1995: British woman conquers Everest
A British mother of two has become the first woman to conquer Everest without oxygen or the help of sherpas.
Alison Hargreaves, 33, is only the second person ever to reach the peak of the world's highest mountain unaided.
She reached the 29,028ft (8,847.7m) summit at 1208 local time on Saturday - 0723 in Britain - and immediately radioed her base camp. She wanted to send a fax to her two children, Tom and Kate, aged six and four, at home near Fort William on the west coast of Scotland.
The message was: "I am on the top of the world and I love you dearly."
She set herself a formidable target
Husband Jim Ballard
Before starting her descent, she planted a silk flower.
Her husband Jim Ballard, 48, a climbing photographer, who stayed at home to look after the children said: "I am very proud of Alison. I always had confidence in her ability to get to the roof of the world, although she set herself a formidable target."
Alison tackled the mountain's notorious north ridge from Tibet after more than a year's training on the slopes of Ben Nevis.
She failed in a similar attempt last year, when she was driven back at 27,500ft (8,382m) by arctic winds which threatened to freeze her hands and feet.
Cally Fleming, a spokeswoman for the Nevis Range ski slope where Miss Hargreaves trained said: "This is the most important climb ever undertaken by a woman. It's fabulous."
Miss Hargreaves, who uses her maiden name for climbing, arrived at base camp at 17,060ft (5,199.9m) on 11 April. She climbed the entire route without porters or oxygen
She was forced to approach the summit almost along the top of the arduous north ridge because weather conditions meant the slopes below were almost bare of snow.
The only other climber to have reached the top of Everest unaided was Reinhold Messner in 1980.
Alison Hargreaves now plans to climb the world's second highest mountain, K2, unaided after a short break in Scotland.
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Alison Hargreaves before leaving for her attempt on Everest
In Context
Three months to the day after her successful conquest of Everest, Alison Hargreaves was killed shortly after reaching the summit of Pakistan's K2.
Three climbers who had tackled the summit with her were also killed. Three members of a separate five-strong Spanish team died the same day.
New Zealander Peter Hillary, son of the Everest pioneer, Sir Edmund Hillary, was climbing with the Hargreaves' team, but turned back before the fateful summit bid and survived.
It is not clear how they died. Witnesses on the mountain said there was a sudden mountain storm, combined with a bitter 100mph (160.9kph) wind. At least one climber is thought to have fallen.
Following Miss Hargreave's death, there was some criticism in the media about whether a mother should be allowed to pursue such a dangerous sport.
In 1996, Jim Ballard and the couple's two children, made an emotional pilgrimage to Pakistan to visit the foot of K2.
Both children have developed a keen interest in climbing and Tom has said he would like to become a professional climber.
Stories From 13 May
1981: Thousands see Pope shot in Rome
1989: British war hero 'seized' in Beirut
1968: Workers join Paris student protest
1995: British woman conquers Everest
1977: Cricket captain sacked over 'circus'
Everest 1953 Witness Special
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A student and youngest member of the Everest team
1568 – Battle of Langside: the forces of Mary, Queen of Scots, are defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her half-brother.
1607 - Captain John Smith landed on the coast of Virginia and began the first permanent English settlement in the New World, calling it Jamestown.
1660 - Diarist Samuel Pepys witnessed the removal of the Irish Harp from the Union Flag, on the Restoration of Charles II. The cross of St Patrick was not added until 1801.
1787 – Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England, with eleven ships full of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.
1912 – The Royal Flying Corps (now the Royal Air Force) is established in the United Kingdom.
1949 - Britain’s first jet bomber, the Canberra, was given its first test flight at Warton in Lancashire.
1950 – The first round of the Formula One World Championship is held at Silverstone.
1967 – Dr. Zakir Hussain becomes the third President of India. He is the first Muslim President of the Indian Union. He holds this position until August 24, 1969.
1998 – Race riots break out in Jakarta, Indonesia, where shops owned by Indonesians of Chinese descent are looted and women raped.
1998 – India carries out two nuclear tests at Pokhran, following the three conducted on May 11. The United States and Japan impose economic sanctions on India.
