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1975: Journalists leave fallen Saigon
A group of 80 reporters and cameramen - including nine Britons - have been allowed to fly out of Saigon to Vientiane in Laos.
They are the first Westerners to leave the capital of South Vietnam since it fell to communist forces on 29 April.

That day there were chaotic scenes in Saigon as desperate South Vietnamese citizens tried to board overcrowded US helicopters in a bid to flee their own country.

The next day, North Vietnamese tanks rolled in and forced a humiliating surrender.

Thousands desperate to leave

There are still 16,000 foreign passport holders, including thousands of Vietnamese with French passports, waiting anxiously for exit visas and a way out.

After weeks of failed promises and delays, the Western journalists boarded a Russian-made plane belonging to the North Vietnamese Air Force to Vientiane in Laos, the only Indo-Chinese country that still has diplomatic ties with the US.

The fall of Saigon has been marked by victory parades by the communist forces over the last few days.

Posters of Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh, have been placed on public buildings and marching bands paraded the streets.

Some South Vietnamese welcomed the victory - others loyal to President Thieu who could not get away committed suicide. Most are relieved that the war is finally over.

The communist authorities have so far been lenient on Thieu supporters and are more concerned with "re-educating" former soldiers and young people, tackling growing crime and food shortages in an attempt to bring some sort of order to the streets of Saigon.

In Context
Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and North and South Vietnam were unified in 1976.
This was preceded by three decades of bitter independence wars, which the communists fought first against the colonial power France, then against US-backed South Vietnam.

The US had entered hostilities to stem a perceived "domino effect" of successive nations falling to communism.

The jungle war produced heavy casualties on both sides, atrocities against civilians, and the indiscriminate destruction and contamination of much of the landscape.

In 1986, the communist government allowed in elements of market forces and private enterprise.

But some party leaders still fear that too much economic liberalisation will weaken their power base and introduce "decadent" ideas into Vietnamese society.

In November 2000 President Bill Clinton's visit to Vietnam was presented as the culmination of US efforts to normalise relations with the former enemy.






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Watch/Listen

The capture of Saigon by the Viet Cong was greeted with fear, confusion and joy



The Viet Cong take control of Saigon





Stories From 24 May
2001: Israel wedding party tragedy

1975: Journalists leave fallen Saigon

1989: Yorkshire Ripper's wife wins damages

1968: De Gaulle: 'Back me or sack me'

1999: Drugs row Dallaglio goes





BBC News >>
Reporter Brian Barron looks back at events of the Vietnam war

1941 : Robert Allen Zimmerman born, aka Bob Dylan
http://www.bobdylan.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan

Happy 70th birthday Bob.

1543 - Nicolaus Copernicus published proof of a sun-centered planetary system.

1689 – The English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration protecting Protestants. Roman Catholics are intentionally excluded.

1809 - Dartmoor Prison was opened to accommodate French prisoners of war. From 1850 it becomes a prison for convicts.

1819 - Princess Alexandrina Victoria was born at Kensington Palace in London, the only daughter of the Duke of Kent. As Queen Victoria, she reigned for 63 years, from 1837 until her death in 1901.

1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, was opened. It took 14 years to construct; 27 people died working on it.

1930 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).

1962 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.

1976 - British Airways and Air France Concordes arrived at Dulles International Airport, Washington D.C. having made their first commercial crossing of the North Atlantic.

1994 - Four men convicted of bombing New York's World Trade Center in 1993 were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

2002 – Russia and the United States sign the Moscow Treaty.

(24-05-2011 11:42 )skully Wrote: [ -> ]1962 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.

Malcolm Scott Carpenter was one of the original "Mercury 7" astronauts and the fourth American in space. He had originally been scheduled to be the fifth, but was moved up the roster when Deke Slayton was grounded after being diagnosed with a heart murmur.

His entire life has been colourful and controversial. For some reason still unclear to this day he missed his final exam (in "heat transfer") at the University of Colorado and so did not qualify for his degree in Aeronautical Engineering.

He served in the Navy at the tail end of World War II and in 1949 was recruited by a specialist Naval Reconnaisance Unit where he flew secret missions along the coasts of Korea, China and Japan.

