On this date in 1983, Two-Tone Records released the compilation LP, THIS ARE TWO TONE, (November 26th, 1983).
Serving to highlight the high energy of the early 80s ska-revival as well as the depth of the label's roster, ‘This are Two Tone’ offered six tracks from The Specials, three from The Selecter, two from The Beat, and one each from Madness, The Bodysnatchers, The Swinging Cats, Rico and Rhoda Dakar.
The video here is the compilations album's opening track and debut single from The Specials, GANGSTERS, a reworking of Prince Buster's AL CAPONE.
27th November is Lancashire Day - to commemorate the day in 1295 when Lancashire first sent representatives to Parliament, to attend the Model Parliament of King Edward I.
1582 William Shakespeare, aged 18, married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter in 1583 and a twin boy and girl in 1585. The boy died aged 11.
1826 John Walker invents friction match in England.
1895 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel's will establishes the Nobel Prize.
1911 Audience throws vegetables at actors for 1st recorded time in US.
1914 Miss Mary Allen and Miss E F Harburn became the first two trained policewomen to be granted official status in Britain when they reported for duty at Grantham, Lincolnshire.
1920 The birth of Harry "Buster" Merryfield, English actor best known for starring as Uncle Albert in the BBC comedy series Only Fools and Horses.
1925 Ernie Wise, 'straight man' to comedian Eric Morecambe, was born.
1934 Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI.
1944 Between 3,500 and 4,000 tons of explosives stored in a cavern beneath Staffordshire detonated, killing 68 people and wiping out an entire farm. The explosion was heard over 100 miles away in London, and recorded as an earthquake in Geneva.
1966 The first Lancashire Day to commemorate the day in 1295 when Lancashire first sent representatives to Parliament, to attend the Model Parliament of King Edward I.
1967 President de Gaulle said ‘Non’ to British entry into the Common Market.
1975 Ross McWhirter, TV presenter and co-editor of The Guinness Book of Records, was assassinated by two Provisional IRA gunmen after he had offered a £50,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for several high-profile bombings.
1976 The four millionth 'Mini' car left the production line.
1990 John Major won his second ballot for leadership of the Conservative Party and became Prime Minister. (Mrs. Thatcher had resigned as Prime Minister 5 days previously.)
2008 The Queen Elizabeth II liner (the QE2) retired from active Cunard service. It was planned for her to begin conversion to a floating hotel; however, she remains moored at Port Rashid (Dubai) facing an uncertain future.
2012 The Eurozone announces that it will make loans of 43.7 billion euros to Greece.
2013 The death of actor, Lewis Collins, aged 67. He was the quintessential British hard man, best known as Bodie in the TV the series 'The Professionals'.
2013 "Frozen", the highest-grossing animated film of all time, starring Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, is released.
2014 A consortium made up of 'Stagecoach' and 'Virgin' won the franchise to run the East Coast mainline rail route. The firms promised to invest £140m in the route over eight years, and to pay the government £3.3bn for the contract.
2014 Australian Test batsman Phillip Hughes died aged 25, two days after being struck on the top of the neck by a ball during a domestic match in Sydney. He also played for Hampshire, Middlesex and Worcestershire. His final innings score was adjusted to show him being 63 not out, after an update from Cricket Australia.
2014 The American wife of London financier Sir Chris Hohn was awarded £337m by a High Court judge in a divorce case. The sum was thought to be the biggest of its kind made by a judge in England. The couple separated following 17 years of marriage.
2014 The car registration plate "25 O" was sold at auction for £518,000, setting a new British record.
2016 German Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg clinches his only F1 World Driver's Championship with victory in season ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix; wins title by 5 points from teammate Lewis Hamilton.
2017 North Korean ghost ship washes up Akita prefecture beach, Japan with 8 skeletons on board, 4th boat in a month.
2017 8 Donkeys freed from jail after 4 days in Orai, Uttar Pradesh, India for eating plants.
Hartlepools United's Victoria Ground recorded an unwelcomed footballing first - the first English ground to be bombed in a war-time air-raid. Two First World War German Zeppelins jettisoned their bombs over Hartlepools when confronted by the Royal Flying Corps, destroying the main stand at the Victoria Ground. After the war ended the club demanded £2500 from the German Government to cover the damage - they didn't get it!
Football On This Day - 27th November 1957.
Future England manager Bobby Robson made his England playing debut, against France at Wembley. Times have changed - he had first discovered that he had been selected for the England squad when he read the news in a newspaper stop press column! He scored twice in the 4-0 victory. Manchester United's Tommy Taylor scored the other two but tragically that was the last time that he, Duncan Edwards and Roger Byrne were to play for England with the Munich tragedy claiming their lives before England played again, against Scotland in April 1958. Despite scoring twice on his debut Bobby Robson also missed the Scotland match being dropped and replaced by a player who made his debut. That player was Bobby Charlton - not sure if he had much of an England career after that!!
Football On This Day - 27th November 2006.
The Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland marked the first anniversary of the death of George Best when they issued 1 million £5 notes in honour of the greatest player to come from the north of Ireland. They were legal tender but I bet not many were found in change as they immediately became worth more than face value in the souvenir market.
1660 At Gresham College in Central London, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray founded what was later known as the Royal Society, an organization dedicated to promoting excellence in science.
1717 Blackbeard attacks and captures a French merchant slave ship, which he renames as his flagship the "Queen Anne's Revenge".
1720 Anne Bonny and Mary Read are tried, found guilty of pirating, and sentenced to death in Spanish Town, Jamaica, although their discovered pregnancies win them stays of execution.
1757 The birth of the poet William Blake. His work included a poem that began 'And did those feet in ancient time', which became the words for the anthem Jerusalem.
1814 The Times newspaper was, for the first time, printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer. It signalled the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.
1895 America's 1st auto race organised by the "Chicago Times-Herald" - Chicago to Evanston and back; 6 cars, 55 miles, Frank Duryea wins averaging 7 MPH.
The winning vehicle, a Duryea Motor Wagon Company vehicle driven by Frank Duryea.
1907 In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theatre.
1919 Nancy Astor became Britain's first woman MP, holding a safe Plymouth seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election caused by her husband's elevation to the peerage.
1933 A Dallas grand jury delivers a murder indictment against Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow for the January 1933 killing of Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis.
1967 All horse racing in Britain was suspended 'indefinitely' to help prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
1968 The death of the children's author Enid Blyton. She wrote more than 800 books over 40 years including Noddy, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven.
1971 An English farmer uncovered a major immigrant smuggling operation when he rammed a plane which had landed at a disused airfield on his farm in Kimbolton, 10 miles from Huntingdon. The pilot escaped but police officers arrived soon after the incident and detained the five occupants of the plane.
1990 Margaret Thatcher made her last speech outside 10 Downing Street following her resignation as Prime Minister.
1997 MPs in the House of Commons approved a Private Member's Bill, introduced by Labour MP Michael Foster, to ban fox hunting.
1997 Final episode of "Beavis & Butt-head" on MTV.
1999 Eleven people were injured when a nude swordsman attacked churchgoers at St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church in London.
2006 A modern spy drama unfolded following the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London when traces of polonium-210 radiation were found at central London addresses.
2011 British company Captive Media announced details of its urinal mounted, urine-controlled games console for men. It called it the first 'hands-free' video gaming console of its kind, with games on offer including a skiing challenge, and a multiple choice pub quiz. A noted side effect was that the toilets became markedly cleaner, as a new premium was set on accuracy.
2013 A Newport man (James Howells) searched a landfill site in South Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away, worth over £4m. The drive contained 7,500 bitcoins, a virtual form of currency for use online. The drive was not found.
2014 Jordan Winn was jailed for 13 months after he was caught driving at nearly 100mph in a 30mph zone. Winn blamed his Staffordshire bull terrier, who he said was in the footwell of his Volvo S60, for sitting on the accelerator pedal.
2015 British boxer Tyson Fury beats Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko by unanimous decision to win WBA, WBO, IBF, IBO, The Ring magazine and lineal heavyweight titles in Düsseldorf, Germany; ends Klitschko's 9 year reign as champion.
1530 Thomas Wolsey, English Cardinal and Lord Chancellor, died en route from York to his imprisonment in the Tower of London.
1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's army moves into Manchester and occupies Carlisle.
1775 Sir James Jay invents invisible ink.
1781 The crew of the British slave ship Zong, murdered 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance. The resulting court cases, brought by the ship-owners, sought compensation from the insurers for their lost cargo. The court established that the deliberate killing of slaves could, in some circumstances be legal. It was a landmark in the battle against the African slave trade of the eighteenth century, and inspired abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, leading to the foundation of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787.
1870 Compulsory education proclaimed in England.
1877 US inventor Thomas Edison demonstrates his hand-cranked phonograph for the first time.He demonstrated the device on November 29, 1877, having announced its invention days before.Edison without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: "Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?" The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph..."
1897 1st motorcycle race (Surrey, England).
1907 British nurse Florence Nightingale, aged 87, was presented with the Order of Merit by Edward VII for her work tending the wounded during the Crimean War.
1934 In Britain, the first live radio broadcast of a royal wedding - the marriage of the Duke of Kent to Princess Marina at Westminster Abbey in London.