1264 – Battle of Lewes: Henry III of England is captured and forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, making Simon de Montfort the de facto ruler of England.
1643 – Four-year-old Louis XIV becomes King of France upon the death of his father, Louis XIII.
1796 - Edward Jenner became the first British physician to carry out a successful vaccination. His pioneering work laid the foundation for modern immunology techniques.
1847 - HMS Driver completed the first circumnavigation of the world by a steamship when it arrived back at Spithead on the Hampshire coast.
1878 - The trademarked name Vaseline was registered by Robert A. Chesebrough.
1889 - The children's charity the NSPCC was launched in London.
1948 - The independent state of Israel was proclaimed by Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion, in Tel Aviv.
1965 - The field at Runnymede (the site of the signing of the Magna Carta), was dedicated by the Queen as a memorial to the late John F Kennedy, US President.
1973 - The United States launched Skylab I, its first manned space station.
2005 – The former USS America, a decommissioned supercarrier of the United States Navy, is deliberately sunk in the Atlantic Ocean after four weeks of live-fire exercises. She is the largest ship ever to be disposed of as a target in a military exercise.
1536 - The trial of Anne Boleyn. She was accused of incest, sleeping with 4 men and an assassination plot against her husband, King Henry VIII. She was found guilty and executed four days later.
1718 - The first machine gun was patented by London lawyer James Puckle.
1756 - The Seven Years War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, officially began when England declared war on France.
1800 - George III survived two assassination attempts in one day, the second coming from James Hadfield who fired a shot at the King during a performance at the Drury Lane Theatre in London.
1905 – Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded when 110 acres, in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.
1928 – Mickey Mouse premiered in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy.
1941 - The first Allied jet, a Gloster-Whittle E 28/39, was tested.
1957 - Britain's first hydrogen bomb was exploded on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.
1963 - Gordon Cooper completed 22 orbits of the earth and spent 34 hours in space aboard Faith 7, part of the Mercury program.
1972 – The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control.
1987 – The Soviet Union launches the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform. It fails to reach orbit.
2008 – California becomes the second U.S. state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalize same-sex marriage after the state's own Supreme Court rules a previous ban unconstitutional.
1568 - Mary Queen of Scots fled to England. Disguised as an ordinary woman, she crossed the River Solway and landed at Workington, Cumbria, spending her first night at Workington Hall.
1770 - Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
1920 – In Rome, Pope Benedict XV canonizes Joan of Arc as a saint.
1929 - The first Academy Awards were presented during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
1975 - Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
1991 - Queen Elizabeth II addressed the U.S. Congress, the first British monarch to do so.
1995 - Japanese authorities arrested Shoko Asahara, a doomsday cult leader, who was linked to a nerve-gas attack on Tokyo's subway system two months earlier.
1988 – A report by United States' Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.
1992 – STS-49: Space Shuttle Endeavour lands safely after a successful maiden voyage.
2001 - Labour's Deputy Prime Minister, John (2 Jags) Prescott, punched a man who threw an egg at him during his visit to, Rhyl, North Wales.
2005 - Army Specialist Sabrina Harman was convicted of six of the seven charges she faced for her role in the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
1943: RAF raid smashes German dams
An audacious RAF bombing raid into the industrial heartland of Germany last night has wrecked three dams serving the Ruhr valley.
The attack disrupted water and electricity supplies in a key area for the manufacture of Germany's war munitions.
The Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, called the raid "a trenchant blow for victory".
None of us had any idea what this project was; we were just given instructions to construct and modify various items. The head of this program was Dr Barnes Wallis.
People's War memories »
The mission, known as Operation Chastise, has been planned for months.
The crews were specially selected for the job, and have been training in absolute secrecy.
The bombs themselves were invented specifically for the task by the aircraft engineer Dr Barnes Wallis, the designer of the Wellington bomber.
They were barrel-shaped, and used the principle of a "ducks and drakes" stone bouncing on the water to bypass the defences around the dams.
The Lancaster bombers flown by 617 Squadron were extensively modified, and the crews trained to fly at less than 100ft (30.48m) above the water, the height required to drop the bombs successfully.
The mission began yesterday evening, under the command of Wing Commander Guy Gibson.
