On this day

356 – Emperor Constantius II issues a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire.

1408 - The Battle of Bramham Moor in which King Henry IV defeated the rebellious Percy family. The death of Percy removed the threat of rebellion in the North of England, and allowed Henry to focus more fully on Wales.

1819 - British explorer William Smith discovered the South Shetland Islands, an archipelago lying about 75 miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula, and claimed them in the name of King George III.

1906 - William Kellogg established the Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake Company, selling breakfast cereals. The cereals were originally developed as a health food for psychiatric patients.

1942 – World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese-Americans to Japanese internment camps.

1959 - The United Kingdom granted Cyprus independence, which was then formally proclaimed on 16th August 1960.

1976 - Iceland broke off diplomatic relations with Britain after the two countries failed to agree on limits in the ‘cod war’ fishing dispute.

1976 – Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps, is rescinded by President Gerald R. Ford's Proclamation 4417.

1982 - Ozzy Osbourne was arrested for urinating on The Alamo.

1985 - The first episode of the BBC soap opera, EastEnders was screened.

1986 – The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for 10 of those years.

2002 – NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.

(19-02-2012 15:13 )skully Wrote:  1942 – World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese-Americans to Japanese internment camps.

1976 – Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps, is rescinded by President Gerald R. Ford's Proclamation 4417.

The internment of over 110,000 Japanese-Americans has come to be seen as not one of America's finest moments. The policy was drawn up in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor but the internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally throughout the United States. Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast of the United States were all interned, while in Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned. Of those interned, 62% were American citizens.

In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership". The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.

Probably the best known internee was George Takei, who became famous as Mr Sulu in "Star Trek", who spent three years in camps as a child.

1962: US spaceman orbits Earth
The first American to orbit the Earth has landed safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
Marine Lieutenant John Glenn, 40, travelled about 81,000 miles (more than 130,000km) as he circled the globe three times at more than 17,000 mph (27,000kph).

Lieutenant Glenn controlled nearly two of the orbits himself after reporting "minor difficulties" with the automatic altitude control system as he completed the third circuit - the maximum anticipated.

Messages from the astronaut were transmitted by radio stations across the United States and United Kingdom and his progress was monitored by 18 ground stations around the world.

As he re-entered the atmosphere after his four-hour and 56-minute journey Lieutenant Glenn said: "Boy, that was a real fireball."

His spacecraft, Friendship Seven, landed at 2040 GMT 240 miles north-west of Puerto Rico, where it was picked up by the US destroyer Noa.

Altogether, 24 American ships were ready to pick up the astronaut and his craft from various locations across the globe.



We are really proud of you


President Kennedy

The capsule was launched from the flaming Atlas rocket at 1447 GMT from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

President Kennedy followed the mission on television and telephoned the astronaut afterwards.

"We are really proud of you. You did a wonderful job," he said.

The Queen and British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, also cabled their congratulations.

Technical problems had delayed the mission 10 times - a total of 61 days.

The US has spent over £142m on the man-in-space programme so far and Nasa has planned another three manned orbital flights this year.

The US Earth orbit took place 10 months and 10 days after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, making one circulation of the globe.


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Watch/Listen

John Glenn's trip came 10 months after a Russian circled the Earth


The BBC broadcasts John Glenn's return to earth


JFK salutes US achievements in space







In Context
John Glenn became an overnight celebrity. He was promoted to the rank of colonel in 1964.
He went into politics and was a democrat senator for Ohio - his home state - for 24 years.

He campaigned on space and defence issues in particular.

It was his interest in space medicine that led him to persuade Nasa to send him into space at the age of 77 in November 1998.

He completed the nine-day mission on the space shuttle with another six astronauts to become the oldest man in space.

Over 250,000 people - including President Clinton - gathered at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida to watch the launch.


Stories From 20 Feb
1986: Soviets launch space station Mir
1993: Two boys charged with toddler's murder
1983: Hundreds die in Assam poll violence
1989: IRA bombs Tern Hill barracks
1962: US spaceman orbits Earth
1958: Historic Sheerness docks to close

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_repor...194955.stm

1437 - James I, King of Scotland, was assassinated by a group of dissident nobles led by the earl of Atholl. The crown went to his son, James II.

1472 - Orkney and Shetland were pawned by Norway to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Princess Margaret, daughter of Christian I, King of Norway and Denmark. As the wife of King James III of Scotland she was the Queen Consort and the mother of the future King James IV of Scotland.

1547 - Edward VI, aged 9 years old, was crowned at Westminster. Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first monarch who was raised as a Protestant.

1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by President George Washington.

1816 – Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.

1872 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York City.

1877 – Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake receives its première performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

1931 – The Congress of the United States approves the construction of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge by the state of California.

1933 – Adolf Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party's upcoming election campaign.

1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.

1965 – Ranger 8 crashes into the moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.