1940 The city of Liverpool endured nearly eight hours of bombing, which left 166 people dead and 2,000 people homeless. At the time, Prime Minister Winston Churchill described the tragedy as "the single worst civilian incident of the war."
1956 Panic-buying broke out at garages across the country as the government gave details of its petrol rationing plans. Petrol had been in short supply since the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser, took over the running of the Suez Canal four months previously.
1962 Britain and France announced a joint agreement to design and build Concorde, the world's first supersonic airliner.
1963 The Beatles record I Want To Hold Your Hand was released, with advance orders of one million in the UK alone.
1965 Housewife Mary Whitehouse began her Clean Up TV Campaign by setting up the National Viewers and Listeners' Association to tackle 'bad taste and irresponsibility'.
1972 Co-founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell releases Pong, the 1st commercially successful video game, in Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California Initially it was just designed as a training exercise by Atari employee Alan Alcorn and took the form of a two-dimensional ping pong game based on table tennis.
1975 British racing driver Graham Hill was killed in an aircraft crash at Arkley, Hertfordshire.
2001 George Harrison, musician, actor, songwriter and former lead guitarist with the Beatles died of lung cancer, aged 58. Often referred to as the 'quiet Beatle', Harrison became an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, and introduced it to the other Beatles, as well as to their Western audiences.
2013 A double engine failure caused a police helicopter to crash into the Clutha Vaults pub in Glasgow. Ten people died in the accident; all three on board, six on the ground and another person died two weeks later from injuries received.
2015 Great Britain won the Davis Cup for the first time since 1936 after Andy Murray beat Belgium's David Goffin to clinch the decisive point in Ghent.
1016 Cnut the Great (Canute), King of Denmark, claimed the English throne after the death of Edmund II, often known as Edmund Ironside. The cognomen 'Ironside' was given to Edmund because of his valour in resisting the Danish invasion led by Cnut the Great.
1487 The first German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot), is promulgated in Munich by Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria stating beer should be brewed from only three ingredients – water, malt and hops.
1648 English Parliamentary army captures King Charles I.
1782 Britain signs agreement recognizing US independence.
1872 The first football match between England and Scotland took place, at Hamelton Crescent Glasgow. It ended in a 0-0 draw.
1874 Birth of Sir Winston Leonard Churchill, British statesman, journalist, historian and Nobel prize-winner for literature. He was a descendant of the great Duke of Marlborough, and was born born in Blenheim Palace. The great wartime Prime Minister, with his highly quotable speeches, was considered by many as ‘the greatest living Englishman’.
1902 American Old West: Second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang Kid Curry Logan sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor.
1913 Charlie Chaplin made his film debut without the moustache and cane in 'Making a Living'.
1924 1st photo facsimile transmitted across Atlantic by radio (London-NYC).
1928 Australian cricket legend Don Bradman makes an inauspicious Test debut; scores 18 & 1 vs England in 1st Test in Brisbane; dropped to 12th man for 2nd Test.
1934 The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman (Engine No. 4472) became the first to officially exceed 100mph.
1936 The Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire. The spectacular blaze was seen miles away. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, it was originally erected in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition in 1851.
1946 Bradman scores 187 in 1st Test Cricket v England at the Gabba.
1955 Floodlights were used for the first time at Wembley Stadium, during an international game with Spain.
1956 At 21 years, 10 months, 3 weeks, 5 days Floyd Patterson becomes youngest world heavyweight boxing champion; KOs Archie Moore in 5th round in Chicago; first Olympic gold medalist to win a professional heavyweight title.
1966 Barbados gains independence from Great Britain (National Day).
1968 The Trade Descriptions Act came into force making it a crime for a trader to knowingly sell an item with a misleading label or description.
1979 Pink Floyd's "The Wall" released, sells 6 million copies in 2 weeks.
1982 "Thriller", 6th studio album by Michael Jackson is released.
1982 A letter bomb exploded inside No. 10, Downing Street, injuring a member of staff. The package was sent by animal rights activists. Margaret Thatcher was at home when the device exploded but she was not hurt in the blast.
1983 Seaweed contaminated by heavy radioactivity was discovered in Cumbria, near the Sellafield nuclear plant.
1987 At Christie's auctioneers in London, a painting by Edgar Degas, 'The Laundry Maids', was sold for £7.48 million.
1999 British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merged to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defence contractor and the fourth largest aerospace company in the world.
2007 Evel Knievel dies in Clearwater, Florida, aged 69.
2013 The Hon. Edward Charles d'Olier Gibson, who appealed his conviction for assaulting a police officer, claiming that he did not know what a modern policeman looked like, had his case thrown out by a judge who ordered him to pay prosecution costs of £620. Gibson was also disqualified from driving for 12 months for drink-driving and was fined a total of £2,350 for the offences.
The first ever official international match was played when England played Scotland at the West of Scotland Cricket Club ground in Partick. A crowd of around 4,000 saw a 0-0 draw.
1135 England's King Henry I died. He had fallen ill seven days earlier after eating too many lampreys (jawless fish resembling eels). He was 66, and had ruled for 35 years.
1581 Edmund Campion (later St. Edmund) and three other Jesuits were martyred. He was tried on a charge of treason for promoting Catholicism and was hanged in London.
1642 The 1st English Civil War : A victory for Parliamentarian Forces when Colonel Sir William Waller stormed Farnham Castle in Kent. It became his base for the remainder of the war.
1761 Birth of Madame Marie Tussaud (Grosholz), Swiss-born French waxworks modeller. During the French Revolution she made death masks from the severed heads of the famous. In 1800, separated from her husband, she toured Britain with her waxworks, eventually setting up a permanent exhibition in London.
1868 The opening of London's Smithfield meat market.
1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual went on sale, with 'A Study in Scarlet' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which first introduced the detective, Sherlock Holmes.
1942 The Beveridge Report, written by Sir William Beveridge, proposed a welfare state for Britain, offering care to all from the cradle to the grave. It revolved around a compulsory National Insurance scheme to provide all adults with free medical treatment, unemployment benefit and old age pensions.
1953 Hugh Hefner publishes 1st edition of Playboy magazine, featuring Marilyn Monroe as the magazine's 1st centerfold.
1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama.
1965 The Government put forward a plan to improve the lot of both farmers and consumers by encouraging intensive farming.
1969 A statue of former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was unveiled in the House of Commons.
1971 John Lennon and Yoko Ono release "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" in US.
1987 Digging begins to link England & France under English Channel.
1990 Britain and France were joined for the first time in thousands of years as the last wall of rock separating two halves of the Channel Tunnel was removed.
2010 Large parts of the UK were brought to a standstill by the early freeze. Temperatures plunged again overnight to -16C (3F) in the Scottish Highland after one of the coldest starts to December in more than 20 years. Some 4,000 schools were closed, the Forth Road Bridge was closed for the first time since it opened in 1964 and Edinburgh and Gatwick airports were shut. The Met Office issued heavy snow warnings for Scotland and north-east, eastern and south-east England.
2018 British boxer Tyson Fury dominates much of the fight but survives 2 knockdowns to force a split decision draw with defending WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder at the Staples Center, Los Angeles.
2019 Earliest traceable patient, a 55-year-old man, develops symptoms of a novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in Wuhan, China.
An outbreak of an unknown virus causing pneumonia-like symptoms was discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan. This new coronavirus (technically named SARS-CoV-2; the disease caused by the virus is COVID-19) is thought to have originated at a 'wet market' in the city, where various animals, both live and dead, were sold. This was similar to how the SARS outbreak, also a coronavirus, started in 2002.
Doctors in Wuhan were at first admonished by police for reporting a new virus to their colleagues,before the Chinese government informed the World Health Organization of the mysterious infection on December 31. Among these doctors was Li Wenliang, who helped blow the whistle on the infection, before later dying of it in hospital.
Second Division Liverpool announced that Bill Shankly would be their new manager. The former Carlisle, Grimsby, Workington and Huddersfield Town boss proved to be the man who transformed the Anfield club into one of the English greats.
Birthdate: 2 September 1913 Birthplace: Glenbuck, Scotland Date of death: 29 September 1981 Other clubs as manager: Carlisle United, Grimsby Town, Workington, Huddersfield Town Arrived from: Huddersfield Town Signed for LFC: 1 December 1959 LFC league games as manager: 609 Total LFC games as manager: 783 Honours: League Championship 1963/64, 1965/66, 1972/73; Second Division 1961/62; FA Cup 1965, 1974; UEFA Cup 1973; Manager of the Year 1973 First game in charge: 19.12.1959 Contract Expiry: 12.07.1974.