The targets were three huge water barrage dams - two on the rivers Möhne and Sorpe, and a third on the River Eder.
The Möhne and Sorpe dams control about 70% of the water supplied to the Ruhr basin, and were built to prevent water shortages during the summer.
Wing Commander Gibson led the attack on the Möhne dam personally.
A flight lieutenant who watched what happened at the Möhne dam described the scene:
"The wing commander's load was placed just right and a spout of water went up 300 feet (91.44m) into the air," he said.
"A second Lancaster attacked with equal accuracy, and there was still no sign of a breach.
"Then I went in and we caused a huge explosion up against the dam. It was not until another load had been dropped that the dam at last broke.
"I saw the first jet very clear in the moonlight. I should say that the breach was about 50 yards (45.72m) wide."
The Eder dam - the largest in Europe - was also breached in two places.
Reconnaissance flights showed flood waters sweeping through the Ruhr valley, damaging factories, houses and power stations.
The power station at the Möhne dam has been swept away, rivers are in full flood, and railway and road bridges have disappeared.
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Watch/Listen
The aircrews of Squadron 617 were specially chosen for the mission
Pilot Ken Brown recalls the dambuster raid
In Context
The mission became popularly known as the Dambusters raid, and was immortalised in a 1954 war film.
It was one of the most famous air operations of World War II.
Casualties for the raid were high.
Eight of the original 19 Lancaster bombers were damaged or shot down, and of the 133 aircrew, 53 were killed and three captured.
On the ground, too, almost 1,300 people were killed, including 749 Ukrainian prisoners of war based in a camp just below the Eder dam.
The Möhne and Eder reservoirs poured about 330 million tons of water into the western Ruhr valley. The flood waters spread for about 50 miles (80km) from the source.
The spectacular, daring nature of the raid was a significant boost to British morale.
But militarily, it was a failure. The squadron failed to breach the Sorpe dam; and the disruption to the German war production was minimal. Water supply in the Ruhr valley was back to original levels six weeks later.
The aircrew, however, became famous as war heroes, and the leader of the raid, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, was awarded the Victoria Cross.
He died less than 18 months later, shot down at the age of 26 in September 1944.
Stories From 17 May
1943: RAF raid smashes German dams
1974: Bombs devastate Dublin and Monaghan
1960: East-West summit in tatters after spy plane row
1978: Charlie Chaplin's stolen body found
2000: First Britons reach North Pole unaided
1955: Eden takes to the airwaves
BBC News >>
Anniversary tribute to the Dambusters
WW2 People's War >>
Stories from the people who lived and fought during World War II
BBC History>>
Profile of Neville Barnes Wallis
Wallis was a British aviation engineer, whose most famous design was the 'bouncing bomb' developed for the Dambusters Raid of 1943.
Barnes Neville Wallis was born the son of a doctor on 26 September 1887 in Ripley, Derbyshire. Wallis worked first at a marine engineering firm and in 1913 he moved to Vickers, where he designed airships, including the R100. In 1930, Wallis transferred to working on aircraft. His achievements included the first use of geodesic design in engineering, which was used in his development of the Wellesley and Wellington bombers. When World War Two began in 1939, Wallis was assistant chief designer at Vickers' aviation section.
In February 1943, Wallis revealed his idea for air attacks on dams in Germany. He had developed a drum-shaped, rotating bomb that would bounce over the water, roll down the dam's wall and explode at its base. The bomb was codenamed 'Upkeep'. Impressed with the concept, the chief of the air staff, ordered Wallis to prepare the bombs for an attack on the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in the important German industrial region of the Ruhr.
Operation Chastise, the 'Dambusters Raid', was carried out on the night of 16 - 17 May 1943 by the specially created 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, led by Guy Gibson. Two of the dams - the Mohne and Eder - were breached, leading to serious flooding in the surrounding area, although industrial production was not significantly affected, and 8 of the 19 bombers which took part were lost. The most significant result was the hugely positive effect on Allied morale.