1982 - US entrepreneur John de Lorean’s luxury sports car project in Belfast set up with over £17 million of British taxpayers’ money, went into receivership. On his return to the US he was asked bluntly, ‘Are you a con man?’

1998 – American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

2005 – Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.

2010 – In Madeira Island, Portugal, heavy rain causes floods and mudslides, resulting in at least 43 deaths, in the worst disaster in the history of the archipelago.

(20-02-2012 11:33 )bombshell Wrote:  John Glenn became an overnight celebrity

Glenn was already a minor celebrity years before the Mercury programme started. He is mentioned by name in a 1955 episode of "Sgt Bilko". His earlier fame came from an appearance on a charity edition of the quiz show "The $64,000 question" where he partnered 10 year old Eddie Hodges, winning $32,000 for a children's charity. This was followed by a number of other television appearances, including "I've Got A Secret" after he made the first transcontinental supersonic flight in 1957.

Glenn was a PR man's dream. A good-looking, God-fearing, all-American hero (decorated in both WW2 and Korea) who was at ease when giving interviews and far more comfortable with the media than the other two top astronauts of the day, the dour Alan Shepard and "Gloomy Gus" Virgil Grissom.

It was often speculated that Glenn's public standing was the reason he never flew again during the space race as NASA could not risk the backlash had he been killed, but the truth was far more simple. Glenn was already 41, by far the oldest of the Mercury astronauts, and would have been almost 50 by the time of the moon landings. There was no way he would have made the cut at that age even if his body had been up to the physical demands of the mission. Glenn knew this and left NASA in 1963.

The one fly in the ointment with Glenn's otherwise impeccable credentials was his 1962 testimony before the House Space Committee in favor of excluding women from the NASA astronaut program. The impact of such testimony, from so prestigious a national hero, is debatable, but no female astronaut flew on a NASA mission until Sally Ride in 1983 (20 years after the first Soviet female cosmonaut), and none piloted a mission until Eileen Collins in 1995, more than 30 years after the hearings.

Glenn will be 91 in July, but is still only semi-retired, as he still gives the occasional lecture at Ohio State University. He married his childhood sweetheart, Annie, in 1943, and this year they celebrate their 69th wedding anniversary.

1431 - In a trial demanded by the English, French heroine Joan of Arc was accused of heresy before the judges in Rouen.

1613 – Mikhail I is elected unanimously as Tsar by a national assembly, beginning the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia.

1795 - Freedom of worship was established in France.

1804 - British engineer Richard Trevithick demonstrated the world's first steam railway locomotive at Samuel Homfray's Penydaren Ironworks in South Wales. The engine won a wager for Homfray by hauling a load of 10 tons of iron and 70 men along 10 miles of tramway.

1842 – John Greenough is granted the first U.S. patent for the sewing machine.

1848 - The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, was published in London by the Communist League.

1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated.

1916 - World War I: the Battle of Verdun, NE France, began. It was the longest and one of the bloodiest engagements of World War I and continued until 16th December.

1947 - In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America. It could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds.

1952 - The government of Winston Churchill abolished Identity Cards - "to set the people free".

1958 - The Peace symbol, commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was designed and completed by Gerald Holtom. The logo was not copyrighted and later became known in the wider world as a general-purpose peace symbol.

1961 - The Beatles appeared for the very first time at The Cavern Club, Liverpool. They went on to make a total of 292 other appearances there.

1965 – Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.

1972 – The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon.

1988 - The grave of Boadicea, the warrior queen who fought the Romans in Britain nearly 2,000 years ago, was located by archaeologists under Platform 8 at King’s Cross railway station, London.

1995 – Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

(21-02-2012 15:05 )skully Wrote:  1952 - The government of Winston Churchill abolished Identity Cards - "to set the people free".

Political opportunism, more like! ID cards had been introduced in 1939 not just as a security measure against would be German spies but because the Government had anticipated the mass upheaval that would be caused to the population, also the almost certain need for rationing to be introduced. The war also meant that there could be no census as originally planned for 1941 so the National Identity Register would also be a useful and necessary data stopgap for planning purposes.

However, as in more recent times, the objections to such schemes come from those who point out that those in authority just cannot resist extending the use of such powers contrary to what was originally intended and when no longer needed (the so called "function creep"). For example, it became compulsory that you had to produce your card at the Post Office every time you made a transaction on your National Savings account, but there was no legal authority for this.

ID cards were not abolished after the war and it is unlikely that the system would have been abandoned at all had it not been for the test case of Willcock v Muckle. In this case a driver was stopped in connection with a motoring offence and asked to produce his card. On his refusal to do so, either then or subsequently, he was charged with an offence under the act and convicted. When the case reached appeal in the King's Bench Division, Lord Chief Justice Goddard delivered a ferocious attack upon police practice:

"Because the police have powers, it does not follow that they ought to exercise them on all occasions as a matter of routine. From what we have been told it is obvious that the police now, as a matter of routine, demand the production of a National Registration Card whenever they stop or interrogate a motorist for whatever cause ... This Act was passed for security purposes: it was never intended for the purposes for which it is now being used"

The public backlash was growing and sensing the mood of the people, the Conservatives made it an election pledge to abolish the cards, which they did after their election victory in 1951.

