On this day

79 – Titus succeeds his father Vespasian as the tenth Roman Emperor.

1683 - William Penn, the English Quaker, signed a treaty with the Indian chiefs of the Lenni Lenade Tribe in an attempt to ensure peace in his new American colony, Pennsylvania.

1794 – Empress Catherine II (the great) of Russia grants Jews permission to settle in Kiev.

1860 - The U.S. Secret Service was created to arrest counterfeiters and protect the president.

1942 – World War II: Germany's latest fighter, a Focke-Wulf FW190, is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.

1961 – Cold War: the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent, comes into force after the opening date for signature set for the December 1, 1959.

1970 - The world’s first all-metal liner, Brunel’s 'Great Britain' returned to Bristol from the Falkland Islands where it had lain rusting since 1886.

1985 – A terrorist bomb aboard Air India flight 182 brings the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 aboard.

1986 - Brighton bomber Patrick Magee, found guilty of planting the bomb at the Grand Hotel, Brighton during the Conservative Party Conference in 1983, was jailed for a minimum of 35 years.

1974: Labour rift over nuclear test
The Labour Government has admitted Britain exploded a nuclear device in the United States a few weeks ago.
It is thought the underground trial at America's desert test range in Nevada was carried out on one of the new warheads for the Polaris submarine missiles.

The announcement has sparked a row between senior ministers and the left-wing Tribune group, which opposes Britain's - and Labour's - involvement in the arms race.

The trial had been arranged by the previous Conservative Government, but the Ministry of Defence said it was not ashamed of its nuclear arsenal and intended to continue with the programme.

'Grave danger'

Tribune member Frank Allaun said it was Labour policy to get rid of what he termed "suicide weapons".

And the MP suggested scrapping missiles would set a good example to aspiring nuclear powers.

"The danger at the moment is of the bomb spreading to more and more countries - that's a grave danger," he said.

Defence Secretary Roy Mason said he could understand why people in the Labour Party were opposed to the tests.

But he emphasized there was no party commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons and said the government had not broken a manifesto pledge or international agreement by exploding the device.

"If we had purposefully taken the decision to abandon the test we would have been prematurely taking the decision to abandon our strategic deterrent - that's not on," he said.


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Tribune member Frank Allaun warned the bomb could spread to other countries





In Context
The world's first nuclear test was carried out by the US on 16 July 1945 at Alamagordo Air Base reservation, New Mexico.
Various treaties since the 1958 Geneva Conference have attempted to reduce or abolish nuclear weapons testing, but the Cold War ensured trials continued.

The five declared nuclear powers - Britain, France, US, Russia and China - signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in September 1996 - but it has yet to be ratified.

The two newest countries to obtain nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan, have both exploded devices since the agreement was signed.



Stories From 24 Jun
1974: Labour rift over nuclear test

1983: US astronaut Sally Ride returns

1968: Rail go-slow begins

1986: Ian Paisley's battle cry condemned

1993: Minister resigns over business links

637 – The Battle of Moira is fought between the High King of Ireland and the Kings of Ulster and Dalriada. It is the largest battle in the history of Ireland.

1314 - The forces of Scotland's King Robert I defeated the English (Edward II) in the Battle of Bannockburn.

1497 – John Cabot lands in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.

1509 - Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon are crowned King and Queen of England.

1717 – The Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), is founded in London, England.

1812 - French Emperor Napoleon ordered his Grande Armée of 500,000 soldiers (the largest European military force ever assembled to that date), to cross the Neman River into Russia.

1878 - The Formation of the St. John Ambulance, who were originally called the St. John Ambulance Association.

1916 – World War I: the Battle of the Somme begins with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Line.

1922 - The American Professional Football Association changed its name to the National Football League.

1938 – Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

1981 – The Humber Bridge is opened to traffic, connecting Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It would be the world's longest single-span suspension bridge for 17 years.

1997 - The U.S. Air Force released a report on the so-called "Roswell Incident," saying the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were probably life-sized dummies.

1797 - During the battle off Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands Admiral Nelson was wounded in the right arm by grapeshot and had it amputated later that afternoon.

1876 - Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and his Seventh Cavalry were killed by Sioux Indians in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.

1891 - The first episode of an Arthur Conan Doyle novel involving the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was printed in the Strand Magazine in London.

