On this day

1918 - Lithuania's national day. The Lithuanian government sign the Act of Independence for the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Inde..._Lithuania

1946 - The Sikorsky H-5, the first helicopter intended for civilian instead of military use makes its maiden flight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_H-5

1948 - Miranda, smallest of Uranus' moons, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_(moon)

1959 - Fidel Castro sworn in as Cuban prime minister.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...544431.stm

1972 - Miner's strikes turn off Britain's lights.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...757099.stm

1659 - The first British cheque (for £10) was written by Nicholas Vanacker and is now in the archives of the National Westminster Bank.

1923 - Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, he discovered the tomb 12 months previously.

1937 - Dupont patented a new thread, nylon.

1940 - World War II: The Altmark Incident. In a daring night raid, a boarding party from HMS Cossack successfully rescued 299 British prisoners of war from the Altmark, a 12,000 ton German tanker, in Norwegian waters.

1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service.

2005 - The Kyoto Protocol that aimed to slow down global warming took effect, but the US and Australia refused to support it.

2006 – The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

(16-02-2012 13:41 )skully Wrote:  1659 - The first British cheque (for £10) was written by Nicholas Vanacker and is now in the archives of the National Westminster Bank.

And it probably still hasn't cleared!

Cheques that bounce are typically returned marked "Refer to Drawer"—an instruction to contact the person issuing the cheque for an explanation as to why the cheque was not honoured. This wording was brought in after a bank was successfully sued for libel after returning a cheque with the phrase "Insufficient Funds" after making an error—the court ruled that as there were sufficient funds the statement was demonstrably false and damaging to the reputation of the person issuing the cheque.

Cheques are now virtually non-existant in many European countries, but a proposal to withdraw cheques in the UK by 2018 has been axed for the moment, and they will remain "as long as there is a demand for them".

1816 - A street in Baltimore became the first to be lit with gas from America's first gas company.

1904 – Madama Butterfly receives its première at La Scala in Milan.

1914 - Women suffragettes in Britain turned violent. They set fire to the Lawn Tennis Club and broke windows at the residence of the Home Secretary.

1924 – In Miami, Florida, Johnny Weissmuller (known for playing Tarzan) sets a new world record in the 100 meters freestyle swimming competition with a time of 57.4 seconds.

1938 - The first color television was demonstrated at the Dominion Theatre in London.

1955 - Fanny Cradock's first cookery programme Kitchen Magic, was broadcast on television.

1958 - The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was formed in Britain.

1965 – Project Ranger: The Ranger 8 probe launches on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions. Mare Tranquillitatis or the "Sea of Tranquility" would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

1972 - The British parliament voted to join the European Common Market.

1996 – In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.

2003 - The London Congestion Charge scheme began, with a fee charged for some categories of motor vehicle to travel at certain times within Charge Zone. The charge aimed to reduce congestion, and raise investment funds for London's transport system.

2011 – Libyan protests begin. In Bahrain, security forces launched a deadly Pre-dawn raid on protesters in Pearl Roundabout in Manama, the day is locally known as Bloody Thursday.

(17-02-2012 14:55 )skully Wrote:  1938 - The first color television was demonstrated at the Dominion Theatre in London.

Although John Logie Baird ultimately lost the race to develop the UK's first television service some of his ideas were way ahead of its time.

He showed colour television using a cathode ray tube in front of which revolved a disc fitted with colour filters, a method taken up by CBS and RCA in the United States. In 1941, he patented and demonstrated a system of three-dimensional television at a definition of 500 lines. On 16 August 1944, he gave the world's first demonstration of a fully electronic colour television display. His 600-line colour system used triple interlacing, using six scans to build each picture. In 1943, the Hankey Committee was appointed to oversee the resumption of television broadcasts after the war. Baird persuaded them to make plans to adopt his proposed 1000-line Telechrome electronic colour system as the new post-war broadcast standard. The picture quality on this system would have been comparable to today's HDTV. The Hankey Committee's plan lost all momentum partly due to the challenges of postwar reconstruction. The monochrome 405-line standard remained in place until 1985 in some areas, and it was three decades until the introduction of the 625-line system in 1964 and (PAL) colour in 1967. A demonstration of large screen three-dimensional television by the BBC was reported in March 2008, over 60 years after Baird's demonstration.

The thought that we could have had HD sixty years ago is just amazing!

1996: Bomb blast destroys London bus
Three people are feared dead and eight have been hurt after a bomb exploded on a double decker bus in the heart of London's West End.
The front of the bus was destroyed by the force of the blast on the Aldwych near the Strand.

The bus had travelled over Waterloo Bridge along Lancaster Place and was passing a Ministry of Defence building and turning onto Aldwych when the bomb exploded.

The explosion comes just nine days after the IRA ended its ceasefire with a bombing in the Docklands area of London, which killed two people.

Scotland Yard says it received no warning of the explosion which happened at 2238GMT.

The blast, thought to have been on a New Cross to King's Cross bus, could be heard five miles (eight kilometres) away and witnesses described devastation at the scene.

Six people have been taken to St Thomas's Hospital. Three of the injured have "significant" head injuries.

A further two people have been taken to University College Hospital.

One man is "serious but stable" in intensive care while another was admitted with minor cuts.

Three of the casualties were in two cars in front of the bus when the explosion happened.

Paul Rowan, 31, a BBC employee, described how the bus was a tangled mess, with metal and glass scattered over about 50 yards.

"I saw one woman who looked in a very bad way. She was face down on the road with bad-looking head injuries. There was blood all over the place."


There was tangled metal and glass everywhere.

Witness Paul Rowan

Ten ambulances, five fire engines and four paramedic units were called to the scene.