On this date in 1976, the SEX PISTOLS were brought in to replace Freddie Mercury and Queen in an interview on the edition of the Today TV show, a regional news programme broadcast on Thames Television, (December 1st, 1976). In October 1976 the Pistols signed a contract with EMI Records and, a month later, released their debut single, 'Anarchy in the UK', opening with Rotten's banshee scream of "I am an antichrist." At that stage, there were still only a couple of dozen people who would have believed him. On December 1st, Thames TV's early evening Today show booked them as a last-minute substitute for Freddie Mercury and Queen, having no idea who or what they were. Their interviewer was Bill Grundy, an ill-natured hack almost as drunk as they were, who challenged them to "Say something outrageous". Steve Jones obliged by calling him a "dirty ****" and a "**** rotter". It was, amazingly, only the third recorded use of the F-word on British television, and the first as an expletive rather than in abstract intellectual debate. While Grundy was being insulted, with Matlock commenting about how the presenter was like a "granddad", he tried to involve the female members of the band's entourage, known as The Bromley Contingent, that appeared with them and which included Siouxsie Sioux. He said "What about you girls, behind?" Sioux said she was "enjoying myself". Grundy responded "Are you?" to which she and Simone Thomas chorused "Yeah." Grundy responded "Ah, that's what I thought you were doing." Siouxsie continued feigning interest and said, "I've always wanted to meet you", to which Grundy responded by saying, "Did you really? We'll meet afterwards, shall we?" Interpreting this as a sexual comment, Steve Jones responded by calling the interviewer a "dirty sod" and a "dirty old man." Grundy further goaded Jones to "say something outrageous", a challenge that Jones met by calling Grundy a "dirty ****" and a "dirty ****". Grundy responded, "What a clever boy" and Jones added "What a **** rotter!" As the show ended and the credits rolled, Grundy mouthed, "Oh ****" as the band began dancing to the closing theme, Windy by The Association. "We didn't go on TV intending to do that," recalled Steve Jones. "We thought we were just going to talk about our next tour. McLaren always claims the whole thing was his big publicity coup. But at the time, he was genuinely **** himself. He thought that was going to be the end for us." Instead, next day, the band found themselves surfing on a wave of pricelessly bad publicity that not even the mid-1960s Stones had equalled.
1697 The rebuilt St Paul’s Cathedral, the work of Sir Christopher Wren, was opened. The previous cathedral had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
1755 The second Eddystone Lighthouse (located off the coast of Devon) was destroyed by fire. Four lighthouses have been built on the site. The light was lit on the fourth, (Douglass's lighthouse, designed by James Douglass) in 1882 and it is still in use.
1769 Britain's first cremation took place, in St. George's burial ground, London.
1859 Abolitionist John Brown hanged for murder, treason, and conspiring slaves to revolt at Charles Town, Virginia.
1899 John Cobb, British racing driver was born. He made money as a director of fur brokers and could therefore afford to specialise in large capacity motor-racing. He was born and lived in Esher, Surrey, near the Brooklands race track. He broke the land speed record at Bonneville on August 23, 1939, achieving 367.91 mph. Without this being beaten he raised the record to 394.19 mph in 1947. He died in 1952, attempting to break the world water speed record on Loch Ness in the jet speedboat Crusader at a speed in excess of 200 mph.
1901 King C. Gillette begins selling safety razor blades.
1907 The Professional Footballer’s Association was formed, after a meeting at the Imperial Hotel, Manchester.
1927 1st Model A Ford sold, for $385.
1929 Britain’s first 22 public telephone boxes came into service. They were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and installed as part of a new scheme for policing and were made available for general use in the Barnes, Kew and Richmond Districts. The red K6 phone boxes have become a British icon and many can be found in tourist cities. Note:- The 100,000 BT phone box was installed at Dunsop Bridge in the "exact centre of Great Britain and 401 associated islands".
1932 Australia ends Day 1 of controversial 'Bodyline' cricket series v England at 290/6 in Sydney; Stan McCabe 127no (finishes at 187no); notorious England fast bowler Harold Larwood takes 4 wickets; England wins by 10 wickets.
1943 The first Bevin Boys, aged between 18 and 25 were directed into the mining industry. Many miners had been called up to the armed forces, resulting in a grave shortage of coal.
1966 The Mini skirt, the symbol of the Swinging Sixties, was banned from the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.
1982 The film Gandhi received its premiere in London. It won 8 Oscars.
1995 28 year old Nick Leeson was sentenced for financial dealings which contributed to the fall of Barings Bank, Britain's oldest merchant bank. He admitted to a judge in Singapore two charges of fraud connected with Baring's £860m ruin.
1997 Former wrestler Big Daddy (real name Shirley Crabtree) died in Halifax, aged 67. He was often partnered against Giant Haystacks (Martin Ruane), who died in 1998, aged 52.
2008 Ballon d'Or: Manchester United's Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo wins his first award as best football player in the world; Barcelona forward Lionel Messi 2nd, Liverpool striker Fernando Torres 3rd.
2019 FIFA Ballon d'Or: Barcelona forward Lionel Messi wins his record 6th award from Liverpool's Dutch defender Virgil van Dijk.
1795 Sir Rowland Hill, postal pioneer and founder of the 'Penny Post' was born.
1820 Thomas Beecham, English manufacturer and inventor of Beecham's pills, was born.
1836 Three people were killed at Great Corby, near Carlisle in Cumbria, in the first fatal railway derailment.
1868 Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time. He won office for three more terms.
1894 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, died, aged 45 on the island of Samoa.
1909 King Edward VII dissolved Parliament and taxes on alcohol, tobacco and cars were suspended as no budget had been passed. Edward was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and had a reputation as a 'playboy prince'.
1926 In an episode as puzzling and intriguing as any in her many novels, Agatha Christie disappeared from her Surrey home and was discovered on the 14th December staying under an assumed name at the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate. She said she had no recollection of how she came to be in Yorkshire.
1936 The Royal Family cancelled all engagements as news broke of Edward VIII's determination to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson.
1944 Britain 'stood down' the Home Guard - formed in 1939 to defend Britain from invasion by Germany. They were officially disbanded in December 1945.
1948 The birth of John Michael 'Ozzy' Osbourne, English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. He rose to prominence as lead singer of the band Black Sabbath and became known as the 'Prince of Darkness'.
1961 The whole of south East England was plunged into darkness for two hours, due to an error by an electrician.
1966 Television pop group "The Monkees" make their live concert debut at the Honolulu International Centre Arena, in Hawaii.
1967 1st human heart transplant performed in South Africa by Dr Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky.
1972 Convair 990A charter crashes in Tenerife Canary Island, 155 die.
1977 Wings started a nine week run at No.1 with Mull of Kintyre. It was the first single to sell over 2 million in the UK.
1979 11 members of the audience trampled to death during a stampede to claim unreserved seats for a concert by The Who at The Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati, Ohio.
1984 British Telecom was privatised. The shares immediately made massive gains.
1984 Bhopal disaster: Union Carbide pesticide plant leak 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, kills 2,259 (official figure) - other estimates as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured.
1984 "Do They Know It's Christmas" single written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure and sung by Band Aid is released in the UK.
1988 Junior Health minister Edwina Currie provoked outrage by saying that most of Britain's egg production was infected with the salmonella bacteria.
1992 Two bombs exploded in the centre of Manchester injuring 65 people. Miraculously no-one was killed, but much of the city centre had to be rebuilt.
2007 Gillian Gibbons, a 54 year old teacher from Liverpool was released after eight days in custody and handed over to British officials in Sudan after being jailed for letting her class name a teddy bear Muhammad.
1154 The only Englishman to become a pope, Nicholas Breakspear, became Adrian IV. Nicholas Breakspear was a member of the family which until recent years brewed beer in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
1586 Queen Elizabeth I conferred the death sentence on Mary Queen of Scots after discovering a plot to assassinate her and bring about a Roman Catholic uprising.
1791 The Observer, Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper, was first published.
1798 British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger announced the introduction of Income Tax to help finance the war against France.
1829 Britain outlaws "suttee" in India (widow burning herself to death on her husband's funeral pyre).
1872 Crew from the British brigantine Die Gratia boarded a deserted ship drifting in mid Atlantic. The captain's table was set for a meal aboard the US ship Marie Celeste but the Captain, crew and passengers were all missing.
1930 Vatican approves rhythm method for birth control.
1937 The first issue of the Dandy comic. With a fan club of over 350,000, Desperate Dan proved a durable character. A copy of this first edition is worth between £850 and £1,000. The closure, on 4th December 2012, coincided with its 75th anniversary and the final print edition included a pullout reprint of the very first edition of the comic.
1948 George Orwell completed the final draft of the book Nineteen Eighty Four which was published on 8th June 1949.
1952 At least 4,000 people died in a week, from breathing difficulties, during a severe London smog.
1954 The first Burger King is opened in Miami, Florida, USA.
1961 Birth control pills became available on the NHS.
1980 English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbanded, following the death of drummer John Bonham on 25th September.
1997 Europe's health ministers voted to ban tobacco advertising throughout the European Union although they agreed that motor-racing, which relied heavily on sponsorship and advertising by tobacco companies, should be exempt for another 8 years.
2012 The highest lottery prize ever to remain unclaimed (£63.8m) eventually went to good causes as the winer did not come forward by the deadline of 23:00 GMT.
2014 Knutsford council, in Cheshire, approved plans to widen the town's pavements. 220 years previously, spinster Lady Jane Stanley had paid for narrow pavements to be laid in the town, to prevent lovers from strolling arm in arm.
1697 The first Sunday service was held in the new St Paul's Cathedral, London.
1717 English pirate Blackbeard ransacks the merchant sloop "Margaret" and keeps her captain, Henry Bostock prisoner for 8 hours before releasing him. Bostock later provides 1st record of Blackbeard's appearance, and the source for his name.
