1903 The Wright brothers make the 1st sustained motorized aircraft flight at 10:35 AM, piloted by Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Seconds into the first ever flight of the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville Wright is flying, Wilbur Wright is running alongside.
Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright are widely regarded as being the first to invent, build and fly the first successful airplane. There had been many attempts to do so in the past, but any flight achieved was generally short and uncontrolled. This was changed by the Wright brothers when they took to the skies four times on their Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903. The first of these flights, shown above, lasted about 12 seconds, at a speed of 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h) and an altitude of 120 feet (37 m).
The difference with the Wright brother's aircraft was that they managed to invent a system whereby the pilot could actually control the aircraft during flight. This method, the three-axis control system, remains the standard on all subsequent aircraft.
For three years until their successful flight in 1903 they honed their skills with glider flights and by building home-made wind tunnels that allowed them to collect more data than other engineers. This enabled them to build better wings and propellers, leading to their successful flights.
1559 Queen Elizabeth I of England sent aid to the Scottish Lords to drive the French from Scotland.
1779 The birth, in London, of Joseph Grimaldi, English creator of the original white faced clown. He was introduced to the stage at Drury Lane at the age of three and began to appear at the Sadler's Wells theatre. As Music Hall became popular, he introduced the pantomime dame to the theatre and was responsible for the tradition of audience participation.
1898 Automobile speed record set-39 mph.
1912 The Piltdown Man was discovered in Sussex by Charles Dawson. It was claimed to be the fossilized skull and remains of the earliest known European, but in 1953 it was proved to be a hoax. The skull was that of an orang-utan.
1916 The Battle of Verdun, the longest engagement of World War I, ended after 10 months and massive loss of life. 23 million shells had been fired and 650,000 were killed.
1946 Clement Atlee's Labour government won the vote on state ownership. It led to the nationalizing of the railways, ports and mines. Labour MPs triumphantly sang 'The Red Flag'.
1961 Britain's EMI Records originally rejects the Beatles.
1963 "The Pink Panther" film premieres directed by Blake Edwards and starring Peter Sellers and David Niven with theme by Henry Mancini.
1964 "The Pink Panther" cartoon series premieres.
1974 The Government said that it would pay £42,000 compensation to relatives of the 13 men killed in the **** Sunday riots in Londonderry (30th January 1972).
1989 The Labour Party abandoned its policy on trade union 'closed shops' in line with European legislation.
1997 A bill giving Scotland its own parliament for the first time in three centuries was unveiled in Glasgow. Work commenced in June 1999 on the Scottish Parliament Building It was built at a cost :- £414 million (ten times over the original budget).
2012 Comet stores closed their doors for the last time, bringing the electrical retailer's 79 year history to an end.
2013 The death, aged 84, of the criminal Ronnie Biggs who was part of the gang which escaped with £2.6m from the Glasgow to London mail train on 8th August 1963. Biggs was given a 30-year sentence but escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965. In 2001 he returned to the UK seeking medical helpp, but was sent to prison. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after contracting pneumonia. Coincidentally Biggs' death occurred hours before the first broadcast of a two-part BBC television series 'The Great Train Robbery'.
2013 The Bank of England announced its plans to press ahead with switching to plastic banknotes, starting with the new Sir Winston Churchill £5 note in 2016. The decision will mark the beginning of the end of 320 years of paper notes from the Bank.
2015 The closure of Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, the last remaining deep coal mine in Britain.
2018 Manchester United sacks high profile Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho with United in 6th place in EPL,19 points behind league leaders Liverpool. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer new caretaker manager.
On this day in 2000 Kirsty MacColl dies after being hit by speedboat in Mexico.
In 2000, following her participation in the presentation of a radio programme for the BBC in Cuba,MacColl took a holiday in Cozumel, Mexico,with her sons and her boyfriend, musician James Knight. On 18 December 2000, she and her sons went diving at the Chankanaab reef, part of the National Marine Park of Cozumel, in a designated diving area that watercraft were restricted from entering. With the group was a local veteran divemaster, Iván Díaz. As the group was surfacing from a dive, a powerboat moving at high speed entered the restricted area. MacColl saw the boat coming before her sons did. Louis, age 13 at the time, was not in its path, but Jamie, age 15, was. She was able to push him out of the way (he sustained minor head and rib injuries), but she was struck by the boat which ran over her. MacColl suffered severe chest injuries and died instantly.
The powerboat involved in the collision was controlled by Guillermo González Nova, multimillionaire president of the Comercial Mexicana supermarket chain, who was on board with members of his family. The boat was owned by Carlos González Nova, brother and founder of the chain. One employee of Guillermo González Nova was boathand José Cen Yam,who stated that he was in control of the boat at the time of the incident. Eyewitnesses said that Cen Yam was not at the controls and that the boat was travelling much faster than the speed of one knot that González Nova said.
Cen Yam was found guilty of culpable homicide and was sentenced to 2 years 10 months in prison. He was allowed under Mexican law to pay a punitive fine of 1,034 pesos (about £61) in lieu of the prison sentence. He was also ordered to pay approximately US$2,150 in restitution to MacColl's family, an amount based on his wages. People who said they spoke to Cen Yam after the killing said he received money for taking the blame.
In the immediate aftermath,the 'Justice for Kirsty' campaign was set up,which aimed to force a judicial review of the events surrounding her death.
In May 2006, Emilio Cortez Ramírez, a federal prosecutor in Cozumel, was found liable for breach of authority in his handling of the MacColl case,prompting many to demand the case be reopened, though the campaign was ended in 2009.
Dawson (left) and Smith-Woodward search for more bones, Illustrated London News, 1913.
Piltdown is an otherwise unremarkable hamlet in Sussex, east of Haywards Heath, which suddenly became famous for what seemed to be an astounding discovery. Allegedly, at some point before 1912 workmen in a gravel pit came across part of the skull of a hominid, or human-like creature, that seemed to be the much sought after ‘missing link’ between the apes and homo sapiens, or modern man. Not realising what it was, they broke it, but they gave the largest piece to a local lawyer and antiquary named Charles Dawson. He later found more fragments of the skull at the pit, or so he said when he took the finds to Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology at the British Museum. Woodward joined Dawson for further explorations at Piltdown, where Dawson found more pieces of the skull and part of the jawbone. No bones of the rest of the body were ever found.
By November 1912 the press was on the trail and Woodward announced the discovery to a meeting of the Geological Society in London the following month. It created a sensation and the creature was named Eoanthropus (‘dawn man’) dawsoni in Dawson’s honour, more commonly known as Piltdown Man. The remains were exactly what many leading British palaeontologists had been looking for, a creature combining ape-like and modern human characteristics. They accepted it with enthusiasm and consequently rejected far more significant discoveries made later on in Africa.
Some experts from early on had serious misgivings about Piltdown Man, but it was not until 1953 that an investigation at the Natural History Museum in London pronounced him ‘an elaborate and carefully prepared hoax’. Further investigations confirmed that the remains combined the cranium of a modern human with the jaw and teeth of an immature orangutan. They had been stained to make them look older and the teeth had been ground down with a file to make them seem more human. They had been deliberately introduced into the Piltdown gravels, which themselves were not remotely as old as had been claimed.
