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721 B.C.E. - The first-ever recorded solar eclipse was seen from Babylon.

1702 - Anne Stuart, sister of Mary, succeeded to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland on the death of William III of Orange.

1831 - The first bank robbery in America was reported, at The City Bank of New York City, which lost $245,000 in the heist.

1931 - Nevada legalized gambling in an attempt to lift the state out of the hard times of the Great Depression.

1932 – The Sydney Harbour Bridge is opened.

1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler issues his Nero Decree ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed.

2002 – Zimbabwe is suspended from the Commonwealth on charges of human rights abuses and of electoral fraud, following a turbulent presidential election.

2003 – United States President George W. Bush orders the start of war against Iraq.

2008 – GRB 080319B: A cosmic burst that is the farthest object visible to the naked eye is briefly observed.

1616 - Sir Walter Raleigh was freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment to conduct a second expedition to Venezuela in search of El Dorado.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris, returning from his exile on the island of Elba, and began his 100-day rule which ended disastrously.

1841 - Edgar Allen Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", was published, it was considered the first detective story.

1969 - John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1974 – Ian Ball attempts, but fails, to kidnap Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark Phillips in The Mall, outside Buckingham Palace, London.

1985 – Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen begins his circumnavigation of the globe in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research.

1995 - A terrorist group released nerve gas on the Japanese underground subway system, resulting in the death of 12 people and the illness of 5,500 others.

2003 – 2003 invasion of Iraq: In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq.

2005 – A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits Fukuoka, Japan, its first major quake in over 100 years. One person is killed, hundreds are injured and evacuated.

235 - Maximinus Thrax becomes the 27th Emperor of the Roman Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_Thrax

1852 - First publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin

1956 - Independence day for Tunisia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia

1977 - T.Rex play their final concert at the Locarno, Portsmouth.
http://z6.invisionfree.com/popscene/ar/t4331.htm

2006 - Cyclone Larry makes landfall at Northern Queensland, Australia. 80% of Australia's banana crop is destroyed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Larry

1960: Scores die in Sharpeville shoot-out
More than 50 black people were killed when police opened fire on a "peaceful" protest in the South African township of Sharpeville.
Eye-witnesses said men, women and children fled 'like rabbits' as up to 300 officers began randomly shooting into a 5,000-strong crowd outside the municipal offices in Sharpeville.

Scores of injured have been taken to Baragwanath hospital near Johannesburg suffering gun-shot wounds.

It is not yet clear why the police, in armoured vehicles, opened fire at approximately 1315 local time today, although it is understood some protesters had been stone-throwing.

Non-violent campaign

Between 5,000 and 7,000 people had gathered at Sharpeville police station to protest against the pass laws, which they claim are designed by an apartheid government to seriously restrict their movement in white areas.

The laws, which require all black men and women to carry reference books containing their personal details including name, tax code and employer details, have this year been extended to all black women as well as men.

The law states that anyone found in a public place without their book will be arrested and detained for up to 30 days.

PAC leader, Robert Subukwe, said today's march was intended to be the first of a five-day, non-violent campaign by black Africans to persuade the government to abolish the laws.

The aim was for all black Africans to leave their pass books at home and present themselves at police stations for arrest.

This, said Mr Subukwe, would cause prisons to become overcrowded, labour to dry up and the economy to grind to a halt.

But three hours after it began, the 'peaceful' gathering had turned into a blood-bath.

It is understood police attempted to disperse the crowd with a squadron of low-flying aircraft before drafting in extra reinforcements.

Police Commander D H Pienaar said: "It started when hordes of natives surrounding the police station.

"If they do these things, they must learn their lessons the hard way."


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Men, women and children fled 'like rabbits' as police opened fire






In Context
Following the Sharpeville massacre, as it came to be known, the death toll rose to 69 and the number of injuries to 180.
In the following days 77 Africans, many of whom were still in hospital, were arrested for questioning - most were later released.

On 24 March the government banned all public meetings in 24 magisterial districts of South Africa and on April 8 the PAC and the African National Congress (ANC) were banned and a state of emergency was declared in the country.

The following September 224 people lodged civil claims against the government but the government responded by introducing the Indemnity Act which relieved all officials of any responsibility for the Sharpeville atrocities.

No police officer involved in the massacre was ever convicted.


Stories From 21 Mar
1960: Scores die in Sharpeville shoot-out
1991: Heseltine unveils new property tax
1999: Comedy genius Ernie Wise dies
1984: EEC summit collapses over rebate row
1963: Train drives itself




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14094760

630 - Byzantine emperor Heraclius restores the True Cross to Jerusalem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross

1989 - In an article in Sports Illustrated, the manager of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, Pete Rose, is named in a major gambling scandal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose

1991 - Michael Heseltine reveals plans to scrap the controversial Poll Tax, replacing it with the new Property Tax.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...278401.stm

1999 - Comedy legend Ernie Wise passes away at the age of 73.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...525167.stm

1829 - The Duke of Wellington, aged 60, fought a bloodless duel with the Earl of Winchelsea. The reason for the duel was the Duke’s support of Catholic emancipation. Wellington was both Prime Minister and leader of the Tory Party at the time.

1871 – Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone.

1918 - Germany's last major offensive of World War One began on The Somme.