1766 James Christie, the founder of the famous auctioneers, held his first sale in London. Christie's main London salesroom is on King Street in St. James's, where it has been based since 1823.
1839 The postage rate in Britain was changed to a standard charge of 4d (4 old pence) a half ounce instead of being charged by distance.
1848 US President James K. Polk triggers Gold Rush of 1849 by confirming a gold discovery in California.
1863 The rules of Association Football were published.
1876 Daniel Stillson patents 1st practical pipe wrench.
1893 Electric car built at the Dixon Carriage works in Toronto, could go 15 miles between charges.
1905 The roof of Charing Cross Railway Station in London collapsed, killing five people.
1913 Britain forbade the selling of arms to Ireland.
1928 England beat Australia by a record 675 runs in the Test at Brisbane.
1933 Prohibition ends in the US when 21st Amendment to the US Constitution ratified.
1945 Flight 19 the "Lost Squadron" of 5 torpedo bombers and 14 airmen is lost east of Florida in the supposed Bermuda Triangle.
1952 The Great Smog. A cold fog descended on London, combining with air pollution and killed at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that followed.
1958 The Queen dialled Edinburgh and spoke to the Lord Provost from Bristol, to inaugurate the first direct dialled trunk call, known as STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling)
1958 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan opened the Preston bypass in Lancashire. It was the first stretch of motorway in Britain and is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.
1973 During a petrol shortage, the government imposed a 50mph speed limit to save fuel.
1974 Final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus airs on BBC TV.
1991 Robert Maxwell's business empire collapsed with huge debts of more than £1bn and revelations about misappropriation of money in pension funds.
1993 The record by Mr Blobby, a pink-and-yellow spotted BBC television star, reached number one in the charts.
2008 Former NFL star O.J. Simpson is sentenced to 33 years in prison for kidnapping and armed robbery.
2013 Reforms in Chancellor George Osborne's Autumn Statement included that those in their twenties would have to work until they were 70, under sweeping changes to the basic state pension.
2013 The death, aged 95, of Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa's struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world.There are more streets named after Nelson Mandela in the UK than anywhere in the world outside South Africa. He also shares one of London’s most high profile public spaces in Parliament Square, with his statue alongside great figures from British history, such as former prime ministers Winston Churchill and Robert Peel.
Newcastle finished as League champions in 1908/09 but there was one match they would rather have forgotten – on this day in 1908 they lost 1-9 at home. It shares the record for the worst home defeat in the top flight and is the worst defeat by any club winning the League title – but worse still it was against their nearest neighbours, Sunderland, in front of their highest gate of the season at St James' Park, 56000.
Football On This Day - 5th December 1921.
The Football Association declared its opposition to women’s football. Officially it was because it considered women not physically capable of playing football but unofficially the growing popularity of the women’s game was causing men some concern. The FA couldn’t stop women playing football but they could – and did – ban any FA member club allowing their ground to be used for a women’s football match. The ban lasted until 1971.
Football On This Day - 5th December 2004.
Now this injury causes me pain and I'm only writing about it! When playing for Servette against Schaffhausen in a Swiss League match Paulo Diogo jumped on one of the boundary fences to celebrate a Servette goal. Not being aware that his wedding ring was caught on the fence he jumped down leaving behind the ring and much of his finger, the rest having to be amputated in hospital. And he was booked by ref Florian Etter for excessive celebration of the goal.
On this date in 1980, THE (ENGLISH) BEAT released the single, TOO NICE TO TALK TO, (December 5th, 1980). Dealing with shyness and social discomfort, the song was driven by an up and down bass riff that was pure menace. This was a skankin’ dance groove with sinister undercurrents.
1745 Charles Edward Stewart (commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender) and his army began their retreat from Derby during the second Jacobite Rising.
1768 The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published, in Edinburgh.
1862 US President Abraham Lincoln orders hanging of 39 Santee Sioux Indians.
1897 The world's first fleet of motorised taxi cabs started operating in London.
1921 Irish independence was granted for the 26 southern states that became known as the Irish Free State. Six counties which formed Ulster (Northern Ireland) remained as part of the UK.
1963 English call-girl Christine Keeler, one of the models named in the scandal involving British Secretary of State for War John Profumo, was jailed for 9 months for perjury arising from the trial of an ex-boyfriend.
1969 300,000 attend Altamont free concert in California, featuring The Rolling Stones. Marred by violence and four deaths.
1975 The Balcombe Street siege in Central London was watched by millions on television. It ended when the four IRA gunmen, who had taken a couple hostage following a gun battle and chase, finally gave themselves up without a shot being fired.
1977 The birth of Andrew Flintoff, English and Lancashire cricketer. His nickname 'Freddie' or 'Fred' comes from the similarity between his surname and that of Fred Flintstone. He developed deep vein thrombosis after surgery to his knee and announced his retirement from all cricket on 16th September 2010.
1982 The 'Droppin Well' bombing: The Irish National Liberation Army detonated a bomb in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, killing eleven British soldiers and six civilians.
1983 Surgeons successfully completed the first heart and lung transplant operation to be performed in Britain. Swedish journalist, Lars Ljungberg underwent the transplant, receiving the organs of a woman from the south of England who had died the previous day.
1994 The Queen gave the go ahead for oil drilling to take place in the grounds of Windsor Castle. The move came after studies showed there could be up to £1bn of oil lying beneath the castle.
2005 David Cameron beat David Davis to the leadership of the Conservative Party.
2012 The SA Agulhas set off from London on the start of the world’s first ever attempt to cross the Antarctic in winter. On 25th February 2013, Sir Ranulph Fiennes had to pull out of the expedition due to frostbite. On 18th June 2013, after encountering a crevasse field extending up to 60 miles, with temperatures close to -90c and operating in near permanent darkness the team officially halted its mission and decided to focus only on scientific experiments.
2013 Communities on the east coast of England began assessing the damage caused by the previous night's worst tidal surge for 60 years. Thousands had abandoned their homes, 1,400 properties were flooded and seven cliff-top homes collapsed into the sea at Hemsby - Norfolk. It was the start of a winter of severe floods and storms that affected many parts of Britain.
2015 Exactly two years later, communities in Cumbria and the Scottish Borders began assessing the damage caused by the previous night's rain storms that broke river banks and flooded properties in towns and villages, including Appleby, Cockermouth, Keswick and Hawick. Residents were evacuated from their homes and all trains between England and Scotland were cancelled.
1703 Great storm of 1703 hits Southern England - thousands killed, Royal Navy losses 13 ships and around 1,500 seamen.
1703 The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703.
1732 The first Covent Garden Opera House, then called the Theatre Royal, opened in London to an elite crowd, for a performance of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, a tribute to Gay, who had died three days previously.
1817 The death of William Bligh, rear-Admiral who was captain of the HMS Bounty at the time of the mutiny.
1868 Jesse James gang robs bank in Gallatin Missouri, kills 1.
1907 Eugene Corri becomes 1st referee in a boxing ring.
1909 Inventor Leo Baekeland patents the first thermo-setting plastic, Bakelite, sparking the birth of the plastics industry.
1941 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attack the US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people.
'A date which will live in infamy,' was how then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt described Japan's sudden and undeclared attack on the US naval station at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.
Japan sought to prevent the US Pacific Fleet from interfering with its military adventures in Asia. On the same day as the attack, Japan invaded Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and attack the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island.
The air assault killed 2,403 Americans and destroyed a number of battleships and other vessels, as well as important facilities on Pearl Harbor. It shocked the American public and directly led them to declare war on Japan the following day. Adolf Hitler responded by declaring war on the US on 11 December, firmly bringing America into both fronts of the war. USS Arizona ablaze and sinking after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1972 Apollo 17 launched, the final manned lunar landing mission where the crew takes the famous "blue marble" photo of the entire Earth.
1979 Production of MG Midget sports cars came to an end. 73,899 of the last version were produced and the last 500 cars were painted black.
1979 "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" first movie of the series premieres directed by Robert Wise, starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
1983 A cat climbed to a height of 160ft up an industrial chimney, holding up the work of Lancashire's chief steeplejack and chimney demolisher Fred Dibnah.
1993 Protesters lost a 20 year fight to save a 250 year old chestnut tree in east London. Twenty protesters were arrested after they clashed with 200 police officers sent to ensure a court order to cut down the tree was enforced and that the planned motorway extension could go ahead.
Arsenal lost 2-0 to Manchester United at Old Trafford which was the first time they had failed to score in a League match since May 2001. The 55 League matches on the trot they had scored in set a new record, breaking the previous best of Chesterfield – 46 League scoring matches in a row – set in 1929 and 1930.
Arsenal create a new League record by scoring in 55 consecutive League matches.
The few years around the turn of the Millennium saw a consistency in the form of Arsenal. For eight years they finished as champions or runners-up in the Premier League and starting in May 2003 they embarked on an amazing run of 49 unbeaten League matches on the trot. In that record sequence they went through the whole 2003/04 season without suffering a League reverse, the first time that had been done since the 1800s. Before then, though, Arsene Wenger's side had set another record in consistency - they had scored in each of 55 consecutive matches breaking the record set by Chesterfield over 70 years previously.From May 19th 2001 to November 30th 2002 Arsenal scored in every League match they played in. The run finally came to an end at Old Trafford with a 2-0 defeat, amazingly the same venue and same scoreline that was to end Arsenal's undefeated record a little under two years later.