Charles Dawson had died in 1916. He was inevitably the principal suspect, but other candidates have included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had a house near Piltdown and knew Dawson, the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who also knew Dawson and visited Piltdown with him, and Sir Arthur Keith of the Royal College of Surgeons, who has been accused of colluding with Dawson in what started off as a practical joke. Miles Russell, a Bournemouth University archaeologist, however, has discovered many cases of fakery by Dawson before the Piltdown discovery, which he has described as not a joke but the culmination of Dawson’s life’s work.
George Hardwick didn’t have the best of Football League debuts. Playing for Middlesbrough against Bolton at Ayresome Park in the old First Division he scored an own goal with his first touch of the ball in the first minute of the match!
Football On This Day - 18th December 1954.
In the First Division match between Chelsea and Leicester City at Stamford Bridge Leicester defenders Jack Froggatt and Stan Milburn each struck the ball at exactly the same time to send it past the Leicester 'keeper to record a 'shared own goal' in Chelsea's 3-1 victory, the only such goal in Football League history.
Football On This Day - 18th December 1956.
The first ever Ballon d'Or - European Footballer of Year - award was made. In second place was Alfredo Di Stéfano and his team-mate in the great Real Madrid side, Raymond Kopa, was third but the winner was a 41-year-old Englishman who played for Blackpool - Stanley Matthews. He was presented with the trophy by the man behind the new award, Gabriel Hanot. Two other Brits received votes in the contest - Billy Wright finished in ninth place while Duncan Edwards was 13th.
1606 English entrepreneurs set sail in the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery to establish a colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.
1686 Robinson Crusoe leaves his island after 28 years (as per Daniel Defoe).
1783 William Pitt the Younger became the youngest British Prime Minister, at the age of 24 years, 6 months and 21 days.
1848 Emily Brontë, English author of Wuthering Heights, died of tuberculosis at the tender age of 30.
1851 The renowned artist, Joseph Turner, died. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner was also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting.
1915 World War I: British, Australian and New Zealand troops began their withdrawal from Gallipoli after failing to defeat the Turks.
1922 Theresa Vaughn, 24, confesses in court in Sheffield, England, to being married 61 times over 5 years in 50 cities in three countries.
1924 The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost was sold, in London.The Silver Ghost is considered the most valuable car in the world. In 2005 its insured value was placed at more than £22 million. By 2011 it was valued at almost £37 million.
1932 The BBC World Service began broadcasting, as the BBC Empire Service.
1941 World War II: Limpet mines placed by Italian divers sank the HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth in Alexandria harbour.
1942 Robert Stroud "Birdman of Alcatraz" is transferred to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
1958 1st radio broadcast from space, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower Christmas message "to all mankind, America's wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to men everywhere".
1971 Stanley Kubrick's X-rated film "A Clockwork Orange" based on the book by Anthony Burgess and starring Malcolm McDowell premieres.
1972 Ugandan leader General Idi Amin gave British workers an ultimatum; to accept reduced pay or be expelled.
1972 Frank O'Farrell lost his job as manger of Manchester United, following a 5–0 defeat to Crystal Palace. George Best, once again, announced his retirement, on the same day. Not a good week for United.
1981 The 8 man crew of the Penlee Lifeboat all lost their lives attempting to rescue the crew of the coaster Union Star that was wrecked in violent seas off the coast of Cornwall.
1983 The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro.
1984 Britain and China signed an agreement in Beijing, in which Britain agreed to transfer full sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
1997 MTV drops video "Smack My Bit ch Up" by Prodigy.
1997 The movie "Titanic" one of the highest-grossing movies of all-time is released.
2003 Libyan leader Gaddafi agreed to allow weapons inspectors into Libya 'immediately and unconditionally' to oversee the elimination of its arsenal of chemical weapons.
2006 Steve Wright, was arrested, charged and remanded in custody, accused of murdering five prostitutes over a six week period. The bodies of all five women were found dumped in remote locations around Ipswich in Suffolk, sparking a massive police investigation.
2013 Michael Adebolajo (29) and Michael Adebowale (22) were found guilty of murdering soldier Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks in south-east London in May. Fusilier Rigby was struck with a car before hacked to death. Adebolajo had claimed he was a 'soldier of Allah' and the killing was an act of war. Adebolajo was given a whole-life term and Adebowale was jailed for a minimum of 45 years.
2013 Ornate plasterwork at the Apollo Theatre in London fell from the ceiling during a performance and after a flash flood thunderstorm. The collapse brought down a lighting rig and a section of balcony, trapping 2 people and injuring around 88, including 7 with serious injuries.
2016 US electoral collage votes 304 to 227 to nominate Donald Trump for President over the objections of seven faithless electors.
2018 Drones flying over Gatwick airport, England, causes delays and cancellations for 800 flights and 110,000 people.
It was announced that Rio Ferdinand’s punishment for missing a drugs test in September was a fine of £50,000 and an eight-month ban from football at both club and international level. The test was scheduled to have taken place at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground but Ferdinand forgot about it and went shopping instead.
Football On This Day - 19th December 2004.
One of the reasons why Joey Barton always seemed to have the word 'controversial' preceding his name came at the Manchester City Christmas Party on this day in 2004. Reserve-team player James Tandy set fire to Joey Barton's shirt and Barton responded by stubbing a lit cigar into Tandy's eye. Barton suffered a £60,000 club fine and paid £65,000 in damages to the injured player.
1192 Richard the Lion-Heart was captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after signing a treaty that ended the Third crusade.
1688 Prince William of Orange's troops arrive in London.
1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's army reaches the river Esk.
1780 Britain declares war on Holland.
1910 The British General Election produced a tied vote, with the Liberal Party and the Tory Party each winning 272 seats.
1920 An English born comedian named Leslie Townes, who later changed his name to Bob Hope, became an American citizen on this day. He had lived in the United States since 1908 and became one of America's true ambassadors for show business and charity.
1924 Adolf Hitler freed from jail early, having served only nine months of five-year sentence for "Beer Hall Putsch".
1928 Harry Ramsden started his fish and chip restaurant in a hut at White Cross - Guiseley, near Bradford in West Yorkshire. It soon became the most famous fish and chip restaurant in the world. In 2012 the restaurant was acquired by the fish and chip chain 'Wetherby Whaler' and they gave this name to the new restaurant.
1928 The England cricket team scored a record 636 against Australia in Sydney, including 251 scored by Walter Hammond. England won the Test match by eight wickets.
1946 Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life" film premieres in New York, directed by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore.
1955 Cardiff was officially named the capital of Wales.
1957 Elvis Presley receives his draft notice to join the US Army for National Service.
1962 Osmond brothers debut on Andy Williams Show.
1967 Ian Anderson & Glenn Cornick form rock group Jethro Tull.
1969 Rolf Harris had the Christmas No.1 of 1969 and the last No.1 of the 1960s with 'Two Little Boys'. The song stayed at No.1 for six weeks. On 4th July 2014 84 year old Harris was jailed for 5 years 9 months for 12 indecent assaults against four girls - including one aged 'just seven or eight'. He was also stripped of his CBE and his OA (Order of Australia).
