The single LONDON CALLING by THE CLASH turns 41 today (December 7th 1979)
LONDON CALLING, written as if a post-apocalyptic summary, was the 70s pessimist’s dream come true, feeding off the time’s paranoia - yet its message continues to echo across space and time. In it a warning: solidarity and community before superficiality; punk had died and the sheep were being led to the “imitation zone”. Get real, look forward not back.
Joe wrote the song after riding in a cab along the Thames embankment accompanied by his then fiancée Gaby Salter.
"There was a lot of Cold War nonsense going on, and we knew that London was susceptible to flooding. She told me to write something about that. So I sat in the front room, looking out at Edith Grove.”
His pad at the appropriately titled World's End Estate, Chelsea, had a riverside view and inspired the ironic line, "London is drowning and I live by the river". Detailing the numerous ways to Armageddon, including the coming of the ice age, starvation, and war, much of Joe’s inspiration came from the doom-laden new stories he was consuming at the time, "I read about ten news reports in one day calling down all variety of plagues on us."
The title was lifted from the BBC World Service's radio station identification: "This is London calling...” used during World War II to open their broadcasts outside of England. The line about the "Nuclear Error" was inspired by the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown in March 1979.
The dying strains of "I never felt so much a-like..." was sometimes fleshed out live to "I never felt so much a-like singin' the blues." There was the truth.
LONDON CALLING still wails like a thousand police sirens.
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.
It doesn’t state if any English supporters ventured up north. It seems it hit the Scots harder in the pocket . A shilling admission looks a bit steep, for a bore draw.
1542 The birth of Mary Queen of Scots, Scottish Queen who ascended to the throne when she was just 6 days old and was crowned nine months later. A rebellion led to her abdication and later Elizabeth I imprisoned her for a plot to restore the Roman Catholic religion and to take the throne from her. After 19 years in custody, Mary was tried and executed for treason.
1863 The world’s first heavyweight boxing championship took place at Wadhurst, Kent, between Tom King (England) and John C Heenan (US). The fight lasted for 24 rounds and King was the champion. Heenan was America's heavyweight champion under the London Prize Ring, or bare-knuckle rules, but retired after his defeat by the English heavyweight.
1864 The opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon at Bristol, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel when he was aged just 24. There have been over 500 suicides since the bridge was opened.
1931 Coaxial cable patented.
1941 The US, Britain and Australia declared war on Japan following the Pearl Harbour attack the previous day. The attack sank 9 ships of the American fleet and 21 ships were severely damaged. The overall death toll reached 2,403, including 68 civilians.
1941 The birth of Sir Geoff Hurst, English footballer. He made his mark in World Cup history as the only player to have scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final. His three goals came in the 1966 final for England in their 4–2 win over West Germany at the old Wembley stadium.
1952 Her Majesty the Queen announced that she would permit her coronation to be televised.
1965 The new Race Relations Act came into force making racial discrimination unlawful in public places.
1967 The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" album is released in UK.
1980 John Lennon, former member of the Liverpool group The Beatles, was shot dead by Mark David Chapman who opened fire outside the musician's New York apartment.
1981 Arthur Scargill became leader of 'The National Union Of Mineworkers'.
1983 The House of Lords voted in favour of allowing live broadcasts from its chamber.
2013 Northumberland National Park and the adjoining Kielder Water and forest park, were declared Europe's largest "dark sky park". The award recognises the profound darkness that makes nearly 580 square milesof the county an ideal territory from which to stare up at the night sky.
2020 Ninety year old Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world (outside clinical trials) to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine; at the University Hospital, Coventry. Sir Simon Stevens, NHS England's chief executive said that the vaccine rollout could be 'a decisive turning point' in the fight against Covid-19. Statistics released on Monday evening 7th December 2020 showed that there had been 67.3M Coronavirus cases worldwide and 1.54M deaths.
1783 The first executions took place at Newgate Prison (now the site of the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey). Prior to this,public executions were carried out at Tyburn gallows (now the site of Marble Arch),which involved carting the prisoners from Newgate Prison through the crowded streets.
1854 Lord Tennyson's poem, Charge of the Light Brigade was published. The Charge of the Light Brigade had been led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25th October 1854 in the Crimean War. The poem emphasized the valour of the cavalry in carrying out their orders, even though they knew that blunders had been made by those in command. Quote from the poem - 'Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.'
1960 The first episode of Coronation Street was screened on ITV. It is the world's longest-running television soap opera.
1967 Jim Morrison arrested on stage for disturbing the peace at the New Haven Arena, Connecticut, making him the 1st rock star to be taken into custody during a performance.
1987 England's cricket tour in Pakistan hung in the balance as a row erupted between captain Mike Gatting and the umpire Shakoor Rana who accused Gatting of cheating.
1992 The separation was announced of the Prince and Princess of Wales (Prince Charles and Princess Diana). They married in 1981.
1997 There were problems for Richard Branson in his attempt to fly around the world in a hot-air balloon when the envelope ( the balloon section) of his Virgin Global Challenger broke loose from the gondola and flew off on its own from Marrakech, Morocco.
2010 A car containing Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall was attacked amid violence after MPs voted to raise university tuition fees in England. A window was cracked and their car hit by paint, but the couple were unharmed. In angry scenes, protesters battled with police in Parliament Square and were contained on Westminster Bridge for a time by officers.
2011 Prime Minister David Cameron insisted he put Britain's interests first by vetoing a new European Economic Treaty.
2012 The death of the British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore, aged 89. He was the presenter of the BBC's Sky At Night for over 50 years, from its first airing on 24th April 1957, making him the longest-running host ever of the same television show.
1783 The first executions took place at Newgate Prison (now the site of the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey). Prior to this,public executions were carried out at Tyburn gallows (now the site of Marble Arch),which involved carting the prisoners from Newgate Prison through the crowded streets.
On 3 November 1783 highwayman John Austin became the last man to be executed at Tyburn, marking the end of an infamous 600-year history.
The notorious Tyburn hanging tree was located near Marble Arch, at the top of Oxford Street in the bustling heart of modern London. However, for much of its history, it stood outside of the boundary of the city.
Executions at Tyburn.
La Pendaison (The Hanging), a plate from French artist Jacques Callot’s 1633 series The Great Miseries of War.
The first recorded execution at Tyburn was that of William Fitz Osbert, or William with the Beard in 1196. Fitz Osbert was wanted for sedition (encouraging unrest) and after his capture was dragged naked to Tyburn and hanged.
During the reign of Elizabeth I, the infamy of Tyburn grew apace. In 1571 the original Tyburn hanging place, made up of a row of elm trees, was replaced with a huge triangular Triple Gallows that made mass executions possible.
Condemned criminals were transported from Newgate Prison to Tyburn, watched by large crowds along the route. The journey could take several hours and included a stop at an inn where the prisoners could take a drink to calm them down.
Once at Tyburn, the prisoners were positioned beneath the gallows on a horse-drawn carriage and a noose placed around their neck. The carriage would then be moved away, leaving the prisoners hanging from the tree. Death could take up to three quarters of an hour.
The spectacle of death.
The executions were watched by crowds of spectators who paid an entry fee to sit in specially built stands to watch the gruesome events unfold. Hanging days, normally Mondays, were made public holidays in order to boost crowd numbers.
Residents of nearby houses and inns looking to make some extra cash also rented out rooms with a view of the gallows to eager attendees. Responding to the theatrical nature of the event, some of the condemned dressed up in their finest clothes and made humorous speeches from their carts.
Competition was fierce for first pick of the corpses. Doctors were keen to acquire bodies for dissection and superstitious members of the public believed contact with the bodies could cure certain illnesses.
The last hanging.
By 1783 the route from Newgate Prison to Tyburn passed through newly fashionable areas of London. John Austin was sentenced to death in 1783 for the murder of labourer John Kent and became the last man to be hanged at the site.
By now the permanent triple gallows had been replaced with a removable version but from now on the hangings took place at Newgate on a scaffold known as “New Drop”.
Ledley King scored his first Premer League goal for Tottenham in the 3-3 draw at Bradford City – after just 10 seconds of the match, a Premier League record.
On this date in 1975, MONTY PYTHON released the single THE LUMBERJACK SONG backed with the SPAM SONG, (December 9th 1975).
If you'd ever wondered where the term 'spam' in the sense of 'internet spam' came from then you need look no further than the twenty-fifth episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus first televised in 1970.
The end credits for this episode were changed so every member of the crew had either Spam or some other food item from the menu added to their names. Despite its shortness, the sketch became immensely popular. The word "Spam" is uttered at least 132 times.
Spam (originally a contraction of 'Spiced Ham' but then, during WWII and beyond, an acronym that stood for Special Processed American Meat) was one of the few meats excluded from the British food rationing that began in World War II and continued for a number of years after the war, and the British grew heartily tired of it, hence the sketch.
The phenomenon, some years later, of marketers flooding Usenet newsgroups and individuals' email with junk mail advertising messages was named spamming, recounting the repetitive and unwanted presence of Spam in the sketch.
1541 Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were executed for having affairs with Catherine Howard, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII.
1799 Metric system first adopted in France.
1845 The Scottish civil engineer, Robert Thompson, patented pneumatic tyres. He was one of Scotland’s most prolific, but now largely forgotten, inventors. Tyre manufacture had to be by hand and they proved too expensive to be economically viable until Dunlop developed the process in 1888.
