On this day

(03-04-2011 21:15 )malicious fan Wrote:  i wished a friend of mine from america happy mothers day today iv only known her for 8 months, and she said thanx but its a bit early,

Well I would have thought that was obvious - surely you need to have known her for at least NINE months before you can wish her a happy mothers day!!

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

1964 – The Beatles occupy the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart.

1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

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

1841 - The Ninth US President William Harrison died.

Harrison set a number of records - he was the first US President to die in office, he spent the shortest time in office (just 30 and a half days, dying of pneumonia and pleurisy), and he was the first President to be photographed.

His death caused a constitutional crisis as it was unclear whether the Vice-President, John Tyler, should take over as President or be an acting President whist new elections were called. As the law stood at the time, the Vice-President acceeded to the office of President but didn't have any presidential powers. After a bit of head scratching, Tyler was sworn in as President, Congress passed a motion giving him the job full-time and this was used as the basis of succession until the 25th Amendment was passsed in 1967, following Lyndon Johnson's succession after the death of John Kennedy.

His short term in office meant that he was remembered for nothing of a legislative nature. He didn't appoint a single Federal Judge and became only one of four Presidents never to appoint a Supreme Court Justice.

He died almost penniless, so Congress voted a pension to his widow of what would be about £310,000 a year in today's money. She was also allowed to send letters free of charge. Whilst the postage was probably negligible, the pension proved to be expensive as she outlived her husband by 25 years!



William H Harrison (1773 - 1841)

(the copyright in this photo has expired and it is now classed as "public domain" under both US and EU law)

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.

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.

1964 - Automatic, driverless trains began operating on the London Underground.

1982 - A British Task Force set sail from Southampton to recapture the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic after the invasion by Argentina.

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.

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2001: Driver jailed for immigrant deaths
A Dutch lorry driver has been 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 Perry Wacker's lorry when it was searched at the ferry port in Dover last June after arriving from Belgium.

Wacker, from Rotterdam, had closed the only air vent on the side of the container to avoid detection by immigration officials.

At Maidstone Crown Court he was found guilty of 58 charges of manslaughter, as well as four counts of conspiracy to smuggle immigrants into the UK.

Wacker's co-accused, interpreter Ying Guo, was jailed for six years for conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants into Britain.

The jury of nine women and three men convicted them unanimously after nearly 13 hours of deliberations following a six-week trial.

Human 'cargo'

The judge, Mr Justice Alan Moses, said that Wacker had treated the victims as 'cargo'.

"People like you create a risk of greater prejudice against those people who quite legitimately come to this country seeking refuge as asylum seekers or whatever," he said.

Only two of the 60 immigrants hidden in the back of the lorry survived the five-hour sea journey.

Wacker claimed he thought he was bringing over tomatoes but fingerprint and DNA evidence linked him to the warehouse where the Chinese immigrants were held before they were locked into the container.

After the conviction, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it had ended in justice for the victims.

CPS prosecutor Karen Wiseman said: "The smuggling of humans has become as profitable as drugs.

"This trade hinges on the promise that at the end of the journey the illegal immigrants are heading for a better life.

"Tragically for these 58 victims, commercial gain took precedence over human life."




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Perry Wacker closed the only air vent on his lorry and 58 people inside died




In Context
In May 2001 the leader of the international ring behind smuggling the Chinese into Britain was given a nine-year sentence by a Dutch court.
Gursel Ozcan, a Turk, was cleared of manslaughter but found guilty of negligence.

The same month, six members of a UK-based "Snakehead" - or Chinese mafia - gang were jailed for a total of almost 50 years for smuggling illegal immigrants into the UK and holding them for ransom.

Police believe 10 "Snakehead" gangs control the trade in Britain.

Many of the migrants, like the 58 dead Chinese at Dover, come from Fujian province in east China and are charged up to $30,000 for the journey.



Stories From 5 Apr
1986: Berlin disco bombed

1976: Billionaire Howard Hughes dies

1976: Callaghan is new prime minister

1955: Sir Winston Churchill resigns

1970: West German envoy killed by rebels

1988: Hijackers free 25 hostages

2001: Driver jailed for immigrant deaths

1199 - King Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) died after being wounded by a crossbow bolt during a siege in France.

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

1652 – At the Cape of Good Hope, Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp that eventually becomes Cape Town.