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Serving to highlight the high energy of the early 80s ska-revival as well as the depth of the label's roster, ‘This are Two Tone’ offered six tracks from The Specials, three from The Selecter, two from The Beat, and one each from Madness, The Bodysnatchers, The Swinging Cats, Rico and Rhoda Dakar.
The video here is the compilations album's opening track and debut single from The Specials, GANGSTERS, a reworking of Prince Buster's AL CAPONE.
27th November is Lancashire Day - to commemorate the day in 1295 when Lancashire first sent representatives to Parliament, to attend the Model Parliament of King Edward I.
1582 William Shakespeare, aged 18, married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter in 1583 and a twin boy and girl in 1585. The boy died aged 11.
1826 John Walker invents friction match in England.
1895 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel's will establishes the Nobel Prize.
1911 Audience throws vegetables at actors for 1st recorded time in US.
1914 Miss Mary Allen and Miss E F Harburn became the first two trained policewomen to be granted official status in Britain when they reported for duty at Grantham, Lincolnshire.
1920 The birth of Harry "Buster" Merryfield, English actor best known for starring as Uncle Albert in the BBC comedy series Only Fools and Horses.
1925 Ernie Wise, 'straight man' to comedian Eric Morecambe, was born.
1934 Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI.
1944 Between 3,500 and 4,000 tons of explosives stored in a cavern beneath Staffordshire detonated, killing 68 people and wiping out an entire farm. The explosion was heard over 100 miles away in London, and recorded as an earthquake in Geneva.
1966 The first Lancashire Day to commemorate the day in 1295 when Lancashire first sent representatives to Parliament, to attend the Model Parliament of King Edward I.
1967 President de Gaulle said ‘Non’ to British entry into the Common Market.
1975 Ross McWhirter, TV presenter and co-editor of The Guinness Book of Records, was assassinated by two Provisional IRA gunmen after he had offered a £50,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for several high-profile bombings.
1976 The four millionth 'Mini' car left the production line.
1990 John Major won his second ballot for leadership of the Conservative Party and became Prime Minister. (Mrs. Thatcher had resigned as Prime Minister 5 days previously.)
2008 The Queen Elizabeth II liner (the QE2) retired from active Cunard service. It was planned for her to begin conversion to a floating hotel; however, she remains moored at Port Rashid (Dubai) facing an uncertain future.
2012 The Eurozone announces that it will make loans of 43.7 billion euros to Greece.
2013 The death of actor, Lewis Collins, aged 67. He was the quintessential British hard man, best known as Bodie in the TV the series 'The Professionals'.
2013 "Frozen", the highest-grossing animated film of all time, starring Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, is released.
2014 A consortium made up of 'Stagecoach' and 'Virgin' won the franchise to run the East Coast mainline rail route. The firms promised to invest £140m in the route over eight years, and to pay the government £3.3bn for the contract.
2014 Australian Test batsman Phillip Hughes died aged 25, two days after being struck on the top of the neck by a ball during a domestic match in Sydney. He also played for Hampshire, Middlesex and Worcestershire. His final innings score was adjusted to show him being 63 not out, after an update from Cricket Australia.
2014 The American wife of London financier Sir Chris Hohn was awarded £337m by a High Court judge in a divorce case. The sum was thought to be the biggest of its kind made by a judge in England. The couple separated following 17 years of marriage.
2014 The car registration plate "25 O" was sold at auction for £518,000, setting a new British record.
2016 German Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg clinches his only F1 World Driver's Championship with victory in season ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix; wins title by 5 points from teammate Lewis Hamilton.
2017 North Korean ghost ship washes up Akita prefecture beach, Japan with 8 skeletons on board, 4th boat in a month.
2017 8 Donkeys freed from jail after 4 days in Orai, Uttar Pradesh, India for eating plants.
Hartlepools United's Victoria Ground recorded an unwelcomed footballing first - the first English ground to be bombed in a war-time air-raid. Two First World War German Zeppelins jettisoned their bombs over Hartlepools when confronted by the Royal Flying Corps, destroying the main stand at the Victoria Ground. After the war ended the club demanded £2500 from the German Government to cover the damage - they didn't get it!
Football On This Day - 27th November 1957.
Future England manager Bobby Robson made his England playing debut, against France at Wembley. Times have changed - he had first discovered that he had been selected for the England squad when he read the news in a newspaper stop press column! He scored twice in the 4-0 victory. Manchester United's Tommy Taylor scored the other two but tragically that was the last time that he, Duncan Edwards and Roger Byrne were to play for England with the Munich tragedy claiming their lives before England played again, against Scotland in April 1958. Despite scoring twice on his debut Bobby Robson also missed the Scotland match being dropped and replaced by a player who made his debut. That player was Bobby Charlton - not sure if he had much of an England career after that!!
Football On This Day - 27th November 2006.
The Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland marked the first anniversary of the death of George Best when they issued 1 million £5 notes in honour of the greatest player to come from the north of Ireland. They were legal tender but I bet not many were found in change as they immediately became worth more than face value in the souvenir market.
1660 At Gresham College in Central London, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray founded what was later known as the Royal Society, an organization dedicated to promoting excellence in science.
1717 Blackbeard attacks and captures a French merchant slave ship, which he renames as his flagship the "Queen Anne's Revenge".
1720 Anne Bonny and Mary Read are tried, found guilty of pirating, and sentenced to death in Spanish Town, Jamaica, although their discovered pregnancies win them stays of execution.
1757 The birth of the poet William Blake. His work included a poem that began 'And did those feet in ancient time', which became the words for the anthem Jerusalem.
1814 The Times newspaper was, for the first time, printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer. It signalled the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.
1895 America's 1st auto race organised by the "Chicago Times-Herald" - Chicago to Evanston and back; 6 cars, 55 miles, Frank Duryea wins averaging 7 MPH.
The winning vehicle, a Duryea Motor Wagon Company vehicle driven by Frank Duryea.
1907 In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theatre.
1919 Nancy Astor became Britain's first woman MP, holding a safe Plymouth seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election caused by her husband's elevation to the peerage.
1933 A Dallas grand jury delivers a murder indictment against Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow for the January 1933 killing of Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis.
1967 All horse racing in Britain was suspended 'indefinitely' to help prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
1968 The death of the children's author Enid Blyton. She wrote more than 800 books over 40 years including Noddy, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven.
1971 An English farmer uncovered a major immigrant smuggling operation when he rammed a plane which had landed at a disused airfield on his farm in Kimbolton, 10 miles from Huntingdon. The pilot escaped but police officers arrived soon after the incident and detained the five occupants of the plane.
1990 Margaret Thatcher made her last speech outside 10 Downing Street following her resignation as Prime Minister.
1997 MPs in the House of Commons approved a Private Member's Bill, introduced by Labour MP Michael Foster, to ban fox hunting.
1997 Final episode of "Beavis & Butt-head" on MTV.
1999 Eleven people were injured when a nude swordsman attacked churchgoers at St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church in London.
2006 A modern spy drama unfolded following the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London when traces of polonium-210 radiation were found at central London addresses.
2011 British company Captive Media announced details of its urinal mounted, urine-controlled games console for men. It called it the first 'hands-free' video gaming console of its kind, with games on offer including a skiing challenge, and a multiple choice pub quiz. A noted side effect was that the toilets became markedly cleaner, as a new premium was set on accuracy.
2013 A Newport man (James Howells) searched a landfill site in South Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away, worth over £4m. The drive contained 7,500 bitcoins, a virtual form of currency for use online. The drive was not found.
2014 Jordan Winn was jailed for 13 months after he was caught driving at nearly 100mph in a 30mph zone. Winn blamed his Staffordshire bull terrier, who he said was in the footwell of his Volvo S60, for sitting on the accelerator pedal.
2015 British boxer Tyson Fury beats Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko by unanimous decision to win WBA, WBO, IBF, IBO, The Ring magazine and lineal heavyweight titles in Düsseldorf, Germany; ends Klitschko's 9 year reign as champion.
1530 Thomas Wolsey, English Cardinal and Lord Chancellor, died en route from York to his imprisonment in the Tower of London.
1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's army moves into Manchester and occupies Carlisle.
1775 Sir James Jay invents invisible ink.
1781 The crew of the British slave ship Zong, murdered 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance. The resulting court cases, brought by the ship-owners, sought compensation from the insurers for their lost cargo. The court established that the deliberate killing of slaves could, in some circumstances be legal. It was a landmark in the battle against the African slave trade of the eighteenth century, and inspired abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, leading to the foundation of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787.
1870 Compulsory education proclaimed in England.
1877 US inventor Thomas Edison demonstrates his hand-cranked phonograph for the first time.He demonstrated the device on November 29, 1877, having announced its invention days before.Edison without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: "Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?" The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph..."
1897 1st motorcycle race (Surrey, England).
1907 British nurse Florence Nightingale, aged 87, was presented with the Order of Merit by Edward VII for her work tending the wounded during the Crimean War.
1934 In Britain, the first live radio broadcast of a royal wedding - the marriage of the Duke of Kent to Princess Marina at Westminster Abbey in London.