1868 Whitaker’s Almanac reference book was published for the first time. It's still in print, and is published annually.
1868 The first traffic lights were installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they used semaphore arms and were illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
1884 "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain is first published in the UK and Canada (US Feb 1885, due to printing error).
1901 First Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to Red Cross founder Jean Henri Dunant and peace activist Frederic Passy.
1907 The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London, when 1,000 medical students clashed with 400 police officers over the existence of a memorial for animals that had been subjected to vivisection.
We think we live in frenetic times, but rarely does our concern centre on a brown terrier dog and vivisection, as happened between 1903-10 in Edwardian London.
This long forgotten episode resulted in lawsuits, rioting and deep-felt animosity between doctors and medical students, and anti-vivisectionists, trades unionists, suffragists and feminist groups.
The controversy began in February 1903 when Physiologist, William Bayliss, of University College, London performed, before students, an illegal dissection on a brown, terrier dog.
There was also the question as to whether anaesthesia had been used, which The National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) considered as cruel and unlawful.
1917 The first postmark slogan was stamped on envelopes in Britain: ‘Buy British War Bonds Now’.
1919 The Smith brothers Capt. Ross Smith and Lt. Keith Smith (Australians), became the first aviators to fly from Britain to Australia.
1936 Edward VIII signs Instrument of Abdication, giving up the British throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson
1941 World War II: The Royal Navy's ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk by Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo bombers near Malaya.
1963 6-year old Donny Osmond's singing debut on Andy Williams Show.
1968 Joe Frazier beats Oscar Bonavena in 15 for heavyweight boxing title.
1978 Superman: The Movie, directed by Richard Donner and starring Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder premieres at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.
1979 Twenty year old stuntman Eddie Kidd accomplished a "death-defying" motorcycle leap when he crossed an 80ft gap over a 50ft sheer drop above a viaduct at Maldon, Essex. He jumped the Great Wall of China in 1993, but his career ended after he suffered serious head injuries in 1996 at a ****'s Angels rally in Warwickshire.
1987 Two dangerous prisoners escaped by helicopter from the Gartree maximum security prison in Leicestershire.
1990 The first of the hostages held in the Gulf for four and a half months arrived in Britain, after their release by Saddam Hussein. A total of 100 British hostages were freed and landed at Heathrow airport, with the promise of a further 400 to follow.
1991 The leaders of the 12 EC nations agreed on the treaty of Maastricht, pledging closer political and economic union.
2001 Prime MInister Tony Blair backed Home Secretary David Blunkett over his call for ethnic minority groups to make more effort to fit in with the British identity.
2018 Theresa May cancels UK parliament vote on Brexit bill in face of certain defeat.
December 10, 1896 — When a newspaper mistakenly published the obituary of Mark Twain, the writer is said to have quipped: “Reports of my death are grossly exaggerated.” When a similar thing happened to Alfred Nobel, creator of the prestigious Prizes, it became for him a life-changing event.
Alfred’s brother, Ludvig, fell ill in France in 1888 and died. A French newspaper mixed up the two men and published Alfred’s obituary. In it he was heavily criticised for his invention of dynamite.
Headlined “Le marchand de la mort est mort” (The merchant of death is dead) the obituary said: "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday."
It was certainly true that Alfred had invented the explosive – and made a considerable fortune out of it. But he was shocked by what he read and certainly did not want to be remembered in that way. He resolved that posterity should embrace his name with a much more worthwhile activity.
So he set aside a large portion of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, which each year would honour outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and the pursuit of peace. Economics was added later.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden, the fourth of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel's eight children. His father was an engineer and inventor but found it hard to make a living.
That changed when he took a job manufacturing explosives with a firm in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Alfred, aged only four, moved there with the rest of the family.
His father could now afford private tuition for his son who quickly demonstrated intellectual talents of the kind that make some parents proud and others to raise an astonished eyebrow.
In no time Alfred mastered chemistry, which he continued to study for several years. As a teenager, he became fluent in English, French, German and Russian as well as his native language, Swedish.
Eventually the family moved back to Sweden where a tragic accident in 1864 had a profound effect on the then 29-year-old Alfred. Five people were killed in an explosion at the family’s factory, including Alfred’s younger brother, Emil.
Shocked and deeply upset, Alfred resolved to use his knowledge of chemistry to develop a safer explosive. Three years later, he produced a mixture of nitroglycerin and an absorbent substance. Alfred took out patents on the new explosive, which he called “dynamite.”
He continued for the rest of his life to take out money-making patents on his creations and by the time of his death the number had risen to 355. Alfred’s wealth was also considerably enhanced by his 90 armaments factories and investment in oilfields along the Caspian Sea.
Aged 63, he died of a stroke on December 10, 1896, in San Remo, Italy, and left 94 per cent of his total assets – 31,225,000 Swedish kronor (equivalent to about 300 million US dollars today) to fund the Nobel Prizes.
1282 The death of the last native Prince of Wales - Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd.
1688 James II fled to France, never to return and was forced to abdicate after William of Orange had landed in England on 5th November.
1769 Venetian blinds were patented (in London) by Edward Beran.
1877 English photographer Eadweard Mubridge won a long standing bet for a millionaire by proving that a horse's four feet are all off the ground simultaneously once every stride. He used multiple cameras around the track, each taking a single frame via a series of trip wires.
1903 The first wildlife preservation society was formed in Britain to protect fauna. It was called the Society for the Preservation of Wild Fauna of the Empire.
1914 The Royal Flying Corps, which later became the RAF, adopted the red, white and blue roundel to identify its aircraft more easily during World War I. See the roundel on a static WWII Spitfire F Mk IX - BS435 : F-FY at the Southport Woodvale Rally.
1936 After ruling for less than one year, Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne. Edward planned to marry divorcee Mrs. Wallis Simpson and, before he left for France, he made a final radio broadcast to the nation. He was succeeded by his brother, George, who became George VI.
1952 Derek Bentley, aged 19, and 16 year old Christopher Craig, were found guilty of the murder of a policeman in south London. Because of his age, Craig was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, while Bentley, who did not fire the gun, was sentenced to hang. Despite a public outcry, the sentence was carried out on 27th January 1953.
1967 Concorde, the world's first supersonic airliner, was rolled out of its hangar for public viewing for the first time.
1975 An Icelandic gunboat opened fire on unarmed British fishery support vessels in the North Atlantic Sea, heightening the 'Cod War'.
1981 Muhammad Ali's 61st & last fight, losing to Trevor Berbick.
1986 Church leaders condemned a radio campaign about Aids for 'condoning promiscuity'.
1987 Charlie Chaplin’s famous memorabilia were sold at Christie’s in London. His cane and bowler went for £82,500 and his boots for £38,500.
1990 The Government set aside £42M to British haemophiliacs who became infected with the HIV virus after being treated with contaminated Factor VIII
2005 A huge fire continued to burn at Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It was the largest of its kind in peacetime Europe and the noise of the explosions could be heard as far away as the Netherlands.
2008 Bernard Madoff arrested and charged with securities fraud in $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
1800 Washington, D.C., established as the capital of the United States of America.
1896 Marconi gave the first public demonstration of radio at Toynbee Hall, London. On the same day, in 1901, Marconi carried out the first transatlantic radio transmission from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St John’s, Newfoundland, a distance of 1800 miles.
1908 The start of the first Australian Rugby League tour of Britain. The seven-month tour was almost a disaster due to small gate-takings.
1948 Britain introduced National Service for all men aged between 18 and 26. It extended the British conscription of World War II into peacetime.
1955 Christopher Cockerell patented his prototype of the hovercraft. He had tested his theories using a hair-dryer and tin cans and found his work to have potential, but the idea took some years to develop, and he was forced to sell personal possessions in order to finance his research.
1966 English sailor Francis Chichester arrived at Sydney in his ketch Gipsy Moth IV - half way in his bid to become the first man to sail solo around the world. On 28 May 1967, after 226 days, he arrived back in Plymouth and became the first person to achieve a true, solo, circumnavigation of the world from West to East via the great capes.
1975 The six-day Balcombe Street siege ended peacefully in London after four IRA gunmen freed their two hostages and gave themselves up to police.
1977 "Saturday Night Fever", a film starring John Travolta, premieres in NYC.
1980 Apple makes its initial public offering on the US stock market at $22.00 per share. 38 years later it would become the first US company valued at over $1 trillion. If you'd purchased $10,000 of Apple stock at the end of its first day of trading on Dec. 12, 1980, that investment would currently be worth about $11,590,000 as of September 9, 2020.
1982 30,000 women formed a 9 mile human chain that encircled Greenham Common air base in Berkshire, in protest against the proposed siting of US Cruise missiles there.
1986 James "Bone Crusher" Smith TKO's WBA champ Tim Witherspoon in Madison Square Garden.
1988 Britain’s worst rail crash for 20 years killed 35 and injured 113 people when a packed express train ran into the back of a stationary commuter train near Clapham Junction.
1988 The first satellite pictures were beamed to London's betting shops to allow them to watch the races live from many race courses.
2013 Blockbuster, the DVD and games rental chain that went into administration in January, announced that all the remaining 91 UK stores, employing 808 people, would have to close by 16th December.
2019 Boris Johnson was elected as prime minister. It was the fourth poll in less than five years, after lawmakers approved his gamble to break the country's crippling political deadlock and hold an election two weeks before Christmas.