His 1962 his flight in Mercury Aurora 7 ended with him splashing down safely but 250 miles off course and it was three hours before he was picked up. The cause was linked to everything from a problem with overconsumption of fuel affecting the retro-rockets to a fault with the pitch scanner system. However, despite the mission being officially being described by NASA as "the most successful to date", rumours circulated that Carpenter had been responsible for the overshoot himself. Even Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan later wrote: "But he screwed up his own Mercury flight by joyriding, not paying enough attention to the job, missing his retrofire cue and splashing down several hundred miles from the target area. It became pretty obvious that Scott would never fly in space again.”

The fact that he never flew in space again and left NASA in 1967 was for many years held up as giving support to this theory, but as with all good urban legends, the truth should never spoil a good story, as it was not until later spaceflights that a number of hardware problems were discovered that had not been known at the time and showed that Carpenter had almost certainly been blameless.

The reason Carpenter never flew again was because in 1964 he badly injured his left arm in a motorcycle accident whilst on secondment to a naval underwater unit in Bermuda. Despite two operations he could not get anywhere near full mobility back in the arm and had to be stood down from the astronaut group on medical grounds.

However, the University of Colorado decided to award him his degree almost twenty years late, on the grounds that "his astronaut training more than compensated for what he needed to know about heat transfer".

After NASA he founded Sea Sciences Inc, a Corporation aimed at developing underwater resources.

His "work hard, play hard" image continued. He was often featured in the popular press and on TV, usually accompanied by a fast car or an even faster woman, for a while was one of the organisers of the Paris-Dakar Rally, was a consultant to sport and diving equipment manufacturers and was married and divorced three times, the marriages producing a total of seven children (his second wife was the daughter of Hal Roach, who produced the Laurel and Hardy films).

Carpenter always had the reputation of having astonishing physical fitness (his arm injury only preventing the sky-high requirements to be an astronaut), and although he is now 86 years old, he can still be seen on the ski-slopes in Vail, near his home in Colorado. He and John Glenn (who will be 90 in July) are the only two surviving members of the "Mercury 7".



Scott Carpenter in his Mercury Spacesuit
(photo is copyright NASA but may be freely used for non-commercial purposes under NASA's public domain policy if acknowledged)

1982: Dozens killed as Argentines hit British ships
Dozens of men are feared dead in the seas around the Falkland Islands after the container ship Atlantic Conveyor and the destroyer HMS Coventry were hit by Argentine missiles.
HMS Coventry managed to destroy two Argentine Skyhawk planes with Sea Dart missiles. Another wave of Skyhawks hit her four times with 1,000 bombs. She capsized, losing 21 of her crew.

An explosion and a fireball swept through the operations room. The ship listed to port and the crew and wounded made their way to the upper decks from where they were rescued.

It is thought the Atlantic Conveyor, owned by Cunard, was mistaken for the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes.

She was attacked by two Super Etendards which fired French-built Exocets like the ones that sunk the Coventry's sister ship HMS Sheffield on 4 May.

One of the eight men still unaccounted for on the container ship is her master, Captain Ian North.

Bill Slater, Managing Director of Cunard, said he was a "remarkable man... very well known in the industry generally and this is typified by the messages of sympathy we've received from all over the world".

Two Exocets were fired at the Atlantic Conveyor.

Only one struck home but it was enough to damage the ship seriously.

The Defence Ministry hopes some of the supplies carried by the Atlantic Conveyor can be salvaged.

All the Harrier jump jets aboard have been flown off and some of the helicopters and other supplies could be saved because the vessel is still afloat and upright.

There are now 43 British merchant ships serving with the task force. Cargo vessels and tankers for fuel and water form a conveyor belt of supplies between Britain and the South Atlantic.

Three passenger ships have also been taken over as hospital and troop ships.

The operation is costing the government around £5m a week, employing 2,000 members of the Merchant Navy.



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A single Argentine Exocet missile was enough to wreck the Atlantic Conveyor





In Context
The Atlantic Conveyor eventually went down with the loss of 12 men, including its commander Captain Ian North. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
The vessel's troop-carrying Chinook helicopters, key equipment necessary to re-capture the islands, sank with the ship.

