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1957 - The BBC fools the nation with a spoof documentary about spaghetti crops in Switzerland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...819261.stm

1961 - The Beatles began a residency at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg, Germany. They played for seven hours a night on weekdays and eight hours at weekends, with a fifteen minute break each hour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Club

1984 - Marvin Gaye shot dead by his father during an argument with his parents about misplaced documents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Gaye

1990 - Wrestlemania VI takes place in the SkyDome in Toronto, Canada. It's the first time the WWE has produced the event outside of the United States. Ultimate Warrior defeats Hulk Hogan in the main event.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_VI

1999 - Legally binding minimum wage pay introduced in Britain for the first time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...465397.stm

2001 - Former Yugoslavia leader Slobodan Milosevic is arrested after a siege ends a standoff in Belgrade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...464667.stm

1877 - The first Human Cannonball Act was performed at London's Amphitheatre when acrobat Lady Zazal, attached by elastic springs, was fired into a safety net.

1902 – Electric Theatre, the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles, California.

1930 – After the mysterious death of Empress Zewditu, Haile Selassie is proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia.

1946 - Britain's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst was founded.

1972 – Actor Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist during the Red Scare in the early 1950s.

1975 – Construction of the CN Tower is completed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It reaches 553.33 metres (1,815.4 ft) in height, becoming the world's tallest free-standing structure.

1982 - Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, a British possession for 149 years. The British government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force. The resulting conflict lasted 74 days and ended with the Argentine surrender on 14th June 1982, which returned the islands to British control.

1992 – In New York, Mafia boss John Gotti is convicted of murder and racketeering and is later sentenced to life in prison.

2002 – Israeli forces surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem into which armed Palestinians had retreated. A siege ensues.

33 – Generally agreed-upon date for the historical crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Christianity.

1721 - Sir Robert Walpole was appointed first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer, effectively Britain's first prime minister.

1882 – American Old West: Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford.

1888 - The first of 11 brutal murders of women occurred in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London. The crimes remain unsolved to this day. At various points some or all of the killings were ascribed to the notorious, unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.

1895 - The trial of the libel case instigated by Oscar Wilde began, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

1933 - Everest was conquered for the first time by plane when 2 specially built British planes made aviation history by flying over the summit. The pilots were the Marquis of Douglas and Clydesdale and Flight Lieutenant David McIntyre.

1973 – Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, though it took ten years for the DynaTAC 8000X to become the first such phone to be commercially released.

2000 – United States v. Microsoft: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.

1968: Martin Luther King shot dead
The American black civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King, has been assassinated.
Dr King was shot dead in the southern US city of Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a march of sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions

He was shot in the neck as he stood on a hotel balcony and died in hospital soon afterwards.

Reverend Jesse Jackson was on the balcony with Dr King when the single shot rang out.

"He had just bent over. I reckon if he had been standing up he would not have been hit in the face," said Mr Jackson.


I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has taken Dr King

President Lyndon Johnson

Police in Memphis were put on alert for a "well-dressed" white man who is said to have dropped an automatic rifle after the shooting and escaped in a blue car.

There were early signs of rioting in Memphis after Dr King's death and 4,000 members of the National Guard were drafted into the city.

A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been ordered to ward off disturbances.

The US President, Lyndon Johnson, has postponed a trip to Hawaii for peace talks on Vietnam.

The president said he was "shocked and saddened" by the civil rights leader's death.

"I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has taken Dr King who lived by non-violence," Mr Johnson said.

Bus boycott

Dr King, 39, had previously survived several attempts on his life including the bombing of his home in 1956.

The charismatic civil rights leader joined the crusade for equal rights for black people in America in the mid 1950s.

He first came to national prominence as one of the leaders of the Alabama bus boycott in 1955.

In 1963 Dr King led a massive march on Washington DC where he delivered his now famous "I have a dream" speech.

Dr King advocated the use of non-violent tactics such as sit-ins and protest marches.

In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel peace prize.


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Watch/Listen

Martin Luther King ® on the balcony where he was shot


Charles Wheeler reports on the reaction in America







In Context
Martin Luther King's assassination led to riots in more than 100 US cities.
James Earl Ray was convicted of his murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison.