1940 The city of Liverpool endured nearly eight hours of bombing, which left 166 people dead and 2,000 people homeless. At the time, Prime Minister Winston Churchill described the tragedy as "the single worst civilian incident of the war."
1956 Panic-buying broke out at garages across the country as the government gave details of its petrol rationing plans. Petrol had been in short supply since the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser, took over the running of the Suez Canal four months previously.
1962 Britain and France announced a joint agreement to design and build Concorde, the world's first supersonic airliner.
1963 The Beatles record I Want To Hold Your Hand was released, with advance orders of one million in the UK alone.
1965 Housewife Mary Whitehouse began her Clean Up TV Campaign by setting up the National Viewers and Listeners' Association to tackle 'bad taste and irresponsibility'.
1972 Co-founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell releases Pong, the 1st commercially successful video game, in Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California
Initially it was just designed as a training exercise by Atari employee Alan Alcorn and took the form of a two-dimensional ping pong game based on table tennis.
1975 British racing driver Graham Hill was killed in an aircraft crash at Arkley, Hertfordshire.
2001 George Harrison, musician, actor, songwriter and former lead guitarist with the Beatles died of lung cancer, aged 58. Often referred to as the 'quiet Beatle', Harrison became an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, and introduced it to the other Beatles, as well as to their Western audiences.
2013 A double engine failure caused a police helicopter to crash into the Clutha Vaults pub in Glasgow. Ten people died in the accident; all three on board, six on the ground and another person died two weeks later from injuries received.
2015 Great Britain won the Davis Cup for the first time since 1936 after Andy Murray beat Belgium's David Goffin to clinch the decisive point in Ghent.
1016 Cnut the Great (Canute), King of Denmark, claimed the English throne after the death of Edmund II, often known as Edmund Ironside. The cognomen 'Ironside' was given to Edmund because of his valour in resisting the Danish invasion led by Cnut the Great.
1487 The first German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot), is promulgated in Munich by Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria stating beer should be brewed from only three ingredients – water, malt and hops.
1648 English Parliamentary army captures King Charles I.
1782 Britain signs agreement recognizing US independence.
1872 The first football match between England and Scotland took place, at Hamelton Crescent Glasgow. It ended in a 0-0 draw.
1874 Birth of Sir Winston Leonard Churchill, British statesman, journalist, historian and Nobel prize-winner for literature. He was a descendant of the great Duke of Marlborough, and was born born in Blenheim Palace. The great wartime Prime Minister, with his highly quotable speeches, was considered by many as ‘the greatest living Englishman’.
1902 American Old West: Second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang Kid Curry Logan sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor.
1913 Charlie Chaplin made his film debut without the moustache and cane in 'Making a Living'.
1924 1st photo facsimile transmitted across Atlantic by radio (London-NYC).
1928 Australian cricket legend Don Bradman makes an inauspicious Test debut; scores 18 & 1 vs England in 1st Test in Brisbane; dropped to 12th man for 2nd Test.
1934 The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman (Engine No. 4472) became the first to officially exceed 100mph.
1936 The Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire. The spectacular blaze was seen miles away. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, it was originally erected in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition in 1851.
1946 Bradman scores 187 in 1st Test Cricket v England at the Gabba.
1955 Floodlights were used for the first time at Wembley Stadium, during an international game with Spain.
1956 At 21 years, 10 months, 3 weeks, 5 days Floyd Patterson becomes youngest world heavyweight boxing champion; KOs Archie Moore in 5th round in Chicago; first Olympic gold medalist to win a professional heavyweight title.
1966 Barbados gains independence from Great Britain (National Day).
1968 The Trade Descriptions Act came into force making it a crime for a trader to knowingly sell an item with a misleading label or description.
1979 Pink Floyd's "The Wall" released, sells 6 million copies in 2 weeks.
1982 "Thriller", 6th studio album by Michael Jackson is released.
1982 A letter bomb exploded inside No. 10, Downing Street, injuring a member of staff. The package was sent by animal rights activists. Margaret Thatcher was at home when the device exploded but she was not hurt in the blast.
1983 Seaweed contaminated by heavy radioactivity was discovered in Cumbria, near the Sellafield nuclear plant.
1987 At Christie's auctioneers in London, a painting by Edgar Degas, 'The Laundry Maids', was sold for £7.48 million.
1999 British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merged to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defence contractor and the fourth largest aerospace company in the world.
2007 Evel Knievel dies in Clearwater, Florida, aged 69.
2013 The Hon. Edward Charles d'Olier Gibson, who appealed his conviction for assaulting a police officer, claiming that he did not know what a modern policeman looked like, had his case thrown out by a judge who ordered him to pay prosecution costs of £620. Gibson was also disqualified from driving for 12 months for drink-driving and was fined a total of £2,350 for the offences.
The first ever official international match was played when England played Scotland at the West of Scotland Cricket Club ground in Partick. A crowd of around 4,000 saw a 0-0 draw.
1135 England's King Henry I died. He had fallen ill seven days earlier after eating too many lampreys (jawless fish resembling eels). He was 66, and had ruled for 35 years.
1581 Edmund Campion (later St. Edmund) and three other Jesuits were martyred. He was tried on a charge of treason for promoting Catholicism and was hanged in London.
1642 The 1st English Civil War : A victory for Parliamentarian Forces when Colonel Sir William Waller stormed Farnham Castle in Kent. It became his base for the remainder of the war.
1761 Birth of Madame Marie Tussaud (Grosholz), Swiss-born French waxworks modeller. During the French Revolution she made death masks from the severed heads of the famous. In 1800, separated from her husband, she toured Britain with her waxworks, eventually setting up a permanent exhibition in London.
1868 The opening of London's Smithfield meat market.
1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual went on sale, with 'A Study in Scarlet' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which first introduced the detective, Sherlock Holmes.
1942 The Beveridge Report, written by Sir William Beveridge, proposed a welfare state for Britain, offering care to all from the cradle to the grave. It revolved around a compulsory National Insurance scheme to provide all adults with free medical treatment, unemployment benefit and old age pensions.
1953 Hugh Hefner publishes 1st edition of Playboy magazine, featuring Marilyn Monroe as the magazine's 1st centerfold.
1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama.
1965 The Government put forward a plan to improve the lot of both farmers and consumers by encouraging intensive farming.
1969 A statue of former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was unveiled in the House of Commons.
1971 John Lennon and Yoko Ono release "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" in US.
1987 Digging begins to link England & France under English Channel.
1990 Britain and France were joined for the first time in thousands of years as the last wall of rock separating two halves of the Channel Tunnel was removed.
2010 Large parts of the UK were brought to a standstill by the early freeze. Temperatures plunged again overnight to -16C (3F) in the Scottish Highland after one of the coldest starts to December in more than 20 years. Some 4,000 schools were closed, the Forth Road Bridge was closed for the first time since it opened in 1964 and Edinburgh and Gatwick airports were shut. The Met Office issued heavy snow warnings for Scotland and north-east, eastern and south-east England.
2018 British boxer Tyson Fury dominates much of the fight but survives 2 knockdowns to force a split decision draw with defending WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder at the Staples Center, Los Angeles.
2019 Earliest traceable patient, a 55-year-old man, develops symptoms of a novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in Wuhan, China.
An outbreak of an unknown virus causing pneumonia-like symptoms was discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan. This new coronavirus (technically named SARS-CoV-2; the disease caused by the virus is COVID-19) is thought to have originated at a 'wet market' in the city, where various animals, both live and dead, were sold. This was similar to how the SARS outbreak, also a coronavirus, started in 2002.
Doctors in Wuhan were at first admonished by police for reporting a new virus to their colleagues,before the Chinese government informed the World Health Organization of the mysterious infection on December 31. Among these doctors was Li Wenliang, who helped blow the whistle on the infection, before later dying of it in hospital.
Second Division Liverpool announced that Bill Shankly would be their new manager. The former Carlisle, Grimsby, Workington and Huddersfield Town boss proved to be the man who transformed the Anfield club into one of the English greats.
Birthdate: 2 September 1913
Birthplace: Glenbuck, Scotland
Date of death: 29 September 1981
Other clubs as manager: Carlisle United, Grimsby Town, Workington, Huddersfield Town
Arrived from: Huddersfield Town
Signed for LFC: 1 December 1959
LFC league games as manager: 609
Total LFC games as manager: 783
Honours: League Championship 1963/64, 1965/66, 1972/73; Second Division 1961/62; FA Cup 1965, 1974; UEFA Cup 1973; Manager of the Year 1973
First game in charge: 19.12.1959
Contract Expiry: 12.07.1974.
In October 1976 the Pistols signed a contract with EMI Records and, a month later, released their debut single, 'Anarchy in the UK', opening with Rotten's banshee scream of "I am an antichrist."
At that stage, there were still only a couple of dozen people who would have believed him.
On December 1st, Thames TV's early evening Today show booked them as a last-minute substitute for Freddie Mercury and Queen, having no idea who or what they were.
Their interviewer was Bill Grundy, an ill-natured hack almost as drunk as they were, who challenged them to "Say something outrageous". Steve Jones obliged by calling him a "dirty ****" and a "**** rotter".
It was, amazingly, only the third recorded use of the F-word on British television, and the first as an expletive rather than in abstract intellectual debate.