Without them, the British troops were forced to march to take their first major objective - Goose Green.

After a bloody land battle, Argentine forces surrendered to the British and peace was declared on 20 June.

More than 900 people died in the three-week war - 655 Argentines, 255 British troops and three Falkland islanders.

The Falklands War gave a huge boost to Margaret Thatcher's popularity. She won the general election the following year with a massive majority and remained in power until 1990.

Although the two nations have made peace and relations are harmonious, Argentina still retains its historic claims to the "Malvinas" and Britain maintains an expensive and large garrison there.



Stories From 25 May
1982: Dozens killed as Argentines hit British ships

1967: Celtic win European Cup

1961: Kennedy pledges man on Moon

1963: African states unite against white rule

1979: Price of milk shoots up

1994: Camelot wins UK lottery race





Witness
'I was on the Sir Galahad when it was bombed' - Your stories

1659 - Lord protector Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver, resigned his position - leading to the restoration of the monarchy and the crowning of Charles II in 1660.

1768 - Captain James Cook sailed on his first voyage of discovery, on which he explored the Society Islands and charted the coasts of New Zealand and West Australia.

1895 - At the end of a sensational trial, Irish writer Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency in his relations with the son of the Marquess of Queensberry. He was sentenced to two years hard labour.

1977 – Star Wars (retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981) is released in theaters, inspiring the Jediism religion.

1985 – Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people.

2001 – 32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1670 - Charles II and Louis XIV signed a secret treaty in Dover, ending hostilities between England and France.

1805 – Napoleon Bonaparte assumes the title of King of Italy and is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Duomo di Milano, the gothic cathedral in Milan.

1896 – Nicholas II becomes Tsar of Russia.

1897 – Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is published.

1940 – World War II: Battle of Dunkirk – In France, Allied forces begin a massive evacuation from Dunkirk, France.

1954 - The Egyptian pharaoh Cheops's funeral ship was found.

1969 - Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono staged a public 'bed in' for world peace - staying in bed for a week in a hotel in Montreal.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.

1986 – The European Community adopts the European flag.

2004 – The United States Army veteran Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

1153 – Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland.

1647 - Achsah Young became the first woman known to be executed as a witch in Massachusetts.

1679 - Britain passed the Habeas Corpus Act which made it illegal to hold anyone in prison without a trial.

1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.

1919 - Oil was struck at Britain's first on-shore oilfield of three wells, at Hardstoft, near Tibshelf in Derbyshire.

1931 - In a balloon launched from Germany, Paul Kipfer and Auguste Piccard became the first to reach the stratosphere, rising almost 10 miles during their flight.

1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.

1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing almost 2,100 men.

1967 – Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.

1995 – In Culpeper, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.

2006 – The May 2006 Java earthquake strikes at 5:53:58 AM local time (22:53:58 UTC May 26) devastating Bantul and the city of Yogyakarta killing over 6,600 people.

585 BC – A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.

1503 – James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor are married according to a Papal Bull by Pope Alexander VI. A Treaty of Everlasting Peace between Scotland and England signed on that occasion results in a peace that lasts ten years.

1830 – President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act which relocates Native Americans.

1842 - Britain's first public library opened, in Frederick Street, Salford.

1907 - The first Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) motor cycle races were held. The winner was Charlie Collier on his pedal assisted Matchless, at an average speed of 38.22 mph.

1929 - Warner Brothers debuted the first all-color talking picture, "On With the Show."

1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., who pushes a button signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the span.

1945 - World War II: the English broadcaster of Nazi propaganda, William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was captured near Hamburg. He was later tried for treason, found guilty, and hanged.

1961 - Amnesty International, the human rights organization, was founded.

1995 – The Russian town of Neftegorsk is hit by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that kills at least 2,000 people, half of the total population.

1998 – Nuclear testing: Pakistan responds to a series of nuclear tests by India with five of its own, prompting the United States, Japan, and other nations to impose economic sanctions.

1999 – In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper is put back on display.

2002 – The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large ice deposits on the planet Mars.

(28-05-2011 12:29 )skully Wrote: [ -> ]1945 - World War II: the English broadcaster of Nazi propaganda, William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was captured near Hamburg. He was later tried for treason, found guilty, and hanged.