1979 The introduction of Britain's Housing Bill - forcing local councils to sell their houses to any tenants who wished to buy them.
1984 The Summit tunnel fire; the largest underground fire in history, as a freight train carrying over 1 million litres of petrol derailed near the town of Todmorden, in West Yorkshire. The tunnel is 1.6 miles in length,was built in the late 1830s and is located between Littleborough and Walsden. When completed in 1841, it was the longest railway tunnel in the world.
George Stephenson,the tunnel's builder,said, 'I stake my reputation and my head that the tunnel will never fail so as to injure any human life' and ... in spite of the intense fire inside the tunnel in 1984, he was right.
1988 Animal rights terrorists fire bombed Harrod's department store in London.
1990 The Maerdy Colliery, employing 320 men, closed. It was the last remaining coal mine in the Rhondda Valley, an area which once produced 9 million tonnes a year, and where more than 50,000 miners had worked in 54 pits.
1995 The Queen urged Prince Charles and Princess Diana to seek 'an early divorce'.
1996 Horror film classic "Scream", starring Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox, is released.
2004 A gang of thieves stole £26.5 million worth of currency from the Donegall Square West headquarters of the Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland, one of the largest bank robberies in UK history.
2007 Elizabeth II became the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.
2012 Mayan prophecies predicted that the world would end on Saturday morning 22nd December 2012.
At half time at the Leicester v Ipswich First Division match City’s England international Keith Weller had things on his mind. He had suffered an FA fine for bringing the game into disrepute, a transfer request from him had been turned down, Leicester had lost seven matches on the trot (and would lose against Ipswich), the crowd were starting to get on his back and he argued with team-mates in the tunnel at the half-time break. So he decided enough was enough, ran a bath, got in it and refused to go out for the second half! His one-man strike cost him a club fine and he got his wish of going onto the transfer although all was later forgiven and he remained at Filbert Street for another four years.
1118 The birth, in London's Cheapside, of Thomas à Becket, Lord Chancellor of England, Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr.
1620 The Pilgrim Fathers arrived at Plymouth Rock , Massachusetts aboard The Mayflower. Passengers & crew increased to 103 after 2 births on the voyage from Plymouth, England. They had originally set sail from Southampton on 5th August but were beset with problems.
1842 Pentonville Prison, Islington, was opened. Pentonville became the model for British prisons. A further 54 were built to the same design over six years, and hundreds more were built throughout the British Empire.
1844 At 8:00 p.m. On This Day, the Rochdale Pioneers commenced business at their co-operative, now this museum on Toad Lane, Rochdale, thus starting the Co-operative movement, often referred to simply as the Co-op.
1846 Robert Liston, Scottish surgeon, used anaesthetic (ether) for the first time in a British operation, at University College Hospital, London, to perform an amputation of a leg. Liston was known as 'the fastest knife in the West End' at a time when speed was essential to reduce pain and improve the odds of survival of a patient.
1872 The Challenger expedition, when HMS Challenger, commanded by Captain George Nares, sailed from Portsmouth. The scientific exercise covered almost 70,000 nautical miles, laid the foundation of oceanography and more than 4,000 previously unknown species were discovered. The expedition was hailed as 'the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.'
1872 Phileas Fogg completes his round the world trip in 80 days, in Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days".
1880 An act passed by the House of Keys on the Isle of Man granted women the vote, provided they were widows or spinsters with a property rated annually at £4 or over.
1910 Explosion in coal mine in Hulton England, 344 mine workers die.
1937 The first full-length animated feature film and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.
1962 President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan agreed that the UK would buy nuclear missiles from the US to form a multilateral NATO nuclear force.
1963 Under soil heating was used for the first time, at the Leeds Rugby League ground for their match against Dewsbury.
1970 Elvis Presley meets US President Richard Nixon in the White House - the image of this meeting is the most requested photo from the entire National Archives.
1988 A Pan American jumbo jet bound for New York was blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb and crashed onto the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 passengers and 11 people on the ground. It remains the deadliest aviation incident ever to take place in the United Kingdom. The Garden of Remembrance and the Lockerbie Air Disaster Memorial are at Dryfesdale Cemetery, Lockerbie.
2013 A poll showed that 1 in 10 people aged 25 to 34 in Britain thought that Father Christmas was mentioned in the Biblical account of the birth of Jesus.
2013 The death, aged 87, of former BBC sports broadcaster David Coleman. He first appeared on air for the BBC in 1954, covering 11 Olympic Games - from Rome in 1960 to Sydney 2000 and six football World Cups. Coleman presented some of the BBC's leading sporting programmes, including Grandstand and Sportsnight and was the host of Question of Sport for 18 years.
2014 A former senior military intelligence officer disclosed that a British soldier was investigated for touching a Taliban fighter on the nose with a sheet of paper during a routine interrogation as he had broken rules concerning the touching of detainees during questioning. The £31 million inquiry, chaired by Sir Thayne Forbes,a former High Court judge, listed several instances of what was judged to be 'ill-treatment during questioning'.
A Christmas miracle at The Valley. With less than half an hour left of their Second Division match against Huddersfield, Charlton were 1-5 behind and were down to 10 players. When the final whistle blew Charlton had won 7-6, the only time that scoreline had been recorded in the Football League.
Football On This Day - 21st December 1996.
Middlesbrough were due visit Blackburn Rovers on this day in 1996 for a Premier League match but the fixture was called off by Boro as they had 23 players unavailable because of illness,injury and suspension. No permission was given for the postponement by the Premier League though and Middlesbrough were fined £50,000 and docked three points. They were relegated at the seasons' end - just two points short of safety.
1550 The death of Richard Plantagenet (Richard of Eastwell). Shorty before the Battle of Bosworth (Richard - then aged 16) was taken to see King Richard III at his encampment. The King informed the boy that he was his son, and told him to watch the battle from a safe vantage point, telling him that, if he won, he would acknowledge him as his son. If he lost, the boy was told that he had to forever conceal his identity. King Richard was killed in the battle, the boy fled to London and was apprenticed to a bricklayer, but kept up the Latin he had learned by reading during his work.
1715 James Edward Stuart, son of James II, the deposed Catholic King of England, landed at Petershead in north-east Scotland, after his exile in France, to lead a Jacobite rebellion against England. The rebellion failed.
1716 Lincoln's Inn Theatre in London put on England's first pantomime which included the characters Harlequin, Columbine and Pantaloon.
1882 1st string of Christmas tree lights created by Thomas Edison.
1919 The Government of Ireland Act of Power (Home Rule for Ireland) came into being. It was signed by King George V. Ireland was divided into two parts, each with its own parliament.
1932 "The Mummy" directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff is released in the US - 1st Mummy horror film.
1942 World War II: Adolf Hitler signed the order to develop the V-2 rocket as a weapon. It was the world's first, long-range weapon and was developed specifically to target London and later Antwerp. Over 3,000 V-2s were launched as military rockets against Allied targets during the war.
1949 The birth, in the Isle of Man, of the twin brothers Maurice and Robin Gibb, musicians with The Bee Gees.
1962 Pop group the Tornados started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with their record Telstar. It was the first major hit from a UK act in the American charts.