While Grundy was being insulted, with Matlock commenting about how the presenter was like a "granddad", he tried to involve the female members of the band's entourage, known as The Bromley Contingent, that appeared with them and which included Siouxsie Sioux.
He said "What about you girls, behind?" Sioux said she was "enjoying myself". Grundy responded "Are you?" to which she and Simone Thomas chorused "Yeah." Grundy responded "Ah, that's what I thought you were doing."
Siouxsie continued feigning interest and said, "I've always wanted to meet you", to which Grundy responded by saying, "Did you really? We'll meet afterwards, shall we?"
Interpreting this as a sexual comment, Steve Jones responded by calling the interviewer a "dirty sod" and a "dirty old man." Grundy further goaded Jones to "say something outrageous", a challenge that Jones met by calling Grundy a "dirty ****" and a "dirty ****".
Grundy responded, "What a clever boy" and Jones added "What a **** rotter!" As the show ended and the credits rolled, Grundy mouthed, "Oh ****" as the band began dancing to the closing theme, Windy by The Association.
"We didn't go on TV intending to do that," recalled Steve Jones.
"We thought we were just going to talk about our next tour. McLaren always claims the whole thing was his big publicity coup. But at the time, he was genuinely **** himself. He thought that was going to be the end for us."
Instead, next day, the band found themselves surfing on a wave of pricelessly bad publicity that not even the mid-1960s Stones had equalled.
1697 The rebuilt St Paul’s Cathedral, the work of Sir Christopher Wren, was opened. The previous cathedral had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
1755 The second Eddystone Lighthouse (located off the coast of Devon) was destroyed by fire. Four lighthouses have been built on the site. The light was lit on the fourth, (Douglass's lighthouse, designed by James Douglass) in 1882 and it is still in use.
1769 Britain's first cremation took place, in St. George's burial ground, London.
1859 Abolitionist John Brown hanged for murder, treason, and conspiring slaves to revolt at Charles Town, Virginia.
1899 John Cobb, British racing driver was born. He made money as a director of fur brokers and could therefore afford to specialise in large capacity motor-racing. He was born and lived in Esher, Surrey, near the Brooklands race track. He broke the land speed record at Bonneville on August 23, 1939, achieving 367.91 mph. Without this being beaten he raised the record to 394.19 mph in 1947. He died in 1952, attempting to break the world water speed record on Loch Ness in the jet speedboat Crusader at a speed in excess of 200 mph.
1901 King C. Gillette begins selling safety razor blades.
1907 The Professional Footballer’s Association was formed, after a meeting at the Imperial Hotel, Manchester.
1927 1st Model A Ford sold, for $385.
1929 Britain’s first 22 public telephone boxes came into service. They were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and installed as part of a new scheme for policing and were made available for general use in the Barnes, Kew and Richmond Districts. The red K6 phone boxes have become a British icon and many can be found in tourist cities. Note:- The 100,000 BT phone box was installed at Dunsop Bridge in the "exact centre of Great Britain and 401 associated islands".
1932 Australia ends Day 1 of controversial 'Bodyline' cricket series v England at 290/6 in Sydney; Stan McCabe 127no (finishes at 187no); notorious England fast bowler Harold Larwood takes 4 wickets; England wins by 10 wickets.
1943 The first Bevin Boys, aged between 18 and 25 were directed into the mining industry. Many miners had been called up to the armed forces, resulting in a grave shortage of coal.
1966 The Mini skirt, the symbol of the Swinging Sixties, was banned from the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.
1982 The film Gandhi received its premiere in London. It won 8 Oscars.
1995 28 year old Nick Leeson was sentenced for financial dealings which contributed to the fall of Barings Bank, Britain's oldest merchant bank. He admitted to a judge in Singapore two charges of fraud connected with Baring's £860m ruin.
1997 Former wrestler Big Daddy (real name Shirley Crabtree) died in Halifax, aged 67. He was often partnered against Giant Haystacks (Martin Ruane), who died in 1998, aged 52.
2008 Ballon d'Or: Manchester United's Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo wins his first award as best football player in the world; Barcelona forward Lionel Messi 2nd, Liverpool striker Fernando Torres 3rd.
2019 FIFA Ballon d'Or: Barcelona forward Lionel Messi wins his record 6th award from Liverpool's Dutch defender Virgil van Dijk.
1795 Sir Rowland Hill, postal pioneer and founder of the 'Penny Post' was born.
1820 Thomas Beecham, English manufacturer and inventor of Beecham's pills, was born.
1836 Three people were killed at Great Corby, near Carlisle in Cumbria, in the first fatal railway derailment.
1868 Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time. He won office for three more terms.
1894 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, died, aged 45 on the island of Samoa.
1909 King Edward VII dissolved Parliament and taxes on alcohol, tobacco and cars were suspended as no budget had been passed. Edward was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and had a reputation as a 'playboy prince'.
1926 In an episode as puzzling and intriguing as any in her many novels, Agatha Christie disappeared from her Surrey home and was discovered on the 14th December staying under an assumed name at the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate. She said she had no recollection of how she came to be in Yorkshire.
1936 The Royal Family cancelled all engagements as news broke of Edward VIII's determination to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson.
1944 Britain 'stood down' the Home Guard - formed in 1939 to defend Britain from invasion by Germany. They were officially disbanded in December 1945.
1948 The birth of John Michael 'Ozzy' Osbourne, English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. He rose to prominence as lead singer of the band Black Sabbath and became known as the 'Prince of Darkness'.
1961 The whole of south East England was plunged into darkness for two hours, due to an error by an electrician.
1966 Television pop group "The Monkees" make their live concert debut at the Honolulu International Centre Arena, in Hawaii.
1967 1st human heart transplant performed in South Africa by Dr Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky.
1972 Convair 990A charter crashes in Tenerife Canary Island, 155 die.
1977 Wings started a nine week run at No.1 with Mull of Kintyre. It was the first single to sell over 2 million in the UK.
1979 11 members of the audience trampled to death during a stampede to claim unreserved seats for a concert by The Who at The Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati, Ohio.
1984 British Telecom was privatised. The shares immediately made massive gains.
1984 Bhopal disaster: Union Carbide pesticide plant leak 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, kills 2,259 (official figure) - other estimates as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured.
1984 "Do They Know It's Christmas" single written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure and sung by Band Aid is released in the UK.
1988 Junior Health minister Edwina Currie provoked outrage by saying that most of Britain's egg production was infected with the salmonella bacteria.
1992 Two bombs exploded in the centre of Manchester injuring 65 people. Miraculously no-one was killed, but much of the city centre had to be rebuilt.
2007 Gillian Gibbons, a 54 year old teacher from Liverpool was released after eight days in custody and handed over to British officials in Sudan after being jailed for letting her class name a teddy bear Muhammad.
1154 The only Englishman to become a pope, Nicholas Breakspear, became Adrian IV. Nicholas Breakspear was a member of the family which until recent years brewed beer in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
1586 Queen Elizabeth I conferred the death sentence on Mary Queen of Scots after discovering a plot to assassinate her and bring about a Roman Catholic uprising.
1791 The Observer, Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper, was first published.
1798 British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger announced the introduction of Income Tax to help finance the war against France.
1829 Britain outlaws "suttee" in India (widow burning herself to death on her husband's funeral pyre).
1872 Crew from the British brigantine Die Gratia boarded a deserted ship drifting in mid Atlantic. The captain's table was set for a meal aboard the US ship Marie Celeste but the Captain, crew and passengers were all missing.
1930 Vatican approves rhythm method for birth control.
1937 The first issue of the Dandy comic. With a fan club of over 350,000, Desperate Dan proved a durable character. A copy of this first edition is worth between £850 and £1,000. The closure, on 4th December 2012, coincided with its 75th anniversary and the final print edition included a pullout reprint of the very first edition of the comic.
1948 George Orwell completed the final draft of the book Nineteen Eighty Four which was published on 8th June 1949.
1952 At least 4,000 people died in a week, from breathing difficulties, during a severe London smog.
1954 The first Burger King is opened in Miami, Florida, USA.
1961 Birth control pills became available on the NHS.
1980 English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbanded, following the death of drummer John Bonham on 25th September.
1997 Europe's health ministers voted to ban tobacco advertising throughout the European Union although they agreed that motor-racing, which relied heavily on sponsorship and advertising by tobacco companies, should be exempt for another 8 years.
2012 The highest lottery prize ever to remain unclaimed (£63.8m) eventually went to good causes as the winer did not come forward by the deadline of 23:00 GMT.
2014 Knutsford council, in Cheshire, approved plans to widen the town's pavements. 220 years previously, spinster Lady Jane Stanley had paid for narrow pavements to be laid in the town, to prevent lovers from strolling arm in arm.
1697 The first Sunday service was held in the new St Paul's Cathedral, London.
1717 English pirate Blackbeard ransacks the merchant sloop "Margaret" and keeps her captain, Henry Bostock prisoner for 8 hours before releasing him. Bostock later provides 1st record of Blackbeard's appearance, and the source for his name.
1766 James Christie, the founder of the famous auctioneers, held his first sale in London. Christie's main London salesroom is on King Street in St. James's, where it has been based since 1823.
