had before the war.

However, overall the industry gave a warm welcome to the news. "We are very glad about it," said a spokesman for the Cocoa, Chocolate and Confectionery Alliance. "We will do all we can to make it work."

So far, despite the heavy sales, there have been no signs of panic buying, even though there are already shortages of the most popular brands.

One reason may be that the price of confectionery has nearly doubled during the war, and many have not been taking up their full 6oz ration.

Sweet coupons, though, will be with us for some time yet: it takes so long to print all 50m ration books that next year's have been designed already, sweet ration and all.


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Watch/Listen

Some companies are giving out free sweets to children to mark the occasion


Children celebrate the end of sweet rationing (mute)




In Context
Rationing came into force on 8 January 1940, a few months after the start of World War II.
All sorts of essential and non-essential foods were rationed, as well as clothing, furniture and petrol. Rationing of sweets and chocolate began on 26 July 1942.

The process of de-rationing began in 1948, but made slow progress until 1953. Then Food Minister Gwilym Lloyd-George made it a priority for his department.

As well as sweets, he took eggs, cream, butter, cheese, margarine and cooking fats off the ration books.

He de-rationed sugar in September 1953, partly as a result of pressure from sweet manufacturers, and finally ended rationing when meat was taken off the ration books in July1954.

The de-rationing of sweets had a dramatic effect on the confectionery market. Spending on sweets and chocolate jumped by about £100m in the first year to £250m - a year which, according to the confectionery industry, was "as dynamic as any in the industry's history".

Consumers in the UK now spend in excess of £5.5bn on confectionery each year.


Stories From 5 Feb
1994: Market massacre in Sarajevo
1996: First GM food goes on sale in UK
1974: Newspaper heiress kidnapped
1968: Trawler sinks - 18 feared dead
1982: Laker Airways goes bust
1953: Sweet rationing ends in Britain

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhist..._shopping/

1631 - The founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and his wife arrived in Boston from England. Williams edited the first dictionary of Native American languages.

1782 – The Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca.

1811 - The Regency Act was passed in Britain, allowing Prince George of Wales to rule because his father, King George III, was considered insane. He later became George IV.

1869 – The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the Welcome Stranger, is found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia.

1900 – The United States and the United Kingdom sign a treaty for the Panama Canal

1918 - The SS Tuscania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by the German U-boat UB-77. She sank with the loss of 210 lives and was the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.

1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists.

1922 - Reader's Digest began publication in New York.

1924 - The BBC time signals, ('pips' from Greenwich Observatory) broadcast on the hour, were heard for the first time.

1953 - The Walt Disney film, Peter Pan, opened in New York City.

1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.

1958 - Parking meters first appeared on the streets, in London's exclusive Mayfair district. The meters were first used in America in 1935.

1982 – Ugo Vetere, then the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, then the mayor of Carthage meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the Third Punic War which lasted 2,131 years.

1993 - In the Antarctic, British explorers Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr Michael Stroud broke the record for longest unsupported polar march.

1998 - Prime Minister Tony Blair, announced that veteran US entertainer Bob Hope, who was born in England, would receive an honorary knighthood.

2004 - Twenty-three Chinese drowned when a group of 35 cockle-pickers were trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire.

1969 - The death of actress Thelma Ritter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelma_Ritter

1974 - The daughter of millionaire publisher Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her flat in Berkeley, California.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...867727.stm

1982 - Laker Airways goes out of business.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...535297.stm

2006 - The Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Seattle Seahawks 21-10 to become only the third team to win 5 super bowls. They joined the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers in the exclusive club.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XL

(05-02-2012 11:00 )bombshell Wrote: [ -> ]1953: Sweet rationing ends in Britain

The process of de-rationing began in 1948, but made slow progress until 1953. Then Food Minister Gwilym Lloyd-George made it a priority for his department.

As well as sweets, he took eggs, cream, butter, cheese, margarine and cooking fats off the ration books.

He de-rationed sugar in September 1953, partly as a result of pressure from sweet manufacturers, and finally ended rationing when meat was taken off the ration books in July1954.

Gwilym Lloyd-George was the son of former Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, but despite being a minister in a Conservative government he sat as a "National Liberal", a group that broke away from the official Liberals in the 1930s as a protest against them forming a coalition government (who says history doesn't repeat itself? ) although in this case it was after they formed coalitions with Labour.