1577 Francis Drake set sail from Plymouth with his flagship Pelican, plus 4 other ships and 160 men, on an expedition to the Pacific. His other ships were lost or returned home shortly after the voyage began but the Pelican, renamed the Golden Hind, pushed on alone up the coast of Chile and Peru. Continuing northwards, the California coast was claimed in the name of Queen Elizabeth. He crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and eventually returned to Plymouth on September 26th 1580 with treasure worth £500,000. He became the first Englishmen to sail around the world and the Queen knighted him aboard his ship at Deptford, on the river Thames.
1847 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (under the pseudonym Ellis Bell) was published, as was Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë (under the pseudonym Acton Bell). In choosing to write under pseudonyms, the sisters drew an immediate veil of mystery around them, and people speculated as to the true identity of Currer Bell (i.e. Charlotte Brontë), and Ellis and Acton Bell.
1867 Twelve people were killed when Irish terrorists blew up the outer wall of Clerkenwell Prison, London in an attempt to rescue a jailed colleague.
1904 The first electric train came into service on London's Metropolitan Railway.
1939 The Battle of the River Plate, the first naval battle in the Second World War and the only episode of the war developed in South America. Action by Royal Navy cruisers HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles of the New Zealand Division, drove the great German battleship Admiral Graf Spee to seek shelter off Montevideo in Uruguay for repairs to its fuel system. Captain Hans Langsdorff of the Graf Spee scuttled his damaged ship rather than face the overwhelmingly superior force that the British had led him to believe was awaiting on his departure. On 19th December, he committed suicide, over the Graf Spee's ensign, as a symbolic act of going down with his ship.
1950 James Dean begins his career with an appearance in a Pepsi commercial.
1961 The Beatles sign a formal agreement to be managed by Brian Epstein.
1963 Capital records signs right of first refusal agreement with The Beatles.
1972 More than 300 British victims of the Thalidomide drug were offered a compensation deal said to be worth £11.85m. A year later the 11 year battle over Thalidomide compensation ended with a £20 million court settlement.
1973 The British Government ordered a 3 day working week following an Arab oil embargo and industrial action by the country's miners.
1976 The first oil was brought to Britain, by tanker, from the North Sea Brent Oil Field , located 116miles north-east of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands.
1995 Hundreds of black and white youths went on the streets of Brixton, in south London attacking police, ransacking shops and burning cars after the death of a black man (Wayne Douglas, aged 26. ) in police custody.
2002 The enlargement of the European Union. It was announced that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia would become members from 1st May 2004.
2014 Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London, a conference and events venue since 1887, closed for the last time. The final concert was by the Bombay Bicycle Club, an indie rock band from London.
2015 Irishman Conor McGregor knocks out Brazilian Jose Aldo in 13 seconds to win his 1st featherweight title in Las Vegas.
2017 Prime Minister Theresa May's UK Conservative government loses key vote in Parliament for an amendment to allow MPs to vote on Brexit.
2019 Yesterday's general election, the first in December for almost 100 years, led to a win for Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party. There were massive losses for Labour, in areas that had been Labour strongholds for decades. Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said that he would not stand as Labour leader in another general election. The Lib. Dem. leader, Jo Swinson, lost her seat to the SNP and stepped down as their leader.
With Christmas fast approaching the half time entertainment at the Premier League match between Aston Villa and Arsenal included Santa parachuting down onto the Villa Park pitch. But the festive mood being enjoyed by the 40,000 Sunday evening crowd turned to tragedy when a gust of wind caused the RAF parachutist, Nigel Rogoff, to clip the edge of the Trinity Road stand and he then fell some 80 feet onto the side of the pitch. His badly broken legs were treated by two surgeons who had been spectators at the match and he went on to receive 177 pints of blood in a 3-month spell in hospital but sadly his injuries resulted in a leg being amputated. In February 2016 Nigel was part of a team of four rowers who became the first amputees to row the Atlantic - all 3000 miles of it.
1542 Princess Mary Stuart becomes Queen Mary I of Scotland at 6 days old. She was queen of Scotland until 24th July 1567 and was queen consort of France from 10th July 1559 to 5th December 1560.
1861 Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria died, at the early age of 42 of typhoid fever. His death plunged the Queen into a deep mourning that lasted for the rest of her life.
1895 The birth of King George VI, the second son of George V and Mary. He succeeded Edward VIII when Edward abdicated and ruled Britain during the war years.
1896 The Glasgow Underground Railway was opened by the Glasgow District Subway Company.
1903 The Wright brothers attempt to fly the Wright Flyer for the first time at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1911 Norwegian Roald Amundsen's expedition is the 1st to each the South Pole.
1918 The first woman elected to Parliament was Constance, the Countess Markievicz who won for Sinn Fein, contesting a Dublin seat. She was unable to take her seat as she was in Holloway Prison, London. The 1918 General Election was also the first time that women in Britain had the vote.
1920 The first scheduled airliner disaster in aviation history occurred when an airliner with six passengers and two crew took off from Cricklewood Airport, London, for a flight to Paris. Barely airborne, the plane crashed into a house in neighbouring Golders Green, killing the crew and two passengers. The others escaped from the wreckage.
1932 Leeds and Wigan competed in the first floodlit rugby league match, at London’s White City Stadium.
1959 The shortest murder trial in British legal history. In 30 seconds, at Winchester Assizes, Brian Cawley pleaded guilty to the murder of Rupert Steed and was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
1967 DNA created in a test tube.
1984 Miners' leader Arthur Scargill was found guilty of obstruction during a picket at a Yorkshire coal works earlier in the year. He was fined £250 and ordered to pay £750 in costs.
2003 US President George W. Bush announces the capture of Saddam Hussein.
2011 The UK jobless total reached a 17-year high in the three months to October, hitting 2.64 million. Youth unemployment, which covers 16-24 year olds, hit its highest level since records began in 1992.
2011 Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen (aged 85) and Duke of Edinburgh (aged 90) would mark their 2012 Diamond Jubilee with a five-month 'four corners' tour of the UK.
2012 Yorkshire, beat off the challenge of bids from Florence and Edinburgh with Leeds set to host the prestigious start of the Tour de France cycle race in 2014. Yorkshire took the Grand Depart to its heart. Day 1 started in Leeds on 5th July 2014 and took in the town of Skipton.The day's stage continued through the Yorkshire Dales National Park and Ripon, before ending the day in Harrogate.
2017 British surgeon Simon Bramhall admits to branding the liver of 2 patients with his initials.
2018 Report by Reuters US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson knew for decades their talc was contaminated with asbestos.
1911 Norwegian Roald Amundsen's expedition is the 1st to each the South Pole.
Heartbreak and Tragedy for Captain Scott.
December 14, 1911 — Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man, on this day, to set foot on the South Pole. To celebrate, he and his team pitched their tent on the spot with the Norwegian flag fluttering proudly above it.
It was an achievement that would break the heart and spirit of fellow explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott who had set out from Britain months before, determined to win the race to the Pole.
At the time, Antarctica was the last unexplored continent and of interest to a number of countries including Britain, Japan, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. They would compete against each other to gain knowledge and commercial opportunities in the region as well as claiming new territory. But the geographical prize was the South Pole – the most remote spot on the planet.
The British party arrived in Antarctica in January 1911 and preparations began. Scott's expedition had a dual purpose - to reach the Pole for the British Empire, and to explore and document this great southern land. He left base camp with support parties, motor sledges, dogs and ponies for his journey south on 1 November 1911. The race was on.
But they hadn't reckoned on the appalling conditions that they would face. The mechanical sledges constantly broke down in the freezing weather and the ponies could not cope with such cold. The expedition carried on without them. In mid-December the dog teams turned back and the explorers had to haul their sledges by hand.
Of the 65 members of the original expedition team, only five now remained to face the ascent of the Beardmore Glacier and the polar plateau: Scott; his friend Dr Edward Wilson; Welshman Edgar Evans; Scotsman Henry 'Birdie' Bowers; and Captain Lawrence 'Titus' Oates.
Tired and hungry, suffering from hypothermia and scurvy, they arrived at the Pole on 17 January to find the heartbreaking sight of the flag that Amundsen had hoisted 33 days earlier. He had taken a shorter route.
The British party, l-r Scott, Oates, Wilson and Evans reach Amundsen's tent. Photo: Henry Bowers/British Library.
Scott wrote in his diary: "The Pole, yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority."
The men did not stay long. With heavy hearts they took pictures and quickly left to begin the 1,500 km journey back. They did so amid ferocious winds and temperatures hovering around minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 22 degrees Celsius).
Evans was the first to die on 17 February – he had stumbled behind the group until he slipped into a coma. A month later, on 17 March, Captain Oates, crippled with frostbite and believing he was holding the others back, walked out of the party's tent. It was his 32nd birthday.
Scott immortalised the courageous army officer in his diary, writing: "As he left he said, 'I am just going outside and may be some time...' We knew that Oates was walking to his death. It was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman."
A few days later, the three remaining men were themselves lying in their tent waiting for death. A swirling blizzard had confined them to their sleeping bags, while – tragically – a pre-arranged cache of food and supplies lay only 11 miles away. Scott wrote in his diary:
"We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more."
Eight months later a search party found Scott and his two companions in their small tent on the ice frozen inside their sleeping bags. His diary lay nearby. The search party used the tent to cover the bodies then built a cairn of ice and snow over it to mark the spot.