1965 The government introduced an 'experimental' speed limit of 70mph on motorways in England. The limit is still in force.
1967 "The Graduate" American comedy-drama film directed by Mike Nichols, starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, is released.
1974 The Provisional IRA threw a bomb onto the 1st floor balcony of the home of the Conservative leader and former Prime Minister Edward Heath. He arrived home 10 minutes after the bomb exploded.
2000 The American singer Madonna married British film maker Guy Ritchie at an exclusive ceremony in Skibo Castle near Dornoch in Sutherland, hours after their son was christened.
2014 Six people were killed by an out-of-control bin lorry in Glasgow. A 'Fatal Accident Inquiry' into the incident showed that the driver (58-year old Harry Clarke) had a history of health issues including fainting and dizziness dating back to the 1970s and that he had lied on his HGV renewal application form.
2014 A grey seal was spotted in a farmer's field in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, 20 miles inland. The disorientated animal was captured and transferred to a wildlife centre in Nantwich, Cheshire.
Tommy Docherty was appointed Manchester United manager at a reputed salary of £15,000 a year. Mainly remembered, perhaps, as being in charge when the Holy Trinity of Charlton, Best and Law finished their playing days at Old Trafford, seeing United relegated to Division 2 and setting up home with the wife of the club physio.
In December 1972, when Frank O'Farrell was sacked as manager of Manchester United, Docherty was poached by Manchester United and quit his job with Scotland to become manager. His first game in charge was against Leeds United at Old Trafford. The game finished 1–1 with Ted MacDougall scoring one of his few goals for United. Although United were in serious trouble when he took them over, because of an ageing squad, he managed to keep them in the First Division in 1972–73. The 1973–74 season saw United continue to struggle and they were eventually relegated to the Second Division.
In the following season, United returned to the top flight as Second Division champions. In 1975–76 they finished in third place in the First Division and also reached the 1976 FA Cup Final, but lost 1–0 to Southampton who were then in the Second Division. Docherty led United to the FA Cup final again in 1977, this time as underdogs against Liverpool; United won 2–1, denying Liverpool the second trophy of a possible treble of League, FA Cup and European Cup.
Shortly afterwards, news that Docherty was having an extramarital affair with the wife of a United physiotherapist, Laurie Brown, became public. He was sacked in a blaze of publicity in July 1977. Docherty was replaced at Old Trafford by the same man who had replaced him at Chelsea, Dave Sexton. The affair also resulted in the end of his marriage to Agnes, who had been his wife since December 1949. Docherty later married Mary Brown, and the couple are still together. Docherty has subsequently had a frosty relationship with the club.
1688 As part of the Glorious Revolution to overthrow King James II of England (James VII of Scotland), the KIng fled to Paris 'On This Day' after being deposed in favour of his nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary.
1732 The birth, in Preston, Lancashire, of Sir Richard Arkwright, the youngest of 16 children. A self-made man, he was a leading entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolution and the cotton spinning industry. He was the creator of the modern factory system, especially in his mill at Cromford, Derbyshire which also had the world's first water-powered mill.
1834 English architect Joseph Hansom, who designed the Town Hall at Lutterworth, Leicestershire patented the horse drawn taxi,known as the Hansom Cab. He went on to sell the patent to a company for £10,000 but the sum was never paid. The first Hansom Cab travelled down Hinckley's Coventry Road in 1835. They were exported worldwide and became a feature of the 19th-century street scene.
1888 The birth, in Hull, of the film magnate J. Arthur Rank. He was founder of the Rank Organisation, now known as The Rank Group Plc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyRmRY7Eok
1888 Vincent van Gogh cuts off his left ear with a razor, after argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, and sends to a prostitute for safe keeping.
1905 The earliest recorded British beauty show was held at Newcastle Upon Tyne, in north-east England.
1937 The first flight of the Vickers Wellington, a British twin-engine, long range medium bomber designed at Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey. It was widely used as a night bomber in the early years of the Second World War, before being displaced as a bomber by the larger four-engine "heavies" such as the Avro Lancaster.
1943 General Bernard Montgomery told he is appointed commandant for D-day.
1952 Alain Bombard arrives in Barbados after 65 days at sea proving his theory that a shipwrecked person could survive with almost no provisions, despite having lost 25 kg (65 lbs) in weight.
1961 Fidel Castro announces Cuba will release 1,113 prisoners from failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion for $62M worth of food & medical supplies.
1962 Cuba starts returning US prisoners from Bay of Pigs invasion.
1970 The Mousetrap reached its 7511th consecutive performance to break the world record for the longest running play.
1972 16 plane crash survivors rescued from Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 after 72 days on the Andean Mountains, after only surviving through cannibalism.
1987 The first ‘Scrooge’ award by the Low Pay Unit was made to a Wiltshire stable-owner who paid a qualified groom only £28 a week. The runner-up was a doctor employing a telephonist for 30p an hour. The prize was a copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
2013 Former MP Denis MacShane was jailed for six months for expenses fraud after admitting submitting 19 fake receipts amounting to £12,900. MacShane said 'cheers' as the sentence was delivered, before adding, 'quelle surprise' as he was led from the dock. He became the fifth MP to get a prison sentence after the 2009 expenses scandal.
2014 Ashley Stansfield, 48, a prisoner released on licence, was sentenced to spend Christmas in jail after he was punished for taking a job which started at 6.15 in the morning, 45 minutes before his night-time curfew expired.
1972 16 plane crash survivors rescued from Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 after 72 days on the Andean Mountains, after only surviving through cannibalism.
A Plane Carrying 45 People Crashed In The Andes – 16 Of Them Survived By Eating The Others
"We made a pact that, if we died, we would be happy to put our bodies to the service of the rest of the team."
The Story Of The Miracle in the Andes
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash site.
How far could you go to survive? Would you do whatever it takes? Would you even eat human flesh? It’s something many people have asked themselves when they hear tales of survival in extreme circumstances. But Roberto Canessa doesn’t have to wonder. He’s done it.
In 1972, Canessa was a 19-year-old medical student accompanying his rugby team on a trip from Uruguay to attend a match in nearby Chile. To get there, they needed to fly a small plane over the rugged Andes mountains. But after entering severe turbulence, the pilot made a mistake and began descending while they were still over the mountains. Within a few seconds, the plane smashed into a snow-capped peak.
Canessa survived the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, but he was one of the few who did. Dozens of passengers were dead or in serious condition with broken bones or bits of debris embedded in their body.
Over the next few days, several more passengers died from exposure on the freezing mountainside or from their injuries. And one night, an avalanche crashed over the survivors and swept another eight people to their deaths.
Canessa and the other survivors did everything they could to combat the elements. They fashioned blankets out of the plane seats and used aluminum from the plane to melt snow so that they would have something to drink. But the one thing they couldn’t find was food.
In desperation, they turned to the one source of sustenance they had available: the bodies of their dead friends. In his book I Had To Survive, Canessa lays out his account of the ordeal, “You had to eat these dead bodies, and that was it. The decision to accept it intellectually is only one step, though. The next step is to actually do it.”