1839 The postage rate in Britain was changed to a standard charge of 4d (4 old pence) a half ounce instead of being charged by distance.
1848 US President James K. Polk triggers Gold Rush of 1849 by confirming a gold discovery in California.
1863 The rules of Association Football were published.
1876 Daniel Stillson patents 1st practical pipe wrench.
1893 Electric car built at the Dixon Carriage works in Toronto, could go 15 miles between charges.
1905 The roof of Charing Cross Railway Station in London collapsed, killing five people.
1913 Britain forbade the selling of arms to Ireland.
1928 England beat Australia by a record 675 runs in the Test at Brisbane.
1933 Prohibition ends in the US when 21st Amendment to the US Constitution ratified.
1945 Flight 19 the "Lost Squadron" of 5 torpedo bombers and 14 airmen is lost east of Florida in the supposed Bermuda Triangle.
1952 The Great Smog. A cold fog descended on London, combining with air pollution and killed at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that followed.
1958 The Queen dialled Edinburgh and spoke to the Lord Provost from Bristol, to inaugurate the first direct dialled trunk call, known as STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling)
1958 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan opened the Preston bypass in Lancashire. It was the first stretch of motorway in Britain and is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.
1973 During a petrol shortage, the government imposed a 50mph speed limit to save fuel.
1974 Final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus airs on BBC TV.
1991 Robert Maxwell's business empire collapsed with huge debts of more than £1bn and revelations about misappropriation of money in pension funds.
1993 The record by Mr Blobby, a pink-and-yellow spotted BBC television star, reached number one in the charts.
2008 Former NFL star O.J. Simpson is sentenced to 33 years in prison for kidnapping and armed robbery.
2013 Reforms in Chancellor George Osborne's Autumn Statement included that those in their twenties would have to work until they were 70, under sweeping changes to the basic state pension.
2013 The death, aged 95, of Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa's struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world.There are more streets named after Nelson Mandela in the UK than anywhere in the world outside South Africa. He also shares one of London’s most high profile public spaces in Parliament Square, with his statue alongside great figures from British history, such as former prime ministers Winston Churchill and Robert Peel.
Football On This Day - 5th December 1908.
Newcastle finished as League champions in 1908/09 but there was one match they would rather have forgotten – on this day in 1908 they lost 1-9 at home. It shares the record for the worst home defeat in the top flight and is the worst defeat by any club winning the League title – but worse still it was against their nearest neighbours, Sunderland, in front of their highest gate of the season at St James' Park, 56000.
Football On This Day - 5th December 1921.
The Football Association declared its opposition to women’s football. Officially it was because it considered women not physically capable of playing football but unofficially the growing popularity of the women’s game was causing men some concern. The FA couldn’t stop women playing football but they could – and did – ban any FA member club allowing their ground to be used for a women’s football match. The ban lasted until 1971.
Football On This Day - 5th December 2004.
Now this injury causes me pain and I'm only writing about it! When playing for Servette against Schaffhausen in a Swiss League match Paulo Diogo jumped on one of the boundary fences to celebrate a Servette goal. Not being aware that his wedding ring was caught on the fence he jumped down leaving behind the ring and much of his finger, the rest having to be amputated in hospital. And he was booked by ref Florian Etter for excessive celebration of the goal.
On this date in 1980, THE (ENGLISH) BEAT released the single, TOO NICE TO TALK TO, (December 5th, 1980).
Dealing with shyness and social discomfort, the song was driven by an up and down bass riff that was pure menace.
This was a skankin’ dance groove with sinister undercurrents.
1745 Charles Edward Stewart (commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender) and his army began their retreat from Derby during the second Jacobite Rising.
1768 The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published, in Edinburgh.
1862 US President Abraham Lincoln orders hanging of 39 Santee Sioux Indians.
1897 The world's first fleet of motorised taxi cabs started operating in London.
1921 Irish independence was granted for the 26 southern states that became known as the Irish Free State. Six counties which formed Ulster (Northern Ireland) remained as part of the UK.
1963 English call-girl Christine Keeler, one of the models named in the scandal involving British Secretary of State for War John Profumo, was jailed for 9 months for perjury arising from the trial of an ex-boyfriend.
1969 300,000 attend Altamont free concert in California, featuring The Rolling Stones. Marred by violence and four deaths.
1975 The Balcombe Street siege in Central London was watched by millions on television. It ended when the four IRA gunmen, who had taken a couple hostage following a gun battle and chase, finally gave themselves up without a shot being fired.
1977 The birth of Andrew Flintoff, English and Lancashire cricketer. His nickname 'Freddie' or 'Fred' comes from the similarity between his surname and that of Fred Flintstone. He developed deep vein thrombosis after surgery to his knee and announced his retirement from all cricket on 16th September 2010.
1982 The 'Droppin Well' bombing: The Irish National Liberation Army detonated a bomb in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, killing eleven British soldiers and six civilians.
1983 Surgeons successfully completed the first heart and lung transplant operation to be performed in Britain. Swedish journalist, Lars Ljungberg underwent the transplant, receiving the organs of a woman from the south of England who had died the previous day.
1994 The Queen gave the go ahead for oil drilling to take place in the grounds of Windsor Castle. The move came after studies showed there could be up to £1bn of oil lying beneath the castle.
2005 David Cameron beat David Davis to the leadership of the Conservative Party.
2012 The SA Agulhas set off from London on the start of the world’s first ever attempt to cross the Antarctic in winter. On 25th February 2013, Sir Ranulph Fiennes had to pull out of the expedition due to frostbite. On 18th June 2013, after encountering a crevasse field extending up to 60 miles, with temperatures close to -90c and operating in near permanent darkness the team officially halted its mission and decided to focus only on scientific experiments.
2013 Communities on the east coast of England began assessing the damage caused by the previous night's worst tidal surge for 60 years. Thousands had abandoned their homes, 1,400 properties were flooded and seven cliff-top homes collapsed into the sea at Hemsby - Norfolk. It was the start of a winter of severe floods and storms that affected many parts of Britain.
2015 Exactly two years later, communities in Cumbria and the Scottish Borders began assessing the damage caused by the previous night's rain storms that broke river banks and flooded properties in towns and villages, including Appleby, Cockermouth, Keswick and Hawick. Residents were evacuated from their homes and all trains between England and Scotland were cancelled.
1703 Great storm of 1703 hits Southern England - thousands killed, Royal Navy losses 13 ships and around 1,500 seamen.
1703 The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703.
1732 The first Covent Garden Opera House, then called the Theatre Royal, opened in London to an elite crowd, for a performance of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, a tribute to Gay, who had died three days previously.
1817 The death of William Bligh, rear-Admiral who was captain of the HMS Bounty at the time of the mutiny.
1868 Jesse James gang robs bank in Gallatin Missouri, kills 1.
1907 Eugene Corri becomes 1st referee in a boxing ring.
1909 Inventor Leo Baekeland patents the first thermo-setting plastic, Bakelite, sparking the birth of the plastics industry.
1941 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attack the US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people.
'A date which will live in infamy,' was how then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt described Japan's sudden and undeclared attack on the US naval station at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.
Japan sought to prevent the US Pacific Fleet from interfering with its military adventures in Asia. On the same day as the attack, Japan invaded Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and attack the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island.
The air assault killed 2,403 Americans and destroyed a number of battleships and other vessels, as well as important facilities on Pearl Harbor. It shocked the American public and directly led them to declare war on Japan the following day. Adolf Hitler responded by declaring war on the US on 11 December, firmly bringing America into both fronts of the war.
USS Arizona ablaze and sinking after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1972 Apollo 17 launched, the final manned lunar landing mission where the crew takes the famous "blue marble" photo of the entire Earth.
1979 Production of MG Midget sports cars came to an end. 73,899 of the last version were produced and the last 500 cars were painted black.
1979 "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" first movie of the series premieres directed by Robert Wise, starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
1983 A cat climbed to a height of 160ft up an industrial chimney, holding up the work of Lancashire's chief steeplejack and chimney demolisher Fred Dibnah.
1993 Protesters lost a 20 year fight to save a 250 year old chestnut tree in east London. Twenty protesters were arrested after they clashed with 200 police officers sent to ensure a court order to cut down the tree was enforced and that the planned motorway extension could go ahead.
Arsenal lost 2-0 to Manchester United at Old Trafford which was the first time they had failed to score in a League match since May 2001. The 55 League matches on the trot they had scored in set a new record, breaking the previous best of Chesterfield – 46 League scoring matches in a row – set in 1929 and 1930.
Arsenal create a new League record by scoring in 55 consecutive League matches.
The few years around the turn of the Millennium saw a consistency in the form of Arsenal. For eight years they finished as champions or runners-up in the Premier League and starting in May 2003 they embarked on an amazing run of 49 unbeaten League matches on the trot. In that record sequence they went through the whole 2003/04 season without suffering a League reverse, the first time that had been done since the 1800s. Before then, though, Arsene Wenger's side had set another record in consistency - they had scored in each of 55 consecutive matches breaking the record set by Chesterfield over 70 years previously.From May 19th 2001 to November 30th 2002 Arsenal scored in every League match they played in. The run finally came to an end at Old Trafford with a 2-0 defeat, amazingly the same venue and same scoreline that was to end Arsenal's undefeated record a little under two years later.