Many people don't realise that the National Liberals were allied with the Conservatives after the war and held more seats than the official Liberal Party in the 1950s (19 seats to 9 in 1951, 21 to 6 in 1955 and 19 to 6 in 1959) and they didn't finallly fully merge with the Conservatives until the late 1960s.

Gwilym Lloyd-George became Home Secretary in 1954 and it was he who refused to commute the death sentence passed on Ruth Ellis, leading to her becoming the last woman to be hanged in the UK in 1955.

After his retirement he become Viscount Tenby. He died in 1967 aged 72.

1971: Man plays golf on the Moon
The first manned mission to the Moon since the near-disastrous Apollo 13 is on its way home after two successful moon walks.
There was just one moment of serious concern: as Apollo 14 left its orbit around the Earth for the Moon, a docking probe failed to work, putting the mission's ability to return in jeopardy.

In the event, a manual docking went perfectly.

There were also light-hearted moments. At the end of today's moonwalk, Alan Shepard became the first man to hit a golfball on the Moon, using a ball and golf club head he had smuggled on board inside his space suit.

He hit two balls just before lift-off, and drove them, as he put it, "miles and miles and miles".

Major success

Overall, the mission was pronounced a major success.

The lunar module, known as Antares, landed within 87 feet (26 metres) of its target point just north of the rim of the Fra Mauro crater - the site originally planned for the aborted Apollo 13 mission.

It was chosen for its exposed rock formations, part of a geological feature covering much of the near side of the Moon.

Shepard and his colleague, Edgar Mitchell, were able to go further from the lunar module than before with their "modularised equipment transporter" - a cart which allowed them to carry equipment and store lunar samples.

The cart also meant they could bring back more moon rock than ever before - about 100 lbs (45 kg) compared to the 75lbs (34 kg) brought back by Apollo 12.

They included samples of very old, crystalline "continental" rocks, almost white, which may be up to 4,500 million years old.

Longest moonwalk

In all the pair spent more than nine hours exploring the Moon - longer than in any other mission.

One of their main scientific aims - a climb to the rim of the 400-foot (120 meters) high Cone Crater - had to be called off after Shepard registered a heartbeat of 150.

Mitchell also found the climb difficult, saying it was "a darn hard climb to try rapidly. The soil is a bit thin and mushy and these suits are bulky".

The next mission, Apollo 15, is scheduled for launch in July. Nasa plans to send a lunar rover car with the astronauts to send them even further away from base in exploring the Moon.


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Alan Shepard leaving the lunar module for the first time (picture: Nasa)





In Context
Apollo 14 was the first of the so-called scientific missions to the Moon.
Having conquered the technical difficulties of landing a man on the Moon and returning him to Earth, Nasa scientists could now concentrate on collecting data about the origins of the Moon itself.

The next mission, Apollo 15, brought back more of the ancient white crystallised rock, including the Genesis Rock, thought to date back to the formation of the Moon thousands of millions of years ago.

The last three of the original 20 Apollo missions were cancelled, and the last lunar module, Apollo 17, landed in December 1972.

In January 2004 however, US President George Bush announced American astronauts would return to the Moon by 2020 as the launching point for journeys further into space.

Edgar Mitchell retired from Nasa in 1972 and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an organisation dedicated to the study of parapsychology, in California.

Alan Shepard, who was also the first American in space in 1961, retired from Nasa in 1974 and died in July 1998 at the age of 74.


Stories From 6 Feb
1958: United players killed in air disaster
1952: King George VI dies in his sleep
2001: Sharon sweeps to power
1983: 'Butcher of Lyon' returns to face trial
1997: Widow allowed dead husband's baby
1971: Man plays golf on the Moon
2005: Blair is Labour's longest-serving PM
1964: Green light for Channel Tunnel



http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witne...058833.stm

(06-02-2012 09:43 )bombshell Wrote: [ -> ]1971: Man plays golf on the Moon

As noted above Alan Shepard had been America's first man in space in 1961 and was top of the astronaut tree. He was assigned the first manned Gemini mission planned for 1965 but in 1964 found himself sufferering from sudden bouts of vertigo, dizziness and nausea. The cause was found to be Meniere's Disease, a problem affecting the inner ear, and Shepard was grounded.

In 1969 he went off unannounced and secretly underwent pioneering surgery to try and correct the problem. It worked perfectly, and Shepard was immediately restored to the top of the flight roster and given command of Apollo 13 (had he come back 18 months earlier, he might well have been given Apollo 11 and been the first man on the moon, such was his standing).