1938 – Dr. Douglas Hyde is inaugurated as the first President of Ireland.

1950 - North Korea invaded South Korea, beginning the Korean War.

1951 - The first color commercial television broadcast took place, on CBS from New York.

1967 - 400 million viewers in 26 nations watched the world's first televised satellite hook up. It was the Beatles recording of 'All you need is love' at Abbey Road.

1997 – An unmanned Progress spacecraft collides with the Russian space station Mir.

1997 – The Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat erupts resulting in the death of 19 people.

1284 – The legendary Pied Piper leads 130 children out of Hamelin, Germany.

1870 – The Christian holiday of Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.

1909 - London's Victoria & Albert Museum opened to the public.

1936 – Initial flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter.

1945 - The United Nations Charter was signed by 50 countries, in San Francisco.

1960 – Madagascar gains its independence from France.

1974 – The Universal Product Code (bar code) is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley's chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

1996 – Irish Journalist Veronica Guerin is shot in her car while in traffic in the outskirts of Dublin.

1746 - In Scotland, Flora MacDonald helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape to the Isle of Skye dressed as an Irish maid, following his defeat by the English at the Battle of Culloden.

1829 - English scientist James Smithson died after a long illness, leaving behind a will which established the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It provided for a museum, a library, and a program of research, publication, and collection in the sciences, arts, and history.

1871 - The yen became the new form of currency in Japan.

1939 - The first scheduled airline service of Boeing 314 flying boats was operated by Pan Am between Newfoundland and Southampton.

1954 – The world's first nuclear power station opens in Obninsk, near Moscow.

1967 – The world's first ATM is installed in Enfield Town, England, United Kingdom.

1988 - Dave Hurst and Alan Matthews, both from England, became the first blind climbers to reach the summit of Europe’s highest mountain, Mont Blanc - 15,781 feet high.

2008 – In a highly-scrutizined election, President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is re-elected in a landslide after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn a week earlier, citing violence against his party's supporters.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/The-wom...42477.html

Woman set to be richer than Bill Gates

You probably haven't heard of Gina Rinehart — the 57-year-old Australian widow — but you'll know the people her wealth is set to eclipse.

Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Carlos Sim are currently rated as the richest people alive by Forbes magazine, while Lakshmi Mittal is the UK's richest person and sixth-richest overall.

But Rinehart is about to leapfrog them all to the top of the list - and become the first woman to ever hold the number one spot.

Where her money's come from

Rinehart was a recently widowed mother of four in her 30s when she inherited her father's debt-laden mining firm. But she wasn't new to the business world.

She had been groomed to inherit the family firm from the age of 12 and, since taking over, has quietly gone about making it one of the world's biggest operations.

In the last year alone her fortune has more than doubled to £6 billion — making her the richest person in Australia. But that is just the start.

An investigation by US banking giant Citigroup into her new mining operations showed her wealth is only just beginning to blossom, and could increase tenfold in the next few years.

"If Rinehart was a company listed on the ASX [Australia Stock Exchange] and valued using the same 11-times price-to-earnings ratio as her partner, Rio Tinto, she would be worth $30 billion (£19 billion), putting her in the top 10 of the Forbes rich list," calculated Australian business site SmartCompany.

"Rinehart, however, has three more mines on the way, and potentially more in the exploration phase.

"If Rinehart's three new projects … match the performance of Hope Downs, and if mineral prices stay high (two big assumptions) it is possible to see Rinehart's portfolio of coal and iron ore production spinning off annual profits approaching $10 billion.

"If those best guesses prove to be correct, Rinehart is heading for a personal net worth valuation of more than $100 billion (£63 billion)."

1960: Welsh pit blast kills miners
At least 37 men have been killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in Monmouthshire, Wales.

Another eight miners are trapped, feared dead, after the accident at Six Bells Colliery, 1,000 ft (305 m) below the surface. They include two fathers, each with their two sons.

Six teams of rescuers were quickly assembled after the alarm was raised, but their progress was hampered by roof falls triggered by the explosion and the large amount of gas still present in the mine.

A spokesman for the National Coal Board said there was "little hope" of finding survivors in the Abertillery colliery, but the search for missing men would continue.

There were 700 people underground in the 70-year-old pit at the time of the blast.