To avoid the heavy bombing that affected Bristol, my mother, then a young child, was sent to live with relatives near the unscathed small town of Abersychan in South Wales. Out playing with a group of friends one day, they were surprised to see one sole military plane coming their way. It was a rare sight in those parts, so naturally they all stood and waved. They only saw the swastika insignia at the last moment, as the plane dropped a bomb on them!!!! Fortunately the bomb landed several hundred yards away, or I might not be here to tell you about it. The next day, Lord Haw-Haw boasted of how incompetent Britain's air defences were against the might of the Luftwaffe and to everybody's amazement heard him announce “why, we even dropped a bomb near Abersychan yesterday” (it was believed that the plane had been trying to find a small armaments plant some miles away but you can imagine the local reaction to that announcement).

William Joyce was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1906 to a Protestant mother and an Irish Catholic father who had taken United States citizenship. A few years after his birth the family returned to Ireland. Unusually for Irish Roman Catholics, both Joyce and his father were strongly Unionist. Joyce later said that he aided the Black and Tans during the Irish War for Independence and became a target of the IRA, causing him to flee to England after an attempt was made on his life.

He joined the Royal Worcester Regiment in 1921 but was discharged when it was discovered that he had lied about his age. He then applied to Birkbeck College of the University of London and to enter the Officer Training Corps. At Birkbeck he worked hard and obtained a First. He also developed an interest in fascism, and he worked with (but never joined) the British Fascisti of Rotha Lintorn-Orman. In 1924, while stewarding a Conservative Party meeting, Joyce was attacked and received a deep razor slash that ran across his right cheek. It left a permanent scar which ran from the earlobe to the corner of the mouth. Joyce was convinced that his attackers were "Jewish communists". It was an incident that had a marked bearing on his outlook.

In 1932 Joyce joined the British Union of Fascists (BUF) under Sir Oswald Mosley, and swiftly became a leading speaker, praised for his power of oratory. He was instrumental in changing the name of the BUF to "British Union of Fascists and National Socialists" in 1936, and stood as a party candidate in the 1937 elections to London County Council. In 1936 Joyce lived for a year in Whitstable, where he owned a radio and electrical shop.

In late August 1939, shortly before war was declared, Joyce and his wife Margaret fled to Germany. Joyce had been tipped off that the British authorities intended to detain him under Defence Regulation 18B. Joyce became a naturalised German in 1940. In Berlin, Joyce could not find employment until a chance meeting with fellow Mosleyite Dorothy Eckersley, former wife of the Chief Engineer of the BBC, and she got him an audition at the Rundfunkhaus (radio centre). Despite having a heavy cold and almost losing his voice, he was recruited immediately for radio announcements and script writing at German radio's English service.

The name "Lord Haw-Haw of Zeesen" was coined by the pseudonymous Daily Express radio critic Jonah Barrington in 1939, but this referred initially to Wolf Mittler (or possibly Norman Baillie-Stewart). When Joyce became the best-known propaganda broadcaster, the nickname was transferred to him. Joyce's broadcasts initially came from studios in Berlin, later transferring (due to heavy Allied bombing) to Luxembourg and finally to Apen near Hamburg, and were relayed over a network of German-controlled radio stations that included Hamburg, Bremen, Luxembourg, Hilversum, Calais, Oslo and Zeesen. Joyce also broadcast on and wrote scripts for the German Büro Concordia organisation, which ran several black propaganda stations, many of which pretended to broadcast illegally from within Britain. His role in writing the scripts increased as time passed, and the German radio capitalized on his public persona. Initially an anonymous broadcaster, Joyce eventually revealed his real name to his listeners, and would occasionally be announced as "William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw-Haw". Urban legends soon circulated about Lord Haw-Haw, alleging that the broadcaster was eerily well-informed about political and military events, to the point of near-omniscience (as my mother would testify!!).