1945 - British warplanes destroyed Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, killing over 70 Nazis. The raid also killed civilians, including 86 schoolchildren, in Denmark's worst civilian disaster of the war.

1963 - The Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

1965 – Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1980 – On the season finale of the soap opera Dallas, the infamous character J.R. Ewing is shot by an unseen assailant, leading to the catchphrase "Who shot J.R.?"

1990 - A demonstration in London against the poll tax became a riot. More than 400 people were arrested.

1999 – Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.

2006 – Immigrant workers constructing the Burj Khalifa and a new terminal of Dubai International Airport riot causing $1M in damage.

(21-03-2012 12:12 )Regenerated Wrote: [ -> ]1999 - Comedy legend Ernie Wise passes away at the age of 73.

Back in the late 80s I was visiting a friend who lived near Oxford and one sunny morning as we were strolling down the banks of the Thames I suddenly exclaimed: "Look, that's Ernie Wise on that houseboat!"

My mate looked and said "Nah, that's not him". The guy on the boat saw that we were looking at him and as the boat passed I just nodded to him and he nodded back.

I thought nothing more of it until a few months later when I was in a waiting room somewhere (can't remember where, possibly dentist or hairdresser) and was flicking through a mag when I came across an article and a picture of Ernie Wise on his houseboat near Oxford!!

The question is often asked as to why Morecambe and Wise never got knighthoods. The problem was that Eric Morecambe was only 58 when he died suddenly in 1984. Had he lived to his mid/late-60s insiders say they would almost certainly have become Sir Eric & Sir Ernie but the rules state that civilian honours can only be awarded posthumously for acts of gallantry (eg somebody who is killed trying to rescue people from a burning building etc) and that is all there is to it.

In May 2007 an online petition was set up asking for the rules to be changed and knighthoods awarded to the great comedy duo.

To date it has received 33 signatures.

Civil rights leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, has been convicted of organising an illegal boycott by black passengers of buses in the US state of Alabama.
Mr King, 27, was fined $500 (£178) and ordered to pay an equal amount in costs.

However, his lawyers immediately gave notice of their intention to appeal and the fine was converted into a prison sentence of 386 days, suspended until the appeal hearing.

Archaic law

The 17-week-old boycott in the town of Montgomery was sparked by the arrest of a black woman, Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on 1 December last year.

The town's segregation laws stipulate separate areas on buses for blacks and whites and require blacks to give up their seats for whites if necessary.

Black travellers have long complained of being called racist names by bus drivers and being forced to stand even if seats were vacant in the whites-only section.

Mrs Parks, 42, was not the first to be arrested for refusing to give up her seat but she was a well-known and respected figure in Montgomery's black community.

Four days after her arrest an almost universal boycott of the town's buses by black passengers began which has seriously diminished the companies' revenues.

Mr King was found guilty under an archaic law dating from 1921 designed to break trade union action.

The law carries a maximum penalty of $1,000 and six months in prison.

But Judge Eugene Carter said he had been lenient with Mr King because he had advocated non-violence.


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The arrest of Rosa Parks sparked the boycott






In Context
The bus boycott lasted a total of 382 days.
It ended in December 1956 after bus companies throughout Alabama were forced to comply with a US Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public transport was illegal.

Martin Luther King organised non-violent campaigns for equal rights throughout the 1950s and 1960s and was jailed many times.

In August 1963 he made his famous "I have a dream" speech at a march in Washington which attracted more than 250,000 demonstrators.

The following year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

He survived several attempts on his life but was assassinated in April 1968.


Stories From 22 Mar
1956: King convicted for bus boycott
1979: British ambassador assassinated in Holland
1963: Profumo denies affair with model
1980: Schild family reunited with daughter
2002: Woman granted 'right to die'

(22-03-2012 10:56 )bombshell Wrote: [ -> ]The arrest of Rosa Parks sparked the boycott

Parks's story has been told many times and doesn't need repeating here, apart from one aside that appeals to my sense of humour.

In 1994 the Ku Klux Klan applied to sponsor a portion of United States Interstate 55 in Saint Louis County and Jefferson County, near St. Louis, Missouri, for clean up (which allowed them to have signs stating that this section of highway was maintained by the organization). Since the state could not refuse the KKK's sponsorship, the Missouri legislature voted to name the highway section the "Rosa Parks Highway".

When Rosa Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92 her body lay in state at the Capitol. At that time she was the first woman, the second black, and only the 31st person in all to have been afforded that honour.

1765 – The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies.

1774 - Mary Cooper published the first book of English nursery rhymes. It was called Tommy Thumb's Song Book.

1784 – The Emerald Buddha is moved with great ceremony to its current location in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand.

1824 - The British parliament purchased 38 paintings (cost £57,000) to establish a national collection now at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London.

1926 - The first directional road markings were introduced onto British roads (Hyde Park Corner, London). They caused confusion and led to seven accidents on the first day.

1942 - The BBC began broadcasting in Morse code to the French Resistance.

1943 – World War II: the entire population of Khatyn in Belarus is burnt alive by German occupation forces.

1984 – Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.

1995 – Cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov returns to earth after setting a record of 438 days in space.

1997 - Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth in the skies over the northern hemisphere. The comet’s next pass is predicted for the year 4397.