A 60,891 Villa Park crowd watched in disbelief as Aston Villa lost 7-1 at home to Arsenal with Ted Drake scoring all seven of Arsenal’s goals. That set the record for the most goals scored in a match by a player in the top division and was the most goals scored in any competitive match by an Arsenal player.
1906 The opening of the Piccadilly tube line on London's Underground. It was the longest underground line at the time, running from Finsbury Park to Hammersmith.
1913 Suffragettes caused a dynamite explosion at Holloway Prison where Emmeline Pankhurst and Lady Constance Lytton were detained.
1939 "Gone With the Wind", drama film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, premieres in Atlanta.
1944 Bandleader, Major Glenn Miller,lost over English Channel.He disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel while traveling to entertain allied troops in France during World War II in a suspected plane crash after its fuel intakes froze. His body was never found.
1958 The last steam locomotive was made at Crewe. Engine number 92250 was the 7,331st locomotive built since the works opened.
1974 New speed limits were introduced. Speed limits on motorways would remain at 70mph , but on dual carriageways they would become 60mph and on all other roads 50mph as the government tried to curb fuel use.
1979 Chris Haney and Scott Abbott develop the board game Trivial Pursuit.
1982 Reputed to be Robin Hood's tree, the 'Major Oak' in Sherwood Forest, was fitted with a fire alarm.
1982 There were scenes of jubilation as the gates isolating the people of Gibraltar from Spain were opened for the first time in 13 years. There were tight restrictions, which included a ban on any British or foreign tourists crossing.
1984 'Do They Know It's Christmas' by Band Aid entered the chart at No.1 and stayed at the top for 5 weeks. At the time it was the biggest selling single ever in the UK, with sales of over three and a half million.
1987 A company in Bedford became the first to be fined (£500) for failing to register personal computer records under the Data Protection Act.
1995 The European Communities Court of Justice hands down the "Bosman ruling", giving EU footballers the right to a free transfer at the end of their contracts, with the provision that they are transferring from one UEFA Federation to another.
2013 Andy Murray was awarded the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. Earlier in the year Murray had become the first Briton in three quarters of a century to win the men’s singles competition at Wimbledon.
2014 Jonathan Paul Burrows, a London hedge fund manager who regularly avoided buying a train ticket on his commute to the City, was banned for life from working in any regulated financial industries. In total, Mr Burrows was believed to have dodged £42,550 in fares.
2015 Forty three year old astronaut Major Tim Peake became the first Briton to serve a mission on the International Space Station. He took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan at 11:03am GMT, alongside Nasa astronaut Tim Kopra and Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko.
1431 King Henry VI of England crowned king of France.
1485 The birth of Catherine of Aragon, the first of Henry VIII’s wives. At the age of three, Catherine was betrothed to Prince Arthur, heir to the English throne, and they married in 1501, but Arthur died five months later. Catherine subsequently married Arthur's younger brother, the recently-succeeded Henry VIII, in 1509.She bore him six children but only one survived (Mary I), and Henry divorced her against the Pope’s wishes, in his pursuit for a male heir.
1653 Following the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell failed to get the Parliament he wanted and became Lord Protector, turning himself into an uncrowned king for the next four years. He was buried in Westminster Abbey but after the Royalists returned to power, they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.
1773 Taxes by Britain on tea and other commodities led Samuel Adams and 150 ‘Sons of Liberty’ disguised as Mohawk Indians to hold what became known as the Boston Tea Party. 342 tea chests worth £18,000 were tossed off Griffin’s Wharf into Boston Harbour. The War of Independence had begun.
1899 Italian football club A.C. Milan founded as Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club by Englishmen Alfred Edwards and Herbert Kilpin (disputed possibly 13 Dec).
1913 Charlie Chaplin begins his film career at Keystone for $150 a week.
1914 German warships attacked the seaside resort of Scarborough, believing it to be a major British port. Hartlepool and Whitby were also targeted. It was the first successful bombing on British shores for 250 years. Over five hundred shells of varying calibres were fired into Scarborough and on to the Grand Hotel.The attacks resulted in a total of 592 casualties, many of them civilians, of whom 137 died. There was public outrage towards the German navy for an attack against civilians and against the Royal Navy for its failure to prevent the raid.
1950 Child star Shirley Temple announces her retirement from films aged 22.
1966 Jimi Hendrix Experience releases its 1st single, "Hey Joe," in the UK.
1969 MPs voted by a big majority for the permanent abolition of the death penalty for murder.
1971 Don McLean's 8+ minute version of "American Pie" released.
1973 O.J. Simpson becomes 1st NFL running back to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.
1976 U.S.A. Government halts swine flu vaccination program following reports of paralysis.
1977 The Queen unveiled the new underground link from central London to Heathrow; the first from a capital city to its major airport.
1985 John Gotti assumes leadership of New York's Gambino crime family after ordering the executions of Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti.
1988 Junior Health minister Edwina Currie resigned after her earlier comments (3rd December) when she said that most of Britain's egg production was infected with the salmonella bacteria.
2012 Tour de France and Olympic time trial champion Bradley Wiggins was voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
2013 Figures showed that the UK paid more than £27m in aid to China last year. China, which has poured billions into its flagship space programme, has a GDP of £5.2 trillion compared with Britain’s £1.5 trillion.
On December 16th 1899 a group of English expats led by Herbert Kilpin and Alfred Edwards formed the Milan Cricket and Football Club .... and they are now the mighty AC Milan! Although no longer renowned for playing cricket AC Milan still pay tribute to their English founders by using the English spelling of their home town in their club name - Milan - rather than using the Italian spelling - Milano.
Football On This Day - 16th December 1961.
Jimmy Greaves continued his record of scoring on his debut for every senior side he played for with a hat-trick for Spurs in Tottenham’s 5-2 First Division victory over Blackpool at White Hart Lane. The first was a from a spectacular flying scissors kick which set the scene for him achieving legend status in North London.
Football On This Day – 16th December 2017.
Sunderland 1 Fulham 0 in the Championship. Nothing unremarkable in that result - except that it was the first time Sunderland fans had seen their club win a home match since they beat Watford 1-0 on December 17th 2016. In the intervening 364 days the long-suffering Sunderland fans hadn’t seen their club win in 21 league and cup fixtures at the Stadium of Light
1778 The birth, in Penzance, of Sir Humphrey Davy, English inventor of the safety lamp for miners which allowed miners to work safely in the presence of flammable gases. Davy refused to patent the lamp, and its invention led to him being awarded the Rumford medal in 1816. The medal has been awarded every alternate year since 1800 by the Royal Society for outstandingly important discoveries by a scientist working in Europe.
1843 Henry Cole, founder of London's V&A Museum, commissions printing of the 1st Christmas card.
1843 Charles Dickens began inscribing copies, for friends, of his new novel A Christmas Carol. There were 10 pre-publication presentations made 'on this day' and the novel went into general publication on 19th December. It was an immediate success with the public and the initial print run of 6,000 copies was sold out by Christmas Eve.
1849 Thomas and William Bowler, felt hat makers, sold their first 'bowler' to William Coke, which he purchased at James Lock & Co. in London.
1900 1st prize of 100,000 francs offered for communications with extraterrestrials. Martians excluded-considered too easy.
1925 The death of Albert Neilson Hornby (A. N. Hornby), one of the best known sportsmen in England during the 19th century. Hornby was the first of only two men to captain the country at both rugby and cricket. He is also remembered as the England cricket captain whose side lost the Test match at home against the Australians in 1882 which gave rise to the Ashes (Quote: - English cricket has died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.)
1933 Members of the public were allowed to walk through the recently completed Mersey Road Tunnel, prior to its opening to traffic.
1954 The British Petroleum Company (BP) was formed.
1967 Alec Rose, aboard Lively Lady, completed his solo 14,500 mile sail from Britain to Australia, having been at sea for 155 days. He returned successfully to Portsmouth on 4th July 1968 and was knighted the next day by the Queen.
1983 Three police officers and three members of the public were killed and many others injured after a car bomb attack in London. Police believe the IRA planted the bomb in a side street near Harrods department store in Knightsbridge.
1986 Mrs Davina Thompson, in an operation performed at a Cambridge hospital, became the world’s first heart, lungs and liver transplant patient.
1989 "The Simpsons" created by Matt Groening, premieres on Fox TV as a full animated series with the episode, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire".
2013 Alex Salmond's ‘Team Scotland’ delegation to the Ryder Cup in Chicago spent spent almost half a million pounds during their short stay, according to official figures obtained by The Telegraph.
2014 Birmingham was named as one of the top 10 cities in the world by travel handbook company Rough Guide. It was the only UK location on the list.
2015 José Mourinho is sacked as manager of British Premier football club Chelsea.
2018 On This Day, all tolls ceased on the Severn Bridges. The first bridge crossing opened in 1966 with tolls charged in both directions. The arrangements were changed in the early 1990s and the toll was collected on the English side and only for vehicles travelling westwards from England to Wales.People have had to pay to cross the Severn Estuary,with its treacherous tides,since Roman times be it in a car,in a train or on a ferry.
2018 US poacher sentenced to watch the film "Bambi" repeatedly during year in prison, for killing hundreds of deer in Missouri.
2019 England's Fallon Sherrock becomes first woman to win a match at the PDC World Darts Championship, beating compatriot Ted Evetts, 3-2 at the Alexandra Palace in London.