A large area of the Strand was cordoned off amid fears over another device and police with loudspeakers warned people to move away or to stay inside restaurants, theatres and hotels.

Charing Cross railway station was closed, preventing many people from catching their last trains home to south-east London and Kent.

No-one has admitted carrying out the attack but one theory is that the bomb exploded as it was being taken to another destination in London.

Detectives are sifting through the wreckage and the London Central bus company is to hand a tape from the video recorder fitted to the bus over to Scotland Yard for examination.

The Prime Minister John Major was being briefed by officials at 10 Downing Street about the attack. The Irish Government condemned the explosion as "an appalling outrage".



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Police said they received no warning of the bus bombing


London reacts to bus blast







In Context
Irishman Brendan Woolhead, who suffered a fractured skull and pelvis in the explosion, was initially regarded as the prime suspect and placed under police guard in hospital.
Mr Woolhead's name was cleared but he died of an asthma attack in October 1996.

It later emerged that one person died in the explosion - IRA bomber Edward O'Brien. He was blown up and killed by his own device when it accidentally detonated.

Bob Newitt, 49, the bus driver hurt in the blast, suffered back and chest injuries while perforated eardrums have left him permanently deaf.

Several devices were found in the months after the bombing as the IRA launched a series of attacks on mainland Britain following the breakdown of a ceasefire.

On April 24, 32lb of semtex - the biggest bomb of its kind ever planted on the mainland - failed to explode on Hammersmith Bridge in west London.

On 15 June 1996, a massive bomb exploded in a busy shopping area in Manchester. Two hundred people were injured. Police believe the IRA planted the device.



Stories From 18 Feb
1996: Bomb blast destroys London bus
1978: Belfast bomb suspects rounded up
1981: Thatcher gives in to miners
2005: Ban on hunting comes into force
1954: McCarthy hunts 'army Communists'
1969: Lulu ties knot with Bee Gee

3102 B.C. In the Hindu chronology, the start of the Kali Yuga era (which will continue 432,000 years)

1504 - The 12 year-old future King Henry VIII was invested as Prince of Wales.

1637 – Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepts an important Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by 6 warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.

1688 - Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania adopted the first formal antislavery resolution in America.

1876 - A direct telegraph line was established between Britain and New Zealand.

1885 - Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was published.

1911 – The first official flight with air mail takes place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away.

1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army begins the systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore.

1954 – The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles, California.

1972 – The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628 invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.

1978 – The first Ironman Triathlon competition takes place on the island of Oahu, won by Gordon Haller.

1979 – Snow falls in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history.

1981 - Oxford University announced that Sue Brown would become the first woman cox in the history of the University Boat Race.

2001 - FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested and charged with selling American secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia over a 15-year period.

2001 – Seven-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt dies in an accident during the Daytona 500.

2004 – Up to 295 people, including nearly 200 rescue workers, die near Neyshabur in Iran when a runaway freight train carrying sulfur, petrol and fertilizer catches fire and explodes.

(18-02-2012 11:21 )bombshell Wrote:  Irishman Brendan Woolhead, who suffered a fractured skull and pelvis in the explosion, was initially regarded as the prime suspect and placed under police guard in hospital.
Mr Woolhead's name was cleared but he died of an asthma attack in October 1996.

The immediate media reaction to Mr Woolhead was similar to that of Joanna Yeats's landlord. The police couldn't be bothered to investigate properly before telling the media that he was an IRA terrorist and The Sun described him as "A Fiend" but whereas it was some weeks before there was a breakthrough in the Yeats case it became clear within 48 hours that Mr Woolhead was a completely innocent bystander. He wasn't even on the bus as initially reported, he had the astonishing misfortune of walking along the pavement as the bus passed him and exploded and the only thing he was guilty of was of being Irish and in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Within 24 hours the media were back-tracking and he was "the innocent Brendan". Private Eye reported at the time how the papers had been falling over themselves, frantically calling his lawyers to get the matter settled after a public backlash against their treatment of an innocent man. It is believed that he received around £300,000 in libel damages from the papers and should have been able to rebulid his shattered life.

But there was a twist in the tale and his death within a year received very little coverage in the tabloids - the papers weren't going to make that mistake again in a hurry. His terrible injuiries had caused him to become addicted to the large quantities of opiates prescribed to him in hospital, and with his new found wealth he had no trouble in finding people prepared to supply him with heroin and morphine.

He signed up to a controversial new detox programme at a private clinic and it was whilst receiving treatment that he suffered the asthma attack which led to cardiac arrest and he died. It was alleged that the heavily marketed miracle cure was too good to be true, and had more to do with the clinic lining their pockets than caring for patients. At the inquest the coroner agreed, bringing in a verdict that he died as a result of "grossly negligent treatment". A doctor at the clinic was struck off over the incident and the clinic closed shortly afterwards.

This was mentioned on BBC TV News this morning.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin,Australia.
On the 19th of February 1942, Australia's mainland came under attack for the first time by the Japanese forces. The attack was planned and led by the commander who was also responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbour ten weeks earlier. Although it was a less significant military target, a greater number of bombs were dropped on Darwin than were used in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
It is both the first and the largest single attack mounted by a foreign power against Australia.

The raids killed at least 243 people and between 300 and 400 were wounded. Twenty military aircraft were destroyed, eight ships at anchor in the harbour were sunk, and most civil and military facilities in Darwin were destroyed.

Info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Darwin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_o...E2%80%9343

1674 - The third Anglo-Dutch war ends with the signing of the treaty of Westminster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Anglo-Dutch_War

2001 - The UK Foot and Mouth epidemic forces the closure of a 5 mile zone around an abbatoir in Essex.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...145501.stm