But he later retracted his confession and said he had been only a minor player in a conspiracy.

However, his appeals for a new trial were rejected and he died in prison in 1998.

Ray was supported by some members of Martin Luther King's family who believed the US Government may have been involved in Dr King's death.

Their case was strengthened in December 1999 when a jury in a wrongful death case brought by the King family, decided the civil rights leader was the victim of a murder conspiracy.

However, in June 2000 after an investigation the US Justice Department said it had uncovered no reliable evidence of a conspiracy.


Stories From 4 Apr
1968: Martin Luther King shot dead
1979: Deposed Pakistani PM is executed
1991: Orkney 'abuse' children go home
1984: Greenham Common women evicted
2000: Spring freeze brings chaos

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/784602.stm

1581 - Queen Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake aboard his ship the Golden Hind at Deptford after his circumnavigation of the world.

1850 – Los Angeles, California is incorporated as a city.

1934 - Yorkshireman Percy Shaw laid the first "cats' eyes" along the centre of the road at an accident black spot near Bradford.

1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established by 12 Western states including Great Britain. The military alliance provided for a collective self-defence against Soviet aggression and greatly increased American influence in Europe.

1964 - British pop group The Beatles occupied the first five places in the US singles pop charts with:- 'Can't Buy Me Love', 'Twist and Shout', 'She Loves You', 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' and 'Please Please Me'.

1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico

(04-04-2012 13:03 )skully Wrote: [ -> ]1934 - Yorkshireman Percy Shaw laid the first "cats' eyes" along the centre of the road at an accident black spot near Bradford.

Shaw was born in Halifax in 1890, one of four children and seven step-children (his father's first wife had died in 1883). He had little formal education, leaving school at 13 to become a labourer in a cloth mill. He had a series of low paid jobs over the years but eventually working in an engineering plant, which when combined with his inquisitive mind led to his breakthrough invention.

Over the years Shaw told different versions of where the inspiration came from; originally it was from seeing car headlights reflected in the eyes of a cat sitting on a fence by the side of a road but in later years he said it was the reflection off tram rails and in an interview with Alan Whicker that he had been generally experimenting with reflective materials.

At first sales of his invention were slow, but after approval from the Ministry of Transport and especially the requirements of the WW2 blackout sales soared. He was awarded the OBE in 1965.

Although he lived in a large house (technically a small mansion) Shaw lived a relatively simple life, his one luxury being a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

He became eccentric in later life, removing the carpets and much of the furniture from his home, and keeping three televisions running constantly (respectively tuned to BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, all with the sound turned down) with a fourth in reserve. How he would have managed in the multi-channel satellite era (and whether he would have had the babechannels on in the background!) we'll never know.

He died in 1976 age 86.

1614 - Native American princess Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indian confederacy, married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.

1722 – The Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovers Easter Island.

1843 - Queen Victoria proclaimed Hong Kong a British crown colony.

1900 – Archaeologists in Knossos, Crete, discover a large cache of clay tablets with hieroglyphic writing in a script they call Linear B.

1943 – World War II: American bomber aircraft accidentally cause more than 900 civilian deaths, including 209 children, and 1300 wounded among the civilian population of the Belgian town of Mortsel. The target is the Erla factory one kilometer from the residential area hit.

1944 – World War II: 270 inhabitants of the Greek town of Kleisoura are executed by the Germans.

1955 - Sir Winston Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain through the crisis of World War II, retired as Prime Minister, aged 81, handing over to Anthony Eden.

1958 – Ripple Rock, an underwater threat to navigation in the Seymour Narrows in Canada is destroyed in one of the largest non-nuclear controlled explosions of the time.

1998 – In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshū and costing about $3.8 billion USD, opens to traffic, becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world.

2001 - Perry Wacker, a Dutch lorry driver was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in the deaths of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants. They were found suffocated in the back of his lorry when it was searched at Dover in June 2000.