1896 – In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I.

1909 - Explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole.

1944 - Pay As You Earn (PAYE) income tax was introduced into Britain.

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

1965 - Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite, was launched by the United States.

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

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.

1739 - English highwayman Dick Turpin was hanged in York for murdering an inn-keeper.

1827 – John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.

1906 - The Italian volcano, Mount Vesuvius, erupts and devastates Naples.

1936 - Butlins opened its first family holiday camp at Skegness.

1948 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.

2001 – Mars Odyssey is launched.

Famous People born on April 7th:
1770 William Wordsworth (poet)
1915 Billie Holiday (singer)
1928 James Garner (actor)
1939 Francis Ford Coppola (film director)
1939 David Frost (tv personality)
1954 Jackie Chan (actor)
1964 Russell Crowe (actor)

On This Day In History:
1795 France adopts the metre as its standard unit for measuring length.
1939 Italy occupies Albania.
2003 US troops occupy Baghdad in Gulf War 2.

1995: Death Row Briton is executed
British-born Nicholas Ingram has been executed in the electric chair in the US after two appeals to the US Supreme Court were turned down.

Ingram, 31, had a previous stay of execution granted last night only an hour before he was due to die.

A spokeswoman for Georgia's prison service said Ingram spent his last hours "quiet and stone-faced" and declined a final meal.

However, observers at Ingram's execution reported he was agitated and spat at the prison warden before being strapped into the chair at Jackson State prison near Atlanta.

Asked whether he wished to make a final statement, Ingram is said to have replied simply: "Let's get on with it".

Two chaplains and officials from Georgia's prison service were with him in the execution chamber when he died.

Ingram's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith witnessed his execution.

Mr Stafford Smith, a Briton, has specialised in Death Row cases since moving to the US 17 years ago.

As he entered the prison for his client's execution Mr Stafford Smith told reporters: ""What we are about to do is utterly, utterly barbaric."

Clemency pleas

Ingram had been on death row since 1983 for murdering J C Sawyer and injuring his wife, Eunice Sawyer, during a robbery.

Ingram's appeal lawyers argued that he was given an anti-psychotic drug during his trial that made him appear to be unemotional and remorseless.

Ingram had dual British and American nationality because he was born in England to a British mother and American father.

His case had been taken up by the British media, prompting a flood of pleas for clemency - including one from the Archbishop of Canterbury - to Georgia's governor.

After the execution, a hearse sped past the gatehouse of the prison to loud cheers from a group of capital punishment supporters.




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Nicholas Ingram had spent 12 years on Death Row



Gavin Esler: "Ingram's violent life ended with a violent death"




In Context
In 2007, 42 people on death row were executed - the lowest number since 1994.
Nicholas Ingram was the first Briton to die in the electric chair.

In March 2002 another man with dual British-American nationality, Tracy Housel, was also executed in Georgia for raping and murdering a woman.

The same month Briton Krishna Maharaj, who had spent 15 years on Death Row, was reprieved and his sentenced commuted to life without parole.

In February 2003, another Briton Jackie Elliott was executed in Texas for a murder he says he did not commit.

Kenny Richey was freed in January 2008 after serving more than 20 years in prison. His conviction for an arson attack in which a young girl died was overturned.





Stories From 8 Apr
1953: Seven years' hard labour for Kenyatta

1994: Rock musician Kurt Cobain 'shoots himself'

1995: Death Row Briton is executed

1997: BBC TV newsman turns politician

1986: Eastwood voted mayor by landslide

1973: Art master Picasso dies




Web Links
Death Row USA

1730 - The first synagogue in New York was consecrated.

1820 – The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.

1904 – The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sign the Entente cordiale.

1925 - The Australian Government and the British Colonial Office offered low interest loans to encourage Britons to borrow the money to emigrate to Australia.

1946 - The League of Nations held its last meeting in Geneva before dissolution. It was replaced by the United Nations (UN).

1971 - Chicago became the first rock group to play Carnegie Hall in New York City.

1992 – Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announces that he has AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.

1993 – The Republic of Macedonia joins the United Nations.

1997 - The results of the first ultrasonic scan of the front of the Titanic revealed a series of six short slits as the principal damage to the ship after it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic in 1912.

2005 – Over four million people attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

2008 – The construction of the world's first building to integrate wind turbines is completed in Bahrain.