Like many of the survivors, Canessa struggled with the idea of eating human flesh. “That was very tough. Your mouth doesn’t want to open because you feel so miserable and sad about what you have to do.”
But it seems that he and the other survivors took comfort in the idea that they would have been willing to sacrifice their bodies if needed. According to Canessa, “We made a pact that, if we died, we would be happy to put our bodies to the service of the rest of the team.”
Eating the dead created a deep sense of a spiritual bond among the survivors, not just for those who were left but also for the dead whose sacrifice allowed them to carry on.
To Canessa, the decision to eat their bodies gave spiritual sustenance as well as physical nourishment. “I feel that I shared a piece of my friends not only materially but spiritually because their will to live was transmitted to us through their flesh,” he stated.
Canessa credits that will to live with his survival. And the food that the dead provided certainly sustained him as he and two other men embarked on a long trek through the mountains to find help.
The men hiked for 10 days through below freezing temperatures before finally finding rescue. Of the 45 people on board Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, only 16 survived the two-month ordeal in the mountains. Their survival became known as the “Miracle In The Andes” and inspired numerous books and films, including Alive.
Roberto Canessa carried his experience into a career as a pediatric cardiologist. “It’s my revenge on death,” he says, “I tell the mother, “You have a big mountain to climb. I was there before. But the joy… that awaits you on the other side is spectacular!”
An early Christmas present for Arsenal who gain a 5-0 First Division victory over Tottenham at White Hart Lane. A 42,073 crowd witnessed Alan Sunderland score three goals,the first Arsenal player to score a hat-trick against Spurs since Ted Drake in 1934.
On This Day - 24th December - Christmas Eve --------------
1914 World War 1 - Not a shot was fired, as German & British soldiers played football & handed out drinks, cigars & souvenirs. It was possibly the most poignant moment of the 'Great War' & for several days afterwards the two sides appeared reluctant to fire on the men they had met face to face. Will we ever learn from history of the futility of war?
-------------- 1166 The birth of King John, youngest son of Henry II, who was forced by the barons to sign the Magna Carta. When he tried to revoke his authorization, civil war broke out. He was jokingly nicknamed 'Lackland' as it seemed unlikely that John would ever inherit substantial lands.
1650 Edinburgh Castle surrendered to troops commanded by Oliver Cromwell.
1777 Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is discovered by James Cook.
1814 The war of 1812 between the US and Britain was brought to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.
1818 Christmas carol "Silent Night" composed by Franz Xaver Gruber is first sung at St Nicholas parish church in Oberndorf, Austria.
1828 William Burke who, with his partner William Hare, dug up the dead and murdered to sell the corpses for dissection, went on trial in Edinburgh. The other bodysnatcher, William Hare, had turned King’s evidence and was not therefore brought to trial.
1904 The London Coliseum opened with the first revolving stage in Britain.
1914 A German monoplane dropped a single bomb on Dover, the first ever to be dropped on British soil. It landed on a rectory garden lawn and blew out the house windows.
1922 The BBC broadcast 'The Truth About Father Christmas' by Phillis M Twigg, the first play written for radio in Britain.
1965 A meteorite weighing about 100 lb (45kg) was the largest to fall on Britain and landed in the village of Barwell, Leicestershire.
1968 Ballon d'Or: Manchester United's winger George Best wins award for best European football player ahead of teammate Bobby Charlton and Red Star Belgrade winger Dragan Džajić; first Northern Irish national to win the award.
1974 Former UK minister John Stonehouse was found in Australia after apparently faking his own death.
1979 The first European Ariane rocket was launched. It had been officially agreed upon at the end of 1973 after delicate discussions between France, Germany and Britain. The project was Western Europe's second attempt to develop its own launcher, following the unsuccessful Europa project.
1988 Three North Sea oil fields were shut down after a giant floating storage vessel, the Medora, broke free of its moorings in gale-force winds.
2013 Alan Turing, the World War Two codebreaker at Bletchley Park was granted a Royal pardon over his homosexuality conviction. The work done at Bletchley Park, particularly the codebreaking feats of Alan Turing, were credited with shortening the Second World War by several years. In August 2014 a film 'The Imitation Game' was released, based on the biography 'Alan Turing: The Enigma'.
2013 Several thousand passengers were stranded at Gatwick Airport following stormy weather. The airport said electricity sub-stations on the airfield had flooded with water from the River Mole.
2018 Christmas Eve - Because of ongoing major conservation work on Parliament's Elizabeth Tower, the bell of Rochdale Town Hall replaced the usual chimes of Big Ben on BBC Radio 4 news bulletins. The Rochdale bell was selected, in part, because it uses the same 'Westminster chime' as Big Ben.
1 1st Christmas, according to calendar-maker Dionysus Exiguus.
337 Earliest possible date that Christmas was celebrated on Dec 25th.
352 1st definite date Christmas was celebrated on Dec 25th.
440 Church leaders agreed to fix the date of the birth of Christ. Previously some people had celebrated it in May, others in January.
597 England adopts Julian calendar.
1066 William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England, was crowned at Westminster Abbey. To press his claim to the English crown, William had invaded England in October 1066, leading his army to victory over the English forces of King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings.
1176 The first Eisteddfod (Festival of the Arts) took place at Cardigan Castle.
1621 Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony (now in Massachusetts) forbids game playing on Christmas.
1643 Christmas Island (a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean) was discovered and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Company.
1651 Massachusetts General Court ordered a five shilling fine for "observing any such day as Christmas".
1652 The Puritan government ordered all Churches to remain closed on Christmas Day.
1800 The first Christmas tree in Britain was erected at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor by the German-born Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. She brought the idea over from Germany where the first reports of Christmas trees go back to 1521.
1864 The traditional swim in the ice-cold Serpentine in London’s Hyde Park was initiated.
1865 Evangeline Booth, the 4th General of The Salvation Army was born, in South Hackney, London, She was the seventh of eight children born to William Booth and Catherine Mumford, who had earlier in the year founded The Christian Mission, which became the Salvation Army in 1878.
1866 The US yacht Henrietta sailed into Cowes harbour on the Isle of Wight, and thus became the winner of the first Transatlantic Yacht Race.
1914 The Christmas truce between British and German troops continued. At 2 a.m. a German band went along the trenches playing Home Sweet Home and God Save the King.
1932 King George V made the first Royal Christmas broadcast to the Empire. During King George V's Christmas dinner speech his chair collapses. Queen Elizabeth II made her first Christmas broadcast in 1952, and her first television Christmas message was broadcast in 1957.
1950 The Stone of Scone, the Scottish coronation stone which had been in Westminster Abbey for 650 years was stolen by Scottish nationalists. The Stone, weighing 458lb (208kg) was said to have been taken from Scotland by Edward I.
1957 Richard Starkey (later better known as Ringo Starr) receives his first drum set.
1963 Walt Disney's "The Sword in the Stone" is released.
1973 "The Sting" directed by George Roy Hill, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford and music inspired by Scott Joplin premieres in Los Angeles and New York.
1977 Charlie Chaplin, the English born comic genius of silent films, died, aged 88.
1989 Show trial of Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena on charges of genocide and personal enrichment. The couple are found guilty and executed by firing squad the same day.