1371 - King Robert II of Scotland succeeded to the throne, beginning the Stuart dynasty.

1797 – The Last Invasion of Britain begins (by the French) near Fishguard, Wales. No other foreign force has managed to invade mainland Britain since.

1819 - Spain agreed to cede the remainder of its old province of Florida to the United States.

1848 – The French Revolution of 1848, which would lead to the establishment of the French Second Republic, begins.

1903 - The Cunard Liner Etruria arrived in New York with a copy of the first newspaper ever published in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It featured news reports transmitted from Britain by wireless while the ship was at sea. Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy, was one of the ship's passengers.

1944 - World War II: Allied American aircraft mistakenly bombed the Dutch towns of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer, resulting in 800 dead in Nijmegen alone.

1956 - Elvis Presley entered the music charts for the first time, with the song Heartbreak Hotel.

1980 – Miracle on Ice: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey team 4-3.

1995 – The Corona reconnaissance satellite program, in existence from 1959 to 1972, is declassified.

1997 - A sheep named Dolly was cloned by scientists in Edinburgh. It was hailed as one of the most significant breakthroughs of the decade.

2006 – At least six men stage Britain's biggest robbery, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or €78 million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.

2011 – An earthquake measuring 6.3 in magnitude strikes Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 185 people.

(22-02-2012 14:20 )skully Wrote:  1944 - World War II: Allied American aircraft mistakenly bombed the Dutch towns of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer, resulting in 800 dead in Nijmegen alone.

Nijmegen is a city I know very well with it being mrs w's home town, and the bombing is still a sore subject among many of its residents, particularly those old enough to remember it, as the American apology was considered to be late, grudging, and offered no proper explanation of who was responsible for such an almighty catastophe and how it could possibly have happened. It is only about six miles from the German border and when the Germans invaded in 1940 they swept straight through the city at 5.00 am with barely a shot fired by the handful of unprepared Dutch border guards. Many people didn't even know what had happened until they got up and found themselves occupied.

Apart from the obvious problems associated with occupation the area was hardly affected by the war in the following four years, as Gelderland is a largely rural, agricultural province with very little heavy industry, and whilst its strategic position near the Rhine meant that many locals feared what might happen in the ground battles when the advancing Allies caught up with the retreating Germans nobody expected what happened that February afternoon. The Americans were trying to hit the industrial complexes based around the German city of Kleve (Cleeves in English, as in “Anne of Cleeves”) some 20 miles away. The fact that they were still to the west of the huge confluence of the rivers Waal and Rhine should have given them some sort of indication that they were still in The Netherlands but as other conflicts have shown, the Americans seem to have an unfortunate tendency to get these things wrong.

At Nijmegen they got it spectacularly wrong, with almost 800 killed - more than died in the city during the entire war. A memorial stands in the city centre to commemorate the incident.

Today Nijmegen is the 10th biggest city in The Netherlands with a population of around 165,000. It has a large student population, a considerable “bohemian” element of arty types and the most left-wing local council in the country!

1540 - Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado began his unsuccessful search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in the American Southwest.

1863 - Lake Victoria, in Africa, was declared to be the source of the River Nile by British explorers John Speke and J.A. Grant.

1874 - Major Walter Clopton Wingfield patented an outdoor game he called ‘Sphairistike’, later known as lawn tennis. Eventually it was adopted by the All England Croquet Club which sponsored the first Wimbledon championships in 1877.

1886 – Charles Martin Hall produced the first samples of man-made aluminum, after several years of intensive work. He was assisted in this project by his older sister Julia Brainerd Hall.

1893 - Rudolf Diesel received a patent in Germany for the engine that bears his name.

1920 - The first regular broadcasting service in Britain started from Marconi’s studio in Writtle, near Chelmsford. The 30-minute programme was transmitted twice daily. Peter Eckersley opened with 'Hello! Hello! This is Two-Emma-Toc, Writtle testing.' Two-Emma-Toc stood for 2MT, the licence granted to Marconi by the General Post Office.

1941 – Plutonium is first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg.

1945 - World War II: The German town of Pforzheim was almost completely destroyed in a raid by 379 British bombers. About one quarter of the town's population (over 17,000 people) were killed in the air raid. The town was thought by the Allies to be producing precision instruments for use in the German war effort and to be a transport centre for the movement of German troops.

1945 – World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines and a commonly forgotten U.S. Navy Corpsman, reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag.

1987 – Supernova 1987a is seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

1998 - Osama bin Laden published a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and "Crusaders". The term Crusaders is commonly interpreted to refer to the people of Europe and the United States.

2007 – A train derails on an evening express service near Grayrigg, Cumbria, England, killing one person and injuring 22. This results in hundreds of points being checked over the UK after a few similar accidents.