Comments
(December 7th 1979)
LONDON CALLING, written as if a post-apocalyptic summary, was the 70s pessimist’s dream come true, feeding off the time’s paranoia - yet its message continues to echo across space and time. In it a warning: solidarity and community before superficiality; punk had died and the sheep were being led to the “imitation zone”. Get real, look forward not back.
Joe wrote the song after riding in a cab along the Thames embankment accompanied by his then fiancée Gaby Salter.
"There was a lot of Cold War nonsense going on, and we knew that London was susceptible to flooding. She told me to write something about that. So I sat in the front room, looking out at Edith Grove.”
His pad at the appropriately titled World's End Estate, Chelsea, had a riverside view and inspired the ironic line, "London is drowning and I live by the river".
Detailing the numerous ways to Armageddon, including the coming of the ice age, starvation, and war, much of Joe’s inspiration came from the doom-laden new stories he was consuming at the time, "I read about ten news reports in one day calling down all variety of plagues on us."
The title was lifted from the BBC World Service's radio station identification: "This is London calling...” used during World War II to open their broadcasts outside of England. The line about the "Nuclear Error" was inspired by the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown in March 1979.
The dying strains of "I never felt so much a-like..." was sometimes fleshed out live to "I never felt so much a-like singin' the blues." There was the truth.
LONDON CALLING still wails like a thousand police sirens.
It seems it hit the Scots harder in the pocket . A shilling admission looks a bit steep, for a bore draw.
1542 The birth of Mary Queen of Scots, Scottish Queen who ascended to the throne when she was just 6 days old and was crowned nine months later. A rebellion led to her abdication and later Elizabeth I imprisoned her for a plot to restore the Roman Catholic religion and to take the throne from her. After 19 years in custody, Mary was tried and executed for treason.
1863 The world’s first heavyweight boxing championship took place at Wadhurst, Kent, between Tom King (England) and John C Heenan (US). The fight lasted for 24 rounds and King was the champion. Heenan was America's heavyweight champion under the London Prize Ring, or bare-knuckle rules, but retired after his defeat by the English heavyweight.
1864 The opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon at Bristol, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel when he was aged just 24. There have been over 500 suicides since the bridge was opened.
1931 Coaxial cable patented.
1941 The US, Britain and Australia declared war on Japan following the Pearl Harbour attack the previous day. The attack sank 9 ships of the American fleet and 21 ships were severely damaged. The overall death toll reached 2,403, including 68 civilians.
1941 The birth of Sir Geoff Hurst, English footballer. He made his mark in World Cup history as the only player to have scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final. His three goals came in the 1966 final for England in their 4–2 win over West Germany at the old Wembley stadium.
1952 Her Majesty the Queen announced that she would permit her coronation to be televised.
1965 The new Race Relations Act came into force making racial discrimination unlawful in public places.
1967 The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" album is released in UK.
1980 John Lennon, former member of the Liverpool group The Beatles, was shot dead by Mark David Chapman who opened fire outside the musician's New York apartment.
1981 Arthur Scargill became leader of 'The National Union Of Mineworkers'.
1983 The House of Lords voted in favour of allowing live broadcasts from its chamber.
2013 Northumberland National Park and the adjoining Kielder Water and forest park, were declared Europe's largest "dark sky park". The award recognises the profound darkness that makes nearly 580 square milesof the county an ideal territory from which to stare up at the night sky.
2020 Ninety year old Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world (outside clinical trials) to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine; at the University Hospital, Coventry. Sir Simon Stevens, NHS England's chief executive said that the vaccine rollout could be 'a decisive turning point' in the fight against Covid-19. Statistics released on Monday evening 7th December 2020 showed that there had been 67.3M Coronavirus cases worldwide and 1.54M deaths.
1783 The first executions took place at Newgate Prison (now the site of the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey). Prior to this,public executions were carried out at Tyburn gallows (now the site of Marble Arch),which involved carting the prisoners from Newgate Prison through the crowded streets.
1854 Lord Tennyson's poem, Charge of the Light Brigade was published. The Charge of the Light Brigade had been led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25th October 1854 in the Crimean War. The poem emphasized the valour of the cavalry in carrying out their orders, even though they knew that blunders had been made by those in command. Quote from the poem - 'Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.'
1960 The first episode of Coronation Street was screened on ITV. It is the world's longest-running television soap opera.
1967 Jim Morrison arrested on stage for disturbing the peace at the New Haven Arena, Connecticut, making him the 1st rock star to be taken into custody during a performance.
1987 England's cricket tour in Pakistan hung in the balance as a row erupted between captain Mike Gatting and the umpire Shakoor Rana who accused Gatting of cheating.
1992 The separation was announced of the Prince and Princess of Wales (Prince Charles and Princess Diana). They married in 1981.
1997 There were problems for Richard Branson in his attempt to fly around the world in a hot-air balloon when the envelope ( the balloon section) of his Virgin Global Challenger broke loose from the gondola and flew off on its own from Marrakech, Morocco.
2010 A car containing Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall was attacked amid violence after MPs voted to raise university tuition fees in England. A window was cracked and their car hit by paint, but the couple were unharmed. In angry scenes, protesters battled with police in Parliament Square and were contained on Westminster Bridge for a time by officers.
2011 Prime Minister David Cameron insisted he put Britain's interests first by vetoing a new European Economic Treaty.
2012 The death of the British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore, aged 89. He was the presenter of the BBC's Sky At Night for over 50 years, from its first airing on 24th April 1957, making him the longest-running host ever of the same television show.
1783 The first executions took place at Newgate Prison (now the site of the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey). Prior to this,public executions were carried out at Tyburn gallows (now the site of Marble Arch),which involved carting the prisoners from Newgate Prison through the crowded streets.
On 3 November 1783 highwayman John Austin became the last man to be executed at Tyburn, marking the end of an infamous 600-year history.
The notorious Tyburn hanging tree was located near Marble Arch, at the top of Oxford Street in the bustling heart of modern London. However, for much of its history, it stood outside of the boundary of the city.
Executions at Tyburn.
La Pendaison (The Hanging), a plate from French artist Jacques Callot’s 1633 series The Great Miseries of War.
The first recorded execution at Tyburn was that of William Fitz Osbert, or William with the Beard in 1196. Fitz Osbert was wanted for sedition (encouraging unrest) and after his capture was dragged naked to Tyburn and hanged.
During the reign of Elizabeth I, the infamy of Tyburn grew apace. In 1571 the original Tyburn hanging place, made up of a row of elm trees, was replaced with a huge triangular Triple Gallows that made mass executions possible.
Condemned criminals were transported from Newgate Prison to Tyburn, watched by large crowds along the route. The journey could take several hours and included a stop at an inn where the prisoners could take a drink to calm them down.
Once at Tyburn, the prisoners were positioned beneath the gallows on a horse-drawn carriage and a noose placed around their neck. The carriage would then be moved away, leaving the prisoners hanging from the tree. Death could take up to three quarters of an hour.
The spectacle of death.
The executions were watched by crowds of spectators who paid an entry fee to sit in specially built stands to watch the gruesome events unfold. Hanging days, normally Mondays, were made public holidays in order to boost crowd numbers.
Residents of nearby houses and inns looking to make some extra cash also rented out rooms with a view of the gallows to eager attendees. Responding to the theatrical nature of the event, some of the condemned dressed up in their finest clothes and made humorous speeches from their carts.
Competition was fierce for first pick of the corpses. Doctors were keen to acquire bodies for dissection and superstitious members of the public believed contact with the bodies could cure certain illnesses.
The last hanging.
By 1783 the route from Newgate Prison to Tyburn passed through newly fashionable areas of London. John Austin was sentenced to death in 1783 for the murder of labourer John Kent and became the last man to be hanged at the site.
By now the permanent triple gallows had been replaced with a removable version but from now on the hangings took place at Newgate on a scaffold known as “New Drop”.
Ledley King scored his first Premer League goal for Tottenham in the 3-3 draw at Bradford City – after just 10 seconds of the match, a Premier League record.
https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/266871#!
On this date in 1975, MONTY PYTHON released the single THE LUMBERJACK SONG backed with the SPAM SONG, (December 9th 1975).
If you'd ever wondered where the term 'spam' in the sense of 'internet spam' came from then you need look no further than the twenty-fifth episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus first televised in 1970.
The end credits for this episode were changed so every member of the crew had either Spam or some other food item from the menu added to their names. Despite its shortness, the sketch became immensely popular. The word "Spam" is uttered at least 132 times.
Spam (originally a contraction of 'Spiced Ham' but then, during WWII and beyond, an acronym that stood for Special Processed American Meat) was one of the few meats excluded from the British food rationing that began in World War II and continued for a number of years after the war, and the British grew heartily tired of it, hence the sketch.
The phenomenon, some years later, of marketers flooding Usenet newsgroups and individuals' email with junk mail advertising messages was named spamming, recounting the repetitive and unwanted presence of Spam in the sketch.
1541 Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were executed for having affairs with Catherine Howard, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII.
1799 Metric system first adopted in France.
1845 The Scottish civil engineer, Robert Thompson, patented pneumatic tyres. He was one of Scotland’s most prolific, but now largely forgotten, inventors. Tyre manufacture had to be by hand and they proved too expensive to be economically viable until Dunlop developed the process in 1888.