1250 - Egyptian Ayyubids defeat the crusader army and capture Louis IX of France during the Seventh Crusade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Crusade

1968 - The riots in the United States escalate following the assassination of Martin Luther King.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...902487.stm

1975 - A plane transporting 99 Vietnamese orphans arrives safely at Heathrow Airport. The Daily Mail chartered the 18 hour flight from Saigon as part of the ongoing Allied operation to rescue children from their war torn homeland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...522869.stm

1994 - The presidents of African states Rwanda (Juvenal Habyarimana) and Burundi (Cyprian Ntayamira) were both killed when their plane was shot down near the Rwandan capital city of Kigali.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...472195.stm

1997 - A defective fuel cell forces the early cancellation of the Columbia space shuttle mission. NASA aborts just four days in to a mission which should have lasted two weeks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...400439.stm

1199 - King Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) died from an infection following the removal of an arrow from his shoulder, after being wounded by a crossbow bolt during a siege in France.

1320 – The Scots reaffirm their independence by signing the Declaration of Arbroath.

1896 - The first modern Olympic Games formally opened in Athens, Greece. It was reinstated 1500 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. Eight nations participated.

1909 – Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reach the North Pole.

1963 - Britain and the USA signed the Polaris missile agreement. Polaris was a submarine launched, nuclear tipped weapon designed as a nuclear deterrent.

1974 - Swedish pop group ABBA won the 19th annual Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton, Sussex, with Waterloo.

1993 - Following public disquiet, Queen Elizabeth II began paying income tax.

1998 – Pakistan tests medium-range missiles capable of reaching India.

2003 - David Hempleman-Adams became the first person to walk alone and unaided to the geomagnetic North Pole.

2009 – A 6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes near L'Aquila, Italy, killing 307.

(06-04-2012 13:59 )skully Wrote: [ -> ]1974 - Swedish pop group ABBA won the 19th annual Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton, Sussex, with Waterloo.

Although they were unknown outside of Scandinavia, all four members of ABBA were seasoned musical veterans long before they were catapulted to global success and co-incidentally all four had previously entered the Swedish heats of Eurovision but without success.

"Benny" Anderson - his real first name is Goran (he's the one who used to play keyboards on the videos) - was the father of two children before he was 18. He had his first chart success as early as 1965 as a member of The Hep Stars, and they had several top 20 hits in the Scandinavian Charts with their eponymous 1966 album reaching number 12 in Sweden and 5 in Norway.

Bjorn Ulvaeus (the guitar player) was a member of a very popular folk-rock group called The Hootenanny Singers whose biggest hit was a cover of Tom Jones' "Green, Green Grass of Home". He met Anderson whilst touring and they started collaborating on various musical projects.

Anni-Frid Lyngstad (the brunette) won the Swedish equivalent of "New Faces" in 1967, by which time she also had two children (she had married at the age of 16 when she was already a mother). She had two number 1 singles and a number 1 album in Sweden in the early 70s as well as a number of other top 20 hits.

Agnetha Faltsog (the blonde) is five years younger than the other three. She had her first of three pre-ABBA number 1 singles in Sweden at the age of just 17 and had had more than a dozen top ten hits before Eurovision. She continued her individual success after the group broke up and was by far the most successful solo artist of the four with more than thirty top 20 hits.

Bjorn and Agnetha married in 1971 and had two children, born in 1973 and 1977, but the way the second pregnancy was concealed from the public at the height of their fame was an object lesson for any of the babes who become pregnant! They separated in 1978 and divorced in 1981.

Benny and Anni-Frid were an item from 1971 but didn't marry until 1978. Despite (or perhaps because of) having four children between them from their previous relationships their union produced no children and the marriage only lasted three years.

In 1977 Anni-Frid was the subject of some unwelcome publicity when it was revealed that her biological father was a German soldier who had had an affair with her Norwegian mother during the German occupation of Norway in WW2. The family had had to move to Sweden after the war to avoid reprisals. Anni-Frid was brought up by her grandmother after her mother died of kidney failure at the age of just 21 and had been told (in all good faith) that her father had been killed when the ship he was travelling on had been sunk towards the end of the war but he had in fact survived. A half-brother got in touch and she had a number of meetings with her father over the years.

ABBA are the eighth biggest selling act in history (they've been swapping between 7th and 8th with Queen for years) with acknowledged sales of over 300 million records.