2003 Scientists failed to make contact with the British built Mars probe Beagle 2, which should have landed on the Red Planet 'on this day'. Beagle 2 was named after HMS Beagle, which twice carried Charles Darwin during expeditions which would later lead to the theory of natural selection. Beagle 2 was officially declared lost on 6th February 2004. As of 2010 only 19 of 38 launch attempts to reach Mars have succeeded.
2013 Earlier storms across southern England, stretching through Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey and Kent, led to extensive power cuts, with around 50,000 homes remaining without power through the Christmas period. Southern Electric said that it would guarantee a £75 payment for any customer who was without electricity for any time on Christmas Day.
2014 The parcel delivery company City Link, which employed 2,727 people, went into administration.
After losing 14 Division 2 matches and drawing 5 – and not scoring a goal in the last 11 of those matches - Coventry City finally won their first match of the season, 3-2 against Stoke at Highfield Road. The following day they lost 6-1 at Stoke in the return fixture.
Football On This Day - 25th December 1924.
Leicester City’s John Duncan scored a club record six goals in the 7-0 Second Division defeat of Port Vale at Filbert Street on Christmas Day 1924. The scorer of the seventh goal that day - Arthur Chandler - later equalled that record scoring 6 in Leicester's club record 10-0 League victory over Portsmouth in October 1928.
Football On This Day - 25th December 1936.
Not a happy Christmas Day for Wrexham’s Ambrose Wilson in a Division 3 (North) match at Hull City – he was sent off after just 20 seconds!
Football On This Day - 25th December 1957.
Jimmy Greaves scored his first League hat-trick (he eventually scored 4) in Chelsea's 7-4 victory over Portsmouth at Stamford Bridge on Christmas Day 1957.
Football On This Day - 25th December 1965.
This day in 1965 saw the last Football League match played on Christmas Day – Blackpool 4 Blackburn Rovers 2 in front of 20,851 at Bloomfield Road.
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Seconds into the first ever flight of the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville Wright is flying, Wilbur Wright is running alongside.
Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright are widely regarded as being the first to invent, build and fly the first successful airplane. There had been many attempts to do so in the past, but any flight achieved was generally short and uncontrolled. This was changed by the Wright brothers when they took to the skies four times on their Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903. The first of these flights, shown above, lasted about 12 seconds, at a speed of 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h) and an altitude of 120 feet (37 m).
The difference with the Wright brother's aircraft was that they managed to invent a system whereby the pilot could actually control the aircraft during flight. This method, the three-axis control system, remains the standard on all subsequent aircraft.
For three years until their successful flight in 1903 they honed their skills with glider flights and by building home-made wind tunnels that allowed them to collect more data than other engineers. This enabled them to build better wings and propellers, leading to their successful flights.
1559 Queen Elizabeth I of England sent aid to the Scottish Lords to drive the French from Scotland.
1779 The birth, in London, of Joseph Grimaldi, English creator of the original white faced clown. He was introduced to the stage at Drury Lane at the age of three and began to appear at the Sadler's Wells theatre. As Music Hall became popular, he introduced the pantomime dame to the theatre and was responsible for the tradition of audience participation.
1898 Automobile speed record set-39 mph.
1912 The Piltdown Man was discovered in Sussex by Charles Dawson. It was claimed to be the fossilized skull and remains of the earliest known European, but in 1953 it was proved to be a hoax. The skull was that of an orang-utan.
1916 The Battle of Verdun, the longest engagement of World War I, ended after 10 months and massive loss of life. 23 million shells had been fired and 650,000 were killed.
1946 Clement Atlee's Labour government won the vote on state ownership. It led to the nationalizing of the railways, ports and mines. Labour MPs triumphantly sang 'The Red Flag'.
1961 Britain's EMI Records originally rejects the Beatles.
1963 "The Pink Panther" film premieres directed by Blake Edwards and starring Peter Sellers and David Niven with theme by Henry Mancini.
1964 "The Pink Panther" cartoon series premieres.
1974 The Government said that it would pay £42,000 compensation to relatives of the 13 men killed in the **** Sunday riots in Londonderry (30th January 1972).
1989 The Labour Party abandoned its policy on trade union 'closed shops' in line with European legislation.
1997 A bill giving Scotland its own parliament for the first time in three centuries was unveiled in Glasgow. Work commenced in June 1999 on the Scottish Parliament Building It was built at a cost :- £414 million (ten times over the original budget).
2012 Comet stores closed their doors for the last time, bringing the electrical retailer's 79 year history to an end.
2013 The death, aged 84, of the criminal Ronnie Biggs who was part of the gang which escaped with £2.6m from the Glasgow to London mail train on 8th August 1963. Biggs was given a 30-year sentence but escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965. In 2001 he returned to the UK seeking medical helpp, but was sent to prison. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after contracting pneumonia. Coincidentally Biggs' death occurred hours before the first broadcast of a two-part BBC television series 'The Great Train Robbery'.
2013 The Bank of England announced its plans to press ahead with switching to plastic banknotes, starting with the new Sir Winston Churchill £5 note in 2016. The decision will mark the beginning of the end of 320 years of paper notes from the Bank.
2015 The closure of Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, the last remaining deep coal mine in Britain.
2018 Manchester United sacks high profile Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho with United in 6th place in EPL,19 points behind league leaders Liverpool. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer new caretaker manager.
In 2000, following her participation in the presentation of a radio programme for the BBC in Cuba,MacColl took a holiday in Cozumel, Mexico,with her sons and her boyfriend, musician James Knight. On 18 December 2000, she and her sons went diving at the Chankanaab reef, part of the National Marine Park of Cozumel, in a designated diving area that watercraft were restricted from entering. With the group was a local veteran divemaster, Iván Díaz. As the group was surfacing from a dive, a powerboat moving at high speed entered the restricted area. MacColl saw the boat coming before her sons did. Louis, age 13 at the time, was not in its path, but Jamie, age 15, was. She was able to push him out of the way (he sustained minor head and rib injuries), but she was struck by the boat which ran over her. MacColl suffered severe chest injuries and died instantly.
The powerboat involved in the collision was controlled by Guillermo González Nova, multimillionaire president of the Comercial Mexicana supermarket chain, who was on board with members of his family. The boat was owned by Carlos González Nova, brother and founder of the chain. One employee of Guillermo González Nova was boathand José Cen Yam,who stated that he was in control of the boat at the time of the incident. Eyewitnesses said that Cen Yam was not at the controls and that the boat was travelling much faster than the speed of one knot that González Nova said.
Cen Yam was found guilty of culpable homicide and was sentenced to 2 years 10 months in prison. He was allowed under Mexican law to pay a punitive fine of 1,034 pesos (about £61) in lieu of the prison sentence. He was also ordered to pay approximately US$2,150 in restitution to MacColl's family, an amount based on his wages. People who said they spoke to Cen Yam after the killing said he received money for taking the blame.
In the immediate aftermath,the 'Justice for Kirsty' campaign was set up,which aimed to force a judicial review of the events surrounding her death.