1868 Whitaker’s Almanac reference book was published for the first time. It's still in print, and is published annually.
1868 The first traffic lights were installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they used semaphore arms and were illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
1884 "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain is first published in the UK and Canada (US Feb 1885, due to printing error).
1901 First Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to Red Cross founder Jean Henri Dunant and peace activist Frederic Passy.
1907 The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London, when 1,000 medical students clashed with 400 police officers over the existence of a memorial for animals that had been subjected to vivisection.
We think we live in frenetic times, but rarely does our concern centre on a brown terrier dog and vivisection, as happened between 1903-10 in Edwardian London.
This long forgotten episode resulted in lawsuits, rioting and deep-felt animosity between doctors and medical students, and anti-vivisectionists, trades unionists, suffragists and feminist groups.
The controversy began in February 1903 when Physiologist, William Bayliss, of University College, London performed, before students, an illegal dissection on a brown, terrier dog.
There was also the question as to whether anaesthesia had been used, which The National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) considered as cruel and unlawful.
1917 The first postmark slogan was stamped on envelopes in Britain: ‘Buy British War Bonds Now’.
1919 The Smith brothers Capt. Ross Smith and Lt. Keith Smith (Australians), became the first aviators to fly from Britain to Australia.
1936 Edward VIII signs Instrument of Abdication, giving up the British throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson
1941 World War II: The Royal Navy's ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk by Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo bombers near Malaya.
1963 6-year old Donny Osmond's singing debut on Andy Williams Show.
1968 Joe Frazier beats Oscar Bonavena in 15 for heavyweight boxing title.
1978 Superman: The Movie, directed by Richard Donner and starring Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder premieres at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.
1979 Twenty year old stuntman Eddie Kidd accomplished a "death-defying" motorcycle leap when he crossed an 80ft gap over a 50ft sheer drop above a viaduct at Maldon, Essex. He jumped the Great Wall of China in 1993, but his career ended after he suffered serious head injuries in 1996 at a ****'s Angels rally in Warwickshire.
1987 Two dangerous prisoners escaped by helicopter from the Gartree maximum security prison in Leicestershire.
1990 The first of the hostages held in the Gulf for four and a half months arrived in Britain, after their release by Saddam Hussein. A total of 100 British hostages were freed and landed at Heathrow airport, with the promise of a further 400 to follow.
1991 The leaders of the 12 EC nations agreed on the treaty of Maastricht, pledging closer political and economic union.
2001 Prime MInister Tony Blair backed Home Secretary David Blunkett over his call for ethnic minority groups to make more effort to fit in with the British identity.
2018 Theresa May cancels UK parliament vote on Brexit bill in face of certain defeat.
December 10, 1896 — When a newspaper mistakenly published the obituary of Mark Twain, the writer is said to have quipped: “Reports of my death are grossly exaggerated.” When a similar thing happened to Alfred Nobel, creator of the prestigious Prizes, it became for him a life-changing event.
Alfred’s brother, Ludvig, fell ill in France in 1888 and died. A French newspaper mixed up the two men and published Alfred’s obituary. In it he was heavily criticised for his invention of dynamite.
Headlined “Le marchand de la mort est mort” (The merchant of death is dead) the obituary said: "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday."
It was certainly true that Alfred had invented the explosive – and made a considerable fortune out of it. But he was shocked by what he read and certainly did not want to be remembered in that way. He resolved that posterity should embrace his name with a much more worthwhile activity.
So he set aside a large portion of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, which each year would honour outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and the pursuit of peace. Economics was added later.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden, the fourth of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel's eight children. His father was an engineer and inventor but found it hard to make a living.
That changed when he took a job manufacturing explosives with a firm in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Alfred, aged only four, moved there with the rest of the family.
His father could now afford private tuition for his son who quickly demonstrated intellectual talents of the kind that make some parents proud and others to raise an astonished eyebrow.
In no time Alfred mastered chemistry, which he continued to study for several years. As a teenager, he became fluent in English, French, German and Russian as well as his native language, Swedish.
Eventually the family moved back to Sweden where a tragic accident in 1864 had a profound effect on the then 29-year-old Alfred. Five people were killed in an explosion at the family’s factory, including Alfred’s younger brother, Emil.
Shocked and deeply upset, Alfred resolved to use his knowledge of chemistry to develop a safer explosive. Three years later, he produced a mixture of nitroglycerin and an absorbent substance. Alfred took out patents on the new explosive, which he called “dynamite.”
He continued for the rest of his life to take out money-making patents on his creations and by the time of his death the number had risen to 355. Alfred’s wealth was also considerably enhanced by his 90 armaments factories and investment in oilfields along the Caspian Sea.
Aged 63, he died of a stroke on December 10, 1896, in San Remo, Italy, and left 94 per cent of his total assets – 31,225,000 Swedish kronor (equivalent to about 300 million US dollars today) to fund the Nobel Prizes.
1282 The death of the last native Prince of Wales - Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd.
1688 James II fled to France, never to return and was forced to abdicate after William of Orange had landed in England on 5th November.
1769 Venetian blinds were patented (in London) by Edward Beran.
1877 English photographer Eadweard Mubridge won a long standing bet for a millionaire by proving that a horse's four feet are all off the ground simultaneously once every stride. He used multiple cameras around the track, each taking a single frame via a series of trip wires.
1903 The first wildlife preservation society was formed in Britain to protect fauna. It was called the Society for the Preservation of Wild Fauna of the Empire.
1914 The Royal Flying Corps, which later became the RAF, adopted the red, white and blue roundel to identify its aircraft more easily during World War I. See the roundel on a static WWII Spitfire F Mk IX - BS435 : F-FY at the Southport Woodvale Rally.
1936 After ruling for less than one year, Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne. Edward planned to marry divorcee Mrs. Wallis Simpson and, before he left for France, he made a final radio broadcast to the nation. He was succeeded by his brother, George, who became George VI.
1952 Derek Bentley, aged 19, and 16 year old Christopher Craig, were found guilty of the murder of a policeman in south London. Because of his age, Craig was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, while Bentley, who did not fire the gun, was sentenced to hang. Despite a public outcry, the sentence was carried out on 27th January 1953.
1967 Concorde, the world's first supersonic airliner, was rolled out of its hangar for public viewing for the first time.
1975 An Icelandic gunboat opened fire on unarmed British fishery support vessels in the North Atlantic Sea, heightening the 'Cod War'.
1981 Muhammad Ali's 61st & last fight, losing to Trevor Berbick.
1986 Church leaders condemned a radio campaign about Aids for 'condoning promiscuity'.
1987 Charlie Chaplin’s famous memorabilia were sold at Christie’s in London. His cane and bowler went for £82,500 and his boots for £38,500.
1990 The Government set aside £42M to British haemophiliacs who became infected with the HIV virus after being treated with contaminated Factor VIII
2005 A huge fire continued to burn at Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It was the largest of its kind in peacetime Europe and the noise of the explosions could be heard as far away as the Netherlands.
2008 Bernard Madoff arrested and charged with securities fraud in $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
2009 Tiger Woods announces an indefinite leave from professional golf to focus on his marriage.
2014 World's 1st pen is transplant procedure by a team from Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
2015 "Playboy" magazine publishes its last nude issue, features Pamela Anderson on the cover.
1800 Washington, D.C., established as the capital of the United States of America.
1896 Marconi gave the first public demonstration of radio at Toynbee Hall, London. On the same day, in 1901, Marconi carried out the first transatlantic radio transmission from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St John’s, Newfoundland, a distance of 1800 miles.
1908 The start of the first Australian Rugby League tour of Britain. The seven-month tour was almost a disaster due to small gate-takings.
1948 Britain introduced National Service for all men aged between 18 and 26. It extended the British conscription of World War II into peacetime.
1955 Christopher Cockerell patented his prototype of the hovercraft. He had tested his theories using a hair-dryer and tin cans and found his work to have potential, but the idea took some years to develop, and he was forced to sell personal possessions in order to finance his research.
1966 English sailor Francis Chichester arrived at Sydney in his ketch Gipsy Moth IV - half way in his bid to become the first man to sail solo around the world. On 28 May 1967, after 226 days, he arrived back in Plymouth and became the first person to achieve a true, solo, circumnavigation of the world from West to East via the great capes.
1975 The six-day Balcombe Street siege ended peacefully in London after four IRA gunmen freed their two hostages and gave themselves up to police.
1977 "Saturday Night Fever", a film starring John Travolta, premieres in NYC.
1980 Apple makes its initial public offering on the US stock market at $22.00 per share. 38 years later it would become the first US company valued at over $1 trillion. If you'd purchased $10,000 of Apple stock at the end of its first day of trading on Dec. 12, 1980, that investment would currently be worth about $11,590,000 as of September 9, 2020.
1982 30,000 women formed a 9 mile human chain that encircled Greenham Common air base in Berkshire, in protest against the proposed siting of US Cruise missiles there.
1986 James "Bone Crusher" Smith TKO's WBA champ Tim Witherspoon in Madison Square Garden.
1988 Britain’s worst rail crash for 20 years killed 35 and injured 113 people when a packed express train ran into the back of a stationary commuter train near Clapham Junction.
1988 The first satellite pictures were beamed to London's betting shops to allow them to watch the races live from many race courses.
2013 Blockbuster, the DVD and games rental chain that went into administration in January, announced that all the remaining 91 UK stores, employing 808 people, would have to close by 16th December.
2019 Boris Johnson was elected as prime minister. It was the fourth poll in less than five years, after lawmakers approved his gamble to break the country's crippling political deadlock and hold an election two weeks before Christmas.