'Terrific flash'

Miner Harold Legge told reporters he was about half a mile from the coal face when he heard a roar and saw a "terrific flash" at about 1045 BST.

"I had a job to breathe and I stumbled to pit bottom through the dust - afterwards I discovered there was a young man killed 20 yards [18 m] away," he said.

As reports of the accident spread, crowds of local people gathered at the pithead, anxious for more news about friends and relatives.

Six Bells Colliery is one of the largest in Monmouthshire and employs 1,450 people - many of them from Abertillery.

"A great many of them lived in the town and several more lived in one small street," said one woman.

In Context
None of the eight trapped men were rescued and the final number of dead in the accident was 45.
The UK coal industry has claimed thousands of lives since the first collieries were opened in the early 1700s. The Six Bells tragedy was one of the last big mining disasters in the country.

An investigation concluded the likely cause of the explosion was a build-up of coal gas ignited by a spark from a falling stone.



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Crowds gathered to watch the rescue




Stories From 28 Jun
1960: Welsh pit blast kills miners
2004: US transfers power back to Iraq
1976: Death sentence for mercenaries
1958: Algeria prisoners freed to win Muslim support
1991: Thatcher to retire from Commons

1389 – The Ottomans defeat the Serbian army in the bloody Battle of Kosovo, opening the way for the Ottoman conquest of Southeastern Europe.

1880 – The Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is captured at Glenrowan.

1905 - Sailors on the Russian battleship Potemkin mutinied as unrest spread through the Russian navy.

1919 – The Treaty of Versailles is signed in Paris, formally ending World War I between Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, the United States and allies on the one side and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other side.

1948 – Boxer Dick Turpin beats Vince Hawkins at Villa Park in Birmingham to become the first black British boxing champion in the modern era.

1964 – Malcolm X forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

1973 – Elections are held for the Northern Ireland Assembly, which will lead to power-sharing between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland for the first time.

1997 – Mike Tyson vs Evander Holyfield II – Tyson is disqualified in the 3rd round for biting a piece off Holyfield's ear.

2004 – Sovereign power is handed to the interim government of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority, ending the U.S. led rule of the nation.

1995: US shuttle docks with Russian space station
American and Russian spacecraft have successfully docked in orbit for the first time in 20 years.
The US shuttle Atlantis delivered a relief crew of two cosmonauts to the Russian Mir space station, signalling a new era of space co-operation between the two former Cold War rivals.

The operation to link the craft was led by the commander of the Atlantis, Robert Gibson. Flying over the Mediterranean at 17,500mph, he lined up the Mir in his sights and with barely a shudder the two craft touched.

"We have capture," he said.

After the safety of the spacecraft was confirmed with the pressure between them equalised, Gibson opened the hatch separating them.

Propelling himself through to the Russian craft he stretched out his arm to shake hands with his counterpart.


It seems hard to believe we're actually there

Atlantis commander Robert Gibson


The symbolic gesture was watched live from Moscow by US Vice President Al Gore, and by the head of NASA Dan Goldin at the Russian control centre.

The crew of the US shuttle moved into the Mir for group photos, before presenting the cosmonauts with gifts of chocolate, fruit and flowers. The Russians gave the Americans gifts of bread and salt, the traditional symbols of welcome.

Mr Gibson said: "After all the training and the preparation it seems hard to believe we're actually there but indeed we are."

The two spacecraft will remain attached for five days, giving the Mir crew time to stock up on fresh water, oxygen and nitrogen. The crews will carry out a range of scientific experiments.

A further six link-ups between the shuttle and Mir are planned, before work on the assembly of an international space station begins in orbit in two years' time.


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Watch/Listen

There are more link-ups planned between Mir and the shuttle


Footage of the docking






In Context
After 15 years in space, the Mir space station returned to Earth in March 2001.
Over the years, Mir has circled the Earth about 88,000 times, travelling 3.6bn km (2.2bn miles).

In many ways, the platform has been humankind's first real home in space, as well as being the pride of the Russian space programme.


Stories From 29 Jun
1995: US shuttle docks with Russian space station
1960: BBC unveils TV 'factory'
1974: First female president for Argentina
1986: Branson beats Atlantic speed record
2001: Diana fountain given go-ahead