In May 2006, Emilio Cortez Ramírez, a federal prosecutor in Cozumel, was found liable for breach of authority in his handling of the MacColl case,prompting many to demand the case be reopened, though the campaign was ended in 2009.
A great hoax was born on December 18th, 1912.
Dawson (left) and Smith-Woodward search for more bones, Illustrated London News, 1913.
Piltdown is an otherwise unremarkable hamlet in Sussex, east of Haywards Heath, which suddenly became famous for what seemed to be an astounding discovery. Allegedly, at some point before 1912 workmen in a gravel pit came across part of the skull of a hominid, or human-like creature, that seemed to be the much sought after ‘missing link’ between the apes and homo sapiens, or modern man. Not realising what it was, they broke it, but they gave the largest piece to a local lawyer and antiquary named Charles Dawson. He later found more fragments of the skull at the pit, or so he said when he took the finds to Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology at the British Museum. Woodward joined Dawson for further explorations at Piltdown, where Dawson found more pieces of the skull and part of the jawbone. No bones of the rest of the body were ever found.
By November 1912 the press was on the trail and Woodward announced the discovery to a meeting of the Geological Society in London the following month. It created a sensation and the creature was named Eoanthropus (‘dawn man’) dawsoni in Dawson’s honour, more commonly known as Piltdown Man. The remains were exactly what many leading British palaeontologists had been looking for, a creature combining ape-like and modern human characteristics. They accepted it with enthusiasm and consequently rejected far more significant discoveries made later on in Africa.
Some experts from early on had serious misgivings about Piltdown Man, but it was not until 1953 that an investigation at the Natural History Museum in London pronounced him ‘an elaborate and carefully prepared hoax’. Further investigations confirmed that the remains combined the cranium of a modern human with the jaw and teeth of an immature orangutan. They had been stained to make them look older and the teeth had been ground down with a file to make them seem more human. They had been deliberately introduced into the Piltdown gravels, which themselves were not remotely as old as had been claimed.
Charles Dawson had died in 1916. He was inevitably the principal suspect, but other candidates have included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had a house near Piltdown and knew Dawson, the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who also knew Dawson and visited Piltdown with him, and Sir Arthur Keith of the Royal College of Surgeons, who has been accused of colluding with Dawson in what started off as a practical joke. Miles Russell, a Bournemouth University archaeologist, however, has discovered many cases of fakery by Dawson before the Piltdown discovery, which he has described as not a joke but the culmination of Dawson’s life’s work.
Football On This Day - 18th December 1937.
George Hardwick didn’t have the best of Football League debuts. Playing for Middlesbrough against Bolton at Ayresome Park in the old First Division he scored an own goal with his first touch of the ball in the first minute of the match!
Football On This Day - 18th December 1954.
In the First Division match between Chelsea and Leicester City at Stamford Bridge Leicester defenders Jack Froggatt and Stan Milburn each struck the ball at exactly the same time to send it past the Leicester 'keeper to record a 'shared own goal' in Chelsea's 3-1 victory, the only such goal in Football League history.
Football On This Day - 18th December 1956.
The first ever Ballon d'Or - European Footballer of Year - award was made. In second place was Alfredo Di Stéfano and his team-mate in the great Real Madrid side, Raymond Kopa, was third but the winner was a 41-year-old Englishman who played for Blackpool - Stanley Matthews. He was presented with the trophy by the man behind the new award, Gabriel Hanot. Two other Brits received votes in the contest - Billy Wright finished in ninth place while Duncan Edwards was 13th.
1154 Henry II was crowned, at Westminster Abbey.
1606 English entrepreneurs set sail in the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery to establish a colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.
1686 Robinson Crusoe leaves his island after 28 years (as per Daniel Defoe).
1783 William Pitt the Younger became the youngest British Prime Minister, at the age of 24 years, 6 months and 21 days.
1848 Emily Brontë, English author of Wuthering Heights, died of tuberculosis at the tender age of 30.
1851 The renowned artist, Joseph Turner, died. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner was also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting.
1915 World War I: British, Australian and New Zealand troops began their withdrawal from Gallipoli after failing to defeat the Turks.
1922 Theresa Vaughn, 24, confesses in court in Sheffield, England, to being married 61 times over 5 years in 50 cities in three countries.
1924 The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost was sold, in London.The Silver Ghost is considered the most valuable car in the world. In 2005 its insured value was placed at more than £22 million. By 2011 it was valued at almost £37 million.
1932 The BBC World Service began broadcasting, as the BBC Empire Service.
1941 World War II: Limpet mines placed by Italian divers sank the HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth in Alexandria harbour.
1942 Robert Stroud "Birdman of Alcatraz" is transferred to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
1958 1st radio broadcast from space, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower Christmas message "to all mankind, America's wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to men everywhere".
1971 Stanley Kubrick's X-rated film "A Clockwork Orange" based on the book by Anthony Burgess and starring Malcolm McDowell premieres.
1972 Ugandan leader General Idi Amin gave British workers an ultimatum; to accept reduced pay or be expelled.
1972 Frank O'Farrell lost his job as manger of Manchester United, following a 5–0 defeat to Crystal Palace. George Best, once again, announced his retirement, on the same day. Not a good week for United.
1981 The 8 man crew of the Penlee Lifeboat all lost their lives attempting to rescue the crew of the coaster Union Star that was wrecked in violent seas off the coast of Cornwall.
1983 The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro.
1984 Britain and China signed an agreement in Beijing, in which Britain agreed to transfer full sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
1997 MTV drops video "Smack My Bit ch Up" by Prodigy.
1997 The movie "Titanic" one of the highest-grossing movies of all-time is released.
2003 Libyan leader Gaddafi agreed to allow weapons inspectors into Libya 'immediately and unconditionally' to oversee the elimination of its arsenal of chemical weapons.
2006 Steve Wright, was arrested, charged and remanded in custody, accused of murdering five prostitutes over a six week period. The bodies of all five women were found dumped in remote locations around Ipswich in Suffolk, sparking a massive police investigation.
2013 Michael Adebolajo (29) and Michael Adebowale (22) were found guilty of murdering soldier Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks in south-east London in May. Fusilier Rigby was struck with a car before hacked to death. Adebolajo had claimed he was a 'soldier of Allah' and the killing was an act of war. Adebolajo was given a whole-life term and Adebowale was jailed for a minimum of 45 years.
2013 Ornate plasterwork at the Apollo Theatre in London fell from the ceiling during a performance and after a flash flood thunderstorm. The collapse brought down a lighting rig and a section of balcony, trapping 2 people and injuring around 88, including 7 with serious injuries.
2016 US electoral collage votes 304 to 227 to nominate Donald Trump for President over the objections of seven faithless electors.
2018 Drones flying over Gatwick airport, England, causes delays and cancellations for 800 flights and 110,000 people.
It was announced that Rio Ferdinand’s punishment for missing a drugs test in September was a fine of £50,000 and an eight-month ban from football at both club and international level. The test was scheduled to have taken place at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground but Ferdinand forgot about it and went shopping instead.
Football On This Day - 19th December 2004.