1577 Francis Drake set sail from Plymouth with his flagship Pelican, plus 4 other ships and 160 men, on an expedition to the Pacific. His other ships were lost or returned home shortly after the voyage began but the Pelican, renamed the Golden Hind, pushed on alone up the coast of Chile and Peru. Continuing northwards, the California coast was claimed in the name of Queen Elizabeth. He crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and eventually returned to Plymouth on September 26th 1580 with treasure worth £500,000. He became the first Englishmen to sail around the world and the Queen knighted him aboard his ship at Deptford, on the river Thames.
1847 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (under the pseudonym Ellis Bell) was published, as was Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë (under the pseudonym Acton Bell). In choosing to write under pseudonyms, the sisters drew an immediate veil of mystery around them, and people speculated as to the true identity of Currer Bell (i.e. Charlotte Brontë), and Ellis and Acton Bell.
1867 Twelve people were killed when Irish terrorists blew up the outer wall of Clerkenwell Prison, London in an attempt to rescue a jailed colleague.
1904 The first electric train came into service on London's Metropolitan Railway.
1939 The Battle of the River Plate, the first naval battle in the Second World War and the only episode of the war developed in South America. Action by Royal Navy cruisers HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles of the New Zealand Division, drove the great German battleship Admiral Graf Spee to seek shelter off Montevideo in Uruguay for repairs to its fuel system. Captain Hans Langsdorff of the Graf Spee scuttled his damaged ship rather than face the overwhelmingly superior force that the British had led him to believe was awaiting on his departure. On 19th December, he committed suicide, over the Graf Spee's ensign, as a symbolic act of going down with his ship.
1950 James Dean begins his career with an appearance in a Pepsi commercial.
1961 The Beatles sign a formal agreement to be managed by Brian Epstein.
1963 Capital records signs right of first refusal agreement with The Beatles.
1972 More than 300 British victims of the Thalidomide drug were offered a compensation deal said to be worth £11.85m. A year later the 11 year battle over Thalidomide compensation ended with a £20 million court settlement.
1973 The British Government ordered a 3 day working week following an Arab oil embargo and industrial action by the country's miners.
1976 The first oil was brought to Britain, by tanker, from the North Sea Brent Oil Field , located 116miles north-east of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands.
1995 Hundreds of black and white youths went on the streets of Brixton, in south London attacking police, ransacking shops and burning cars after the death of a black man (Wayne Douglas, aged 26. ) in police custody.
2002 The enlargement of the European Union. It was announced that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia would become members from 1st May 2004.
2014 Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London, a conference and events venue since 1887, closed for the last time. The final concert was by the Bombay Bicycle Club, an indie rock band from London.
2015 Irishman Conor McGregor knocks out Brazilian Jose Aldo in 13 seconds to win his 1st featherweight title in Las Vegas.
2017 Prime Minister Theresa May's UK Conservative government loses key vote in Parliament for an amendment to allow MPs to vote on Brexit.
2019 Yesterday's general election, the first in December for almost 100 years, led to a win for Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party. There were massive losses for Labour, in areas that had been Labour strongholds for decades. Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said that he would not stand as Labour leader in another general election. The Lib. Dem. leader, Jo Swinson, lost her seat to the SNP and stepped down as their leader.
With Christmas fast approaching the half time entertainment at the Premier League match between Aston Villa and Arsenal included Santa parachuting down onto the Villa Park pitch. But the festive mood being enjoyed by the 40,000 Sunday evening crowd turned to tragedy when a gust of wind caused the RAF parachutist, Nigel Rogoff, to clip the edge of the Trinity Road stand and he then fell some 80 feet onto the side of the pitch. His badly broken legs were treated by two surgeons who had been spectators at the match and he went on to receive 177 pints of blood in a 3-month spell in hospital but sadly his injuries resulted in a leg being amputated. In February 2016 Nigel was part of a team of four rowers who became the first amputees to row the Atlantic - all 3000 miles of it.
1542 Princess Mary Stuart becomes Queen Mary I of Scotland at 6 days old. She was queen of Scotland until 24th July 1567 and was queen consort of France from 10th July 1559 to 5th December 1560.
1861 Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria died, at the early age of 42 of typhoid fever. His death plunged the Queen into a deep mourning that lasted for the rest of her life.
1895 The birth of King George VI, the second son of George V and Mary. He succeeded Edward VIII when Edward abdicated and ruled Britain during the war years.
1896 The Glasgow Underground Railway was opened by the Glasgow District Subway Company.
1903 The Wright brothers attempt to fly the Wright Flyer for the first time at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1911 Norwegian Roald Amundsen's expedition is the 1st to each the South Pole.
1918 The first woman elected to Parliament was Constance, the Countess Markievicz who won for Sinn Fein, contesting a Dublin seat. She was unable to take her seat as she was in Holloway Prison, London. The 1918 General Election was also the first time that women in Britain had the vote.
1920 The first scheduled airliner disaster in aviation history occurred when an airliner with six passengers and two crew took off from Cricklewood Airport, London, for a flight to Paris. Barely airborne, the plane crashed into a house in neighbouring Golders Green, killing the crew and two passengers. The others escaped from the wreckage.
1932 Leeds and Wigan competed in the first floodlit rugby league match, at London’s White City Stadium.
1959 The shortest murder trial in British legal history. In 30 seconds, at Winchester Assizes, Brian Cawley pleaded guilty to the murder of Rupert Steed and was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
1967 DNA created in a test tube.
1984 Miners' leader Arthur Scargill was found guilty of obstruction during a picket at a Yorkshire coal works earlier in the year. He was fined £250 and ordered to pay £750 in costs.
2003 US President George W. Bush announces the capture of Saddam Hussein.
2011 The UK jobless total reached a 17-year high in the three months to October, hitting 2.64 million. Youth unemployment, which covers 16-24 year olds, hit its highest level since records began in 1992.
2011 Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen (aged 85) and Duke of Edinburgh (aged 90) would mark their 2012 Diamond Jubilee with a five-month 'four corners' tour of the UK.
2012 Yorkshire, beat off the challenge of bids from Florence and Edinburgh with Leeds set to host the prestigious start of the Tour de France cycle race in 2014. Yorkshire took the Grand Depart to its heart. Day 1 started in Leeds on 5th July 2014 and took in the town of Skipton.The day's stage continued through the Yorkshire Dales National Park and Ripon, before ending the day in Harrogate.
2017 British surgeon Simon Bramhall admits to branding the liver of 2 patients with his initials.
2018 Report by Reuters US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson knew for decades their talc was contaminated with asbestos.
Heartbreak and Tragedy for Captain Scott.
December 14, 1911 — Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man, on this day, to set foot on the South Pole. To celebrate, he and his team pitched their tent on the spot with the Norwegian flag fluttering proudly above it.
It was an achievement that would break the heart and spirit of fellow explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott who had set out from Britain months before, determined to win the race to the Pole.
At the time, Antarctica was the last unexplored continent and of interest to a number of countries including Britain, Japan, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. They would compete against each other to gain knowledge and commercial opportunities in the region as well as claiming new territory. But the geographical prize was the South Pole – the most remote spot on the planet.
The British party arrived in Antarctica in January 1911 and preparations began. Scott's expedition had a dual purpose - to reach the Pole for the British Empire, and to explore and document this great southern land. He left base camp with support parties, motor sledges, dogs and ponies for his journey south on 1 November 1911. The race was on.
But they hadn't reckoned on the appalling conditions that they would face. The mechanical sledges constantly broke down in the freezing weather and the ponies could not cope with such cold. The expedition carried on without them. In mid-December the dog teams turned back and the explorers had to haul their sledges by hand.
Of the 65 members of the original expedition team, only five now remained to face the ascent of the Beardmore Glacier and the polar plateau: Scott; his friend Dr Edward Wilson; Welshman Edgar Evans; Scotsman Henry 'Birdie' Bowers; and Captain Lawrence 'Titus' Oates.
Tired and hungry, suffering from hypothermia and scurvy, they arrived at the Pole on 17 January to find the heartbreaking sight of the flag that Amundsen had hoisted 33 days earlier. He had taken a shorter route.
The British party, l-r Scott, Oates, Wilson and Evans reach Amundsen's tent. Photo: Henry Bowers/British Library.
Scott wrote in his diary: "The Pole, yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority."
The men did not stay long. With heavy hearts they took pictures and quickly left to begin the 1,500 km journey back. They did so amid ferocious winds and temperatures hovering around minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 22 degrees Celsius).
Evans was the first to die on 17 February – he had stumbled behind the group until he slipped into a coma. A month later, on 17 March, Captain Oates, crippled with frostbite and believing he was holding the others back, walked out of the party's tent. It was his 32nd birthday.
Scott immortalised the courageous army officer in his diary, writing: "As he left he said, 'I am just going outside and may be some time...' We knew that Oates was walking to his death. It was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman."
A few days later, the three remaining men were themselves lying in their tent waiting for death. A swirling blizzard had confined them to their sleeping bags, while – tragically – a pre-arranged cache of food and supplies lay only 11 miles away. Scott wrote in his diary:
"We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more."
Eight months later a search party found Scott and his two companions in their small tent on the ice frozen inside their sleeping bags. His diary lay nearby. The search party used the tent to cover the bodies then built a cairn of ice and snow over it to mark the spot.