However, as he had been out of the main programme for such a long time and the race to the moon had now been won, it was decided that there was no urgency so to give him more time to prepare the crews of Apollo 13 and 14 were swapped around, thus Shepard avoided the near-catastrophe that became Jim Lovell's "Houston, we have a problem!"

1665 - The birth of Queen Anne, the last Stuart ruler and second daughter of James II. She bore Prince George of Denmark 17 children, but 16 died in infancy and the remaining child died when aged 12.

1685 - Charles II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, died after several days of revelry with his concubines and his favourite mistresses. Charles acknowledged at least 12 illegitimate children by various mistresses, but as illegitimate children were excluded from the succession, he was succeeded by his brother James.

1783 - Death of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, the greatest English landscape gardener. His work lives on today throughout the great estates of England.

1804 - The world's first locomotive, converted from a steam-hammer power source and developed by Cornish engineer, Richard Trevithick, ran on a line near Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.

1819 – Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founds Singapore.

1918 – British women over the age of 30 get the right to vote.

1952 – Elizabeth II becomes the first queen regnant of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms since Queen Victoria upon the death of her father, George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a treehouse at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya.

1959 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.

1995 - The National Trust for Scotland banned foxhunting on any of its land.

1997 - The Court of Appeal made an historic judgement in favour of Diane Blood to be allowed to be inseminated with her dead husband's sperm.

1998 - President Bill Clinton signed a bill changing the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

2004 - An explosion ripped through a Moscow subway killing 41 people and injuring 129 others in an attack blamed on Chechen separatists.

1958 - A fateful day in football when several Manchester United players are among the dead when their plane crashes in the Munich Air Disaster.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...535961.stm

1964 - The Channel Tunnel gets the go ahead.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...535625.stm

The four members of the British hit band, the Beatles, have arrived in New York at the start of their first tour of the United States.
The young men, with their now infamous mop-head hairstyles, stepped onto the tarmac at Kennedy Airport just after 1300 local time.

There were more than 3,000 screaming teenagers at the airport. Many had skipped school or work. Some were in tears and some were carrying placards with phrases such as "I love you, please stay".

The Beatles' first scheduled appearance will be on American television on Sunday on the Ed Sullivan show. He apparently booked them to appear after seeing the huge crowds who greeted their return to Heathrow from Sweden last October.

Security barriers

More than 5,000 fans applied for tickets to be part of the audience for the live show - only 750 were lucky enough to get them.

The Beatles - Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison - received maximum police protection, the kind of arrangement usually produced for kings and presidents.

There were security barriers too, without which, the Beatles would almost certainly have been crushed by the throng of screaming women.

Elsewhere in the United States, excitement over the Beatles' arrival has reached almost fever-pitch.

Their songs are playing constantly on radio stations, in shops and other places of work.

Millions of Beatle records have already been sold and a company called Puritan Fashions Incorporated, which describes itself as "the only exclusive official licensed manufacturer of Beatle wearing apparel" is marketing T-shirts, sweat shirts, turtle-neck sweaters, tight-legged trousers, night shirts, scarves and jewellery inspired by the Beatles.

Beatle wigs are also for sale at $2.99 each - or the equivalent of one guinea.


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Watch/Listen

The Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan show sparked Beatlemania


The triumphant Beatles return to the UK


The Beatles talk about touring America




In Context
The Beatles were the first British band to break into the American market.
Their appearance on the Ed Sullivan show reportedly led to a dip in the crime rate to a 50-year low as 73 million people or 40% of Americans tuned into watch.

They performed the songs All My Loving, Till There Was You, She Loves You, I Saw Her Standing There and I Want To Hold Your Hand.

The band appeared twice on the Ed Sullivan show and their performances still rate as the second and third most-watched programmes in the history of US TV. Only the 1983 final episode of Korean war comedy MASH achieved more viewers

In February 2004, the Beatles were given the President's Award at the Grammys to mark the 40th anniversary of what became known as "Beatlemania". It was accepted by the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison.


Stories From 7 Feb
1945: Black Sea talks plan defeat of Germany
1964: Beatlemania arrives in the US
1974: Heath calls snap election over miners
1992: Maastricht treaties make EU official
1974: Radical group 'arrested' heiress
1987: S Korea clashes over student death
2005: MacArthur sails into record books
1966: Hawaii hosts US-Vietnamese summit