When the decision was taken to concentrate on area bombing, Wallis began looking at the design of aircraft that could drop heavy bombs. The adapted Avro Lancaster was able to drop two bombs developed by Wallis, the 'Tallboy' designed in 1944 (used to sink the German battleship 'Tirpitz') and the 'Grand Slam' the following year. Both were used against heavily fortified German targets.
After the war, Wallis led aeronautical research and development at the British Aircraft Corporation until 1971. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1954 and was knighted in 1968. He died on 20 October 1979.
1590 – Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland.
1792 - The New York Stock Exchange was founded by brokers meeting under a tree located on what is now Wall Street.
1899 - Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
1970 – Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat Ra II to sail the Atlantic Ocean.
1990 – The General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) eliminates homosexuality from the list of psychiatric diseases.
2003 - Vatican officials confirmed that Pope John Paul II was suffering from Parkinson's disease.
1991: Sharman becomes first Briton in space
Britain's first astronaut, 27-year-old Helen Sharman from Sheffield, has blasted into orbit.
The Soviet Soyuz TM-12 space capsule made a textbook launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan at 1350 BST carrying Miss Sharman and fellow cosmonauts Anatoly Artebartsky and Sergei Krikalyov.
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Her parents and sister watched from a viewing stand one kilometre away and saw their daughter smile and wave to the onboard camera.
She carries with her a photograph of the Queen, a butterfly brooch given to her by her father and a "space passport" in case her spacecraft is forced to land outside the Soviet Union.
Woman from Mars
Miss Sharman, a former chemist for the Mars chocolate company, had won her place in space in 1989 after answering an advertisement she heard on the car radio - "Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary."
She was eventually selected from over 13,000 applicants to be the British member of the Russian scientific space mission, Project Juno.
The USSR has already taken a Mongolian, an Afghan, a Cuban, a Syrian and a Japanese journalist to space.
She spent 18 gruelling months training in Star City, 30km north-east of Moscow and now speaks fluent Russian. She has become known among her comrades for her remarkably calm and unruffled nature. She has trained alongside her British back-up Major Tim Mace.
Tomorrow, the Soyuz is due to dock with the Mir space station which has been occupied by two crew members for the last six months.
The British element of the Juno project has had trouble raising funds and the only sponsors to come forward are Interflora, a watch manufacturer and a cassette tape company.
During her eight days in space, Miss Sharman will carry out a series of medical and agricultural experiments.
She will also take part in a radio-ham test with British schools, take photos of the British Isles and see how pansies grow in weightless conditions.
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Helen Sharman won a place in space history after answering an advertisement
In Context
Seven days later, Helen Sharman came back to Earth in her Soyuz TM11 capsule which parachuted into Kazakhstan. With her was Commander Musa Manarov who held the record for the longest time in space at 541 days.
When she emerged from the capsule she said: "The air is very fresh. Smell the flowers, they are wonderful."
She was awarded an OBE in 1993.
She has since become a lecturer and broadcaster on science education.
After 15 years in space, the Mir space station was decommissioned and disintegrated in the Earth's atmosphere on 23 March 2001.
Stories From 18 May
1944: Monte Cassino falls to the Allies
1991: Sharman becomes first Briton in space
1950: US and Europe agree Nato aims
1964: Mods and Rockers jailed after seaside riots
1972: Duke too ill for tea with the Queen
BBC News >>
Special report
Chronology of space exploration
Biggest stories of the space race
BBC Science and Nature>>
Space
Features, games and picture galleries
332 – Constantine the Great announced free distributions of food to the citizens in Constantinople.
1152 – Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine.
1803 - Bored with nobody to fight for almost a year, Britain abandoned the Treaty of Amiens and declared war on France.
1804 - The French Senate proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte emperor.
1910 - The 1910 approach of Halley's comet was notable for being the first approach of which photographs exist.
1944 - Monte Cassino, Italy, was taken by Allied forces during World War II. The ancient Italian monastery had been a symbol of German resistance since the beginning of the year.
1954 - The European Convention on Human Rights came into force.
1974 – Nuclear test: under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so.
1980 - Mount St. Helens volcano in southwestern Washington state erupted, killing 57 and devastating 210 square miles.
1990 – In France, a modified TGV train achieves a new rail world speed record of 515.3km/h (320.2 mph).