A 60,891 Villa Park crowd watched in disbelief as Aston Villa lost 7-1 at home to Arsenal with Ted Drake scoring all seven of Arsenal’s goals. That set the record for the most goals scored in a match by a player in the top division and was the most goals scored in any competitive match by an Arsenal player.
1906 The opening of the Piccadilly tube line on London's Underground. It was the longest underground line at the time, running from Finsbury Park to Hammersmith.
1913 Suffragettes caused a dynamite explosion at Holloway Prison where Emmeline Pankhurst and Lady Constance Lytton were detained.
1939 "Gone With the Wind", drama film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, premieres in Atlanta.
1944 Bandleader, Major Glenn Miller,lost over English Channel.He disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel while traveling to entertain allied troops in France during World War II in a suspected plane crash after its fuel intakes froze. His body was never found.
1958 The last steam locomotive was made at Crewe. Engine number 92250 was the 7,331st locomotive built since the works opened.
1974 New speed limits were introduced. Speed limits on motorways would remain at 70mph , but on dual carriageways they would become 60mph and on all other roads 50mph as the government tried to curb fuel use.
1979 Chris Haney and Scott Abbott develop the board game Trivial Pursuit.
1982 Reputed to be Robin Hood's tree, the 'Major Oak' in Sherwood Forest, was fitted with a fire alarm.
1982 There were scenes of jubilation as the gates isolating the people of Gibraltar from Spain were opened for the first time in 13 years. There were tight restrictions, which included a ban on any British or foreign tourists crossing.
1984 'Do They Know It's Christmas' by Band Aid entered the chart at No.1 and stayed at the top for 5 weeks. At the time it was the biggest selling single ever in the UK, with sales of over three and a half million.
1987 A company in Bedford became the first to be fined (£500) for failing to register personal computer records under the Data Protection Act.
1995 The European Communities Court of Justice hands down the "Bosman ruling", giving EU footballers the right to a free transfer at the end of their contracts, with the provision that they are transferring from one UEFA Federation to another.
2013 Andy Murray was awarded the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. Earlier in the year Murray had become the first Briton in three quarters of a century to win the men’s singles competition at Wimbledon.
2014 Jonathan Paul Burrows, a London hedge fund manager who regularly avoided buying a train ticket on his commute to the City, was banned for life from working in any regulated financial industries. In total, Mr Burrows was believed to have dodged £42,550 in fares.
2015 Forty three year old astronaut Major Tim Peake became the first Briton to serve a mission on the International Space Station. He took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan at 11:03am GMT, alongside Nasa astronaut Tim Kopra and Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko.
1431 King Henry VI of England crowned king of France.
1485 The birth of Catherine of Aragon, the first of Henry VIII’s wives. At the age of three, Catherine was betrothed to Prince Arthur, heir to the English throne, and they married in 1501, but Arthur died five months later. Catherine subsequently married Arthur's younger brother, the recently-succeeded Henry VIII, in 1509.She bore him six children but only one survived (Mary I), and Henry divorced her against the Pope’s wishes, in his pursuit for a male heir.
1653 Following the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell failed to get the Parliament he wanted and became Lord Protector, turning himself into an uncrowned king for the next four years. He was buried in Westminster Abbey but after the Royalists returned to power, they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.
1773 Taxes by Britain on tea and other commodities led Samuel Adams and 150 ‘Sons of Liberty’ disguised as Mohawk Indians to hold what became known as the Boston Tea Party. 342 tea chests worth £18,000 were tossed off Griffin’s Wharf into Boston Harbour. The War of Independence had begun.
1899 Italian football club A.C. Milan founded as Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club by Englishmen Alfred Edwards and Herbert Kilpin (disputed possibly 13 Dec).
1913 Charlie Chaplin begins his film career at Keystone for $150 a week.
1914 German warships attacked the seaside resort of Scarborough, believing it to be a major British port. Hartlepool and Whitby were also targeted. It was the first successful bombing on British shores for 250 years. Over five hundred shells of varying calibres were fired into Scarborough and on to the Grand Hotel.The attacks resulted in a total of 592 casualties, many of them civilians, of whom 137 died. There was public outrage towards the German navy for an attack against civilians and against the Royal Navy for its failure to prevent the raid.
1950 Child star Shirley Temple announces her retirement from films aged 22.
1966 Jimi Hendrix Experience releases its 1st single, "Hey Joe," in the UK.
1969 MPs voted by a big majority for the permanent abolition of the death penalty for murder.
1971 Don McLean's 8+ minute version of "American Pie" released.
1973 O.J. Simpson becomes 1st NFL running back to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.
1976 U.S.A. Government halts swine flu vaccination program following reports of paralysis.
1977 The Queen unveiled the new underground link from central London to Heathrow; the first from a capital city to its major airport.
1985 John Gotti assumes leadership of New York's Gambino crime family after ordering the executions of Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti.
1988 Junior Health minister Edwina Currie resigned after her earlier comments (3rd December) when she said that most of Britain's egg production was infected with the salmonella bacteria.
2012 Tour de France and Olympic time trial champion Bradley Wiggins was voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
2013 Figures showed that the UK paid more than £27m in aid to China last year. China, which has poured billions into its flagship space programme, has a GDP of £5.2 trillion compared with Britain’s £1.5 trillion.
On December 16th 1899 a group of English expats led by Herbert Kilpin and Alfred Edwards formed the Milan Cricket and Football Club .... and they are now the mighty AC Milan! Although no longer renowned for playing cricket AC Milan still pay tribute to their English founders by using the English spelling of their home town in their club name - Milan - rather than using the Italian spelling - Milano.
Football On This Day - 16th December 1961.
Jimmy Greaves continued his record of scoring on his debut for every senior side he played for with a hat-trick for Spurs in Tottenham’s 5-2 First Division victory over Blackpool at White Hart Lane. The first was a from a spectacular flying scissors kick which set the scene for him achieving legend status in North London.
Football On This Day – 16th December 2017.
Sunderland 1 Fulham 0 in the Championship. Nothing unremarkable in that result - except that it was the first time Sunderland fans had seen their club win a home match since they beat Watford 1-0 on December 17th 2016. In the intervening 364 days the long-suffering Sunderland fans hadn’t seen their club win in 21 league and cup fixtures at the Stadium of Light
1778 The birth, in Penzance, of Sir Humphrey Davy, English inventor of the safety lamp for miners which allowed miners to work safely in the presence of flammable gases. Davy refused to patent the lamp, and its invention led to him being awarded the Rumford medal in 1816. The medal has been awarded every alternate year since 1800 by the Royal Society for outstandingly important discoveries by a scientist working in Europe.
1843 Henry Cole, founder of London's V&A Museum, commissions printing of the 1st Christmas card.
1843 Charles Dickens began inscribing copies, for friends, of his new novel A Christmas Carol. There were 10 pre-publication presentations made 'on this day' and the novel went into general publication on 19th December. It was an immediate success with the public and the initial print run of 6,000 copies was sold out by Christmas Eve.
1849 Thomas and William Bowler, felt hat makers, sold their first 'bowler' to William Coke, which he purchased at James Lock & Co. in London.
1900 1st prize of 100,000 francs offered for communications with extraterrestrials. Martians excluded-considered too easy.
1925 The death of Albert Neilson Hornby (A. N. Hornby), one of the best known sportsmen in England during the 19th century. Hornby was the first of only two men to captain the country at both rugby and cricket. He is also remembered as the England cricket captain whose side lost the Test match at home against the Australians in 1882 which gave rise to the Ashes (Quote: - English cricket has died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.)
1933 Members of the public were allowed to walk through the recently completed Mersey Road Tunnel, prior to its opening to traffic.
1954 The British Petroleum Company (BP) was formed.
1967 Alec Rose, aboard Lively Lady, completed his solo 14,500 mile sail from Britain to Australia, having been at sea for 155 days. He returned successfully to Portsmouth on 4th July 1968 and was knighted the next day by the Queen.
1983 Three police officers and three members of the public were killed and many others injured after a car bomb attack in London. Police believe the IRA planted the bomb in a side street near Harrods department store in Knightsbridge.
1986 Mrs Davina Thompson, in an operation performed at a Cambridge hospital, became the world’s first heart, lungs and liver transplant patient.
1989 "The Simpsons" created by Matt Groening, premieres on Fox TV as a full animated series with the episode, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire".
2013 Alex Salmond's ‘Team Scotland’ delegation to the Ryder Cup in Chicago spent spent almost half a million pounds during their short stay, according to official figures obtained by The Telegraph.
2014 Birmingham was named as one of the top 10 cities in the world by travel handbook company Rough Guide. It was the only UK location on the list.
2015 José Mourinho is sacked as manager of British Premier football club Chelsea.
2018 On This Day, all tolls ceased on the Severn Bridges. The first bridge crossing opened in 1966 with tolls charged in both directions. The arrangements were changed in the early 1990s and the toll was collected on the English side and only for vehicles travelling westwards from England to Wales.People have had to pay to cross the Severn Estuary,with its treacherous tides,since Roman times be it in a car,in a train or on a ferry.
2018 US poacher sentenced to watch the film "Bambi" repeatedly during year in prison, for killing hundreds of deer in Missouri.
2019 England's Fallon Sherrock becomes first woman to win a match at the PDC World Darts Championship, beating compatriot Ted Evetts, 3-2 at the Alexandra Palace in London.