Although listening to his broadcasts was officially discouraged (but not illegal), they became very popular with the British public. At the height of his influence, in 1940, Joyce had an estimated 6 million regular and 18 million occasional listeners in the United Kingdom. The German broadcasts always began with the announcer's words "Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling" (because of a nasal drawl this sounded like "Jarmany calling"). These broadcasts urged the British people to surrender, and were well known for their jeering, sarcastic and menacing tone. There was also a desire by civilian listeners to hear what the other side was saying, since information during wartime was strictly censored and restricted and at the start of the war it was possible for German broadcasts to be more informative than those of the BBC. This was a scenario which reversed towards the middle of the war, with German civilians tuning (usually secretly) to the BBC.

Joyce recorded his final rambling broadcast on 30 April 1945, during the Battle of Berlin. He chided Britain for pursuing the war beyond mere containment of Germany, and warned repeatedly of the "menace" of the Soviet Union. He signed off with a final defiant "Heil Hitler and farewell". There are conflicting accounts as to whether this last programme was actually transmitted, despite a tape being found in the Apen studios. The next day Radio Hamburg was seized by British forces, who on 4 May used it to make a mock "Germany calling" broadcast denouncing Joyce.
Besides broadcasting, Joyce's duties included writing propaganda for distribution among British prisoners of war, whom he tried to recruit into the British Free Corps. He wrote a book Twilight Over England promoted by the German Ministry of Propaganda, which unfavourably compared the evils of allegedly Jewish-dominated capitalist Britain with the wonders of National Socialist Germany. Adolf Hitler awarded Joyce the War Merit Cross (First and Second Class) for his broadcasts, although they never met. Scripts and the microphone used by Joyce were seized by soldier Cyril Millwood and have now come to light following the ex-soldier's death.

At the end of the war, Joyce was captured by British forces at Flensburg, near the German border with Denmark. Spotting a dishevelled figure while resting from gathering firewood, intelligence soldiers - including a Jewish German, Geoffrey Perry (born Horst Pinschewer), who had left Germany before the war - engaged him in conversation in French and English. After they asked if he was Joyce, he reached for his pocket (actually reaching for a false passport); believing he was armed, they shot him through the buttocks, leaving four wounds. Two intelligence officers then drove him to a border post, and handed him to British military police.

Joyce was tried at the Old Bailey, London on three counts of high treason. During the processing of the charges Joyce's American nationality came to light, and it seemed that he would have to be acquitted, based upon a lack of jurisdiction (you cannot be convicted of betraying a country that is not your own). He was acquitted of the first and second charges. However, the Attorney General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, successfully argued that Joyce's possession of a British passport, even though he had mis-stated his nationality to get it, entitled him (until it expired) to British diplomatic protection in Germany and therefore he owed allegiance to the king at the time he commenced working for the Germans. It was on this basis that Joyce was convicted of the third charge and sentenced to death on 19 September 1945.

His conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal on 1 November, and by the House of Lords (on a 4–1 vote) on 13 December. In the appeal, Joyce argued that possession of a passport did not entitle him to the protection of the Crown, and therefore did not perpetuate his duty of allegiance once he left the country, but the House rejected this argument. Lord Porter's dissenting opinion was based on his belief that whether Joyce's duty of allegiance had terminated or not was a question of fact for the jury to decide, rather than a purely legal question for the judge. Joyce also argued that jurisdiction had been wrongly assumed by the court in electing to try an alien for offenses committed in a foreign country. This argument was also rejected, on the basis that a state may exercise such jurisdiction in the interests of its own security.

Joyce was executed on 3 January 1946 at Wandsworth Prison, aged 39. He was the penultimate person to be hanged for a crime other than murder in the United Kingdom. The last was Theodore Schurch, executed for treachery the following day at Pentonville. In both cases the hangman was Albert Pierrepoint. In spite of pleadings from the hospital chaplain, Joyce chose to die in his mother's faith, that of the Church of Ireland, and he went to his death unrepentent and defiant.
It is said that the scar on Joyce's face split wide open because of the pressure applied to his head upon his drop from the gallows.

As was customary for executed criminals, Joyce's remains were buried in an unmarked grave within the walls of HMP Wandsworth. In 1976 they were exhumed and reinterred in the Protestant section of the New Cemetery in Bohermore in County Galway, Ireland. A Roman Catholic Tridentine Latin mass was celebrated at his reburial.