One of the reasons why Joey Barton always seemed to have the word 'controversial' preceding his name came at the Manchester City Christmas Party on this day in 2004. Reserve-team player James Tandy set fire to Joey Barton's shirt and Barton responded by stubbing a lit cigar into Tandy's eye. Barton suffered a £60,000 club fine and paid £65,000 in damages to the injured player.
1192 Richard the Lion-Heart was captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after signing a treaty that ended the Third crusade.
1688 Prince William of Orange's troops arrive in London.
1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's army reaches the river Esk.
1780 Britain declares war on Holland.
1910 The British General Election produced a tied vote, with the Liberal Party and the Tory Party each winning 272 seats.
1920 An English born comedian named Leslie Townes, who later changed his name to Bob Hope, became an American citizen on this day. He had lived in the United States since 1908 and became one of America's true ambassadors for show business and charity.
1924 Adolf Hitler freed from jail early, having served only nine months of five-year sentence for "Beer Hall Putsch".
1928 Harry Ramsden started his fish and chip restaurant in a hut at White Cross - Guiseley, near Bradford in West Yorkshire. It soon became the most famous fish and chip restaurant in the world. In 2012 the restaurant was acquired by the fish and chip chain 'Wetherby Whaler' and they gave this name to the new restaurant.
1928 The England cricket team scored a record 636 against Australia in Sydney, including 251 scored by Walter Hammond. England won the Test match by eight wickets.
1946 Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life" film premieres in New York, directed by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore.
1955 Cardiff was officially named the capital of Wales.
1957 Elvis Presley receives his draft notice to join the US Army for National Service.
1962 Osmond brothers debut on Andy Williams Show.
1967 Ian Anderson & Glenn Cornick form rock group Jethro Tull.
1969 Rolf Harris had the Christmas No.1 of 1969 and the last No.1 of the 1960s with 'Two Little Boys'. The song stayed at No.1 for six weeks. On 4th July 2014 84 year old Harris was jailed for 5 years 9 months for 12 indecent assaults against four girls - including one aged 'just seven or eight'. He was also stripped of his CBE and his OA (Order of Australia).
1979 The introduction of Britain's Housing Bill - forcing local councils to sell their houses to any tenants who wished to buy them.
1984 The Summit tunnel fire; the largest underground fire in history, as a freight train carrying over 1 million litres of petrol derailed near the town of Todmorden, in West Yorkshire. The tunnel is 1.6 miles in length,was built in the late 1830s and is located between Littleborough and Walsden. When completed in 1841, it was the longest railway tunnel in the world.
George Stephenson,the tunnel's builder,said, 'I stake my reputation and my head that the tunnel will never fail so as to injure any human life' and ... in spite of the intense fire inside the tunnel in 1984, he was right.
1988 Animal rights terrorists fire bombed Harrod's department store in London.
1990 The Maerdy Colliery, employing 320 men, closed. It was the last remaining coal mine in the Rhondda Valley, an area which once produced 9 million tonnes a year, and where more than 50,000 miners had worked in 54 pits.
1995 The Queen urged Prince Charles and Princess Diana to seek 'an early divorce'.
1996 Horror film classic "Scream", starring Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox, is released.
2004 A gang of thieves stole £26.5 million worth of currency from the Donegall Square West headquarters of the Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland, one of the largest bank robberies in UK history.
2007 Elizabeth II became the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.
2012 Mayan prophecies predicted that the world would end on Saturday morning 22nd December 2012.
At half time at the Leicester v Ipswich First Division match City’s England international Keith Weller had things on his mind. He had suffered an FA fine for bringing the game into disrepute, a transfer request from him had been turned down, Leicester had lost seven matches on the trot (and would lose against Ipswich), the crowd were starting to get on his back and he argued with team-mates in the tunnel at the half-time break. So he decided enough was enough, ran a bath, got in it and refused to go out for the second half! His one-man strike cost him a club fine and he got his wish of going onto the transfer although all was later forgiven and he remained at Filbert Street for another four years.
1118 The birth, in London's Cheapside, of Thomas à Becket, Lord Chancellor of England, Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr.
1620 The Pilgrim Fathers arrived at Plymouth Rock , Massachusetts aboard The Mayflower. Passengers & crew increased to 103 after 2 births on the voyage from Plymouth, England. They had originally set sail from Southampton on 5th August but were beset with problems.
1842 Pentonville Prison, Islington, was opened. Pentonville became the model for British prisons. A further 54 were built to the same design over six years, and hundreds more were built throughout the British Empire.
1844 At 8:00 p.m. On This Day, the Rochdale Pioneers commenced business at their co-operative, now this museum on Toad Lane, Rochdale, thus starting the Co-operative movement, often referred to simply as the Co-op.
1846 Robert Liston, Scottish surgeon, used anaesthetic (ether) for the first time in a British operation, at University College Hospital, London, to perform an amputation of a leg. Liston was known as 'the fastest knife in the West End' at a time when speed was essential to reduce pain and improve the odds of survival of a patient.
1872 The Challenger expedition, when HMS Challenger, commanded by Captain George Nares, sailed from Portsmouth. The scientific exercise covered almost 70,000 nautical miles, laid the foundation of oceanography and more than 4,000 previously unknown species were discovered. The expedition was hailed as 'the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.'
1872 Phileas Fogg completes his round the world trip in 80 days, in Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days".
1880 An act passed by the House of Keys on the Isle of Man granted women the vote, provided they were widows or spinsters with a property rated annually at £4 or over.
1910 Explosion in coal mine in Hulton England, 344 mine workers die.
1937 The first full-length animated feature film and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.
1962 President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan agreed that the UK would buy nuclear missiles from the US to form a multilateral NATO nuclear force.
1963 Under soil heating was used for the first time, at the Leeds Rugby League ground for their match against Dewsbury.
1970 Elvis Presley meets US President Richard Nixon in the White House - the image of this meeting is the most requested photo from the entire National Archives.
1988 A Pan American jumbo jet bound for New York was blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb and crashed onto the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 passengers and 11 people on the ground. It remains the deadliest aviation incident ever to take place in the United Kingdom. The Garden of Remembrance and the Lockerbie Air Disaster Memorial are at Dryfesdale Cemetery, Lockerbie.
2013 A poll showed that 1 in 10 people aged 25 to 34 in Britain thought that Father Christmas was mentioned in the Biblical account of the birth of Jesus.
2013 The death, aged 87, of former BBC sports broadcaster David Coleman. He first appeared on air for the BBC in 1954, covering 11 Olympic Games - from Rome in 1960 to Sydney 2000 and six football World Cups. Coleman presented some of the BBC's leading sporting programmes, including Grandstand and Sportsnight and was the host of Question of Sport for 18 years.
2014 A former senior military intelligence officer disclosed that a British soldier was investigated for touching a Taliban fighter on the nose with a sheet of paper during a routine interrogation as he had broken rules concerning the touching of detainees during questioning. The £31 million inquiry, chaired by Sir Thayne Forbes,a former High Court judge, listed several instances of what was judged to be 'ill-treatment during questioning'.
A Christmas miracle at The Valley. With less than half an hour left of their Second Division match against Huddersfield, Charlton were 1-5 behind and were down to 10 players. When the final whistle blew Charlton had won 7-6, the only time that scoreline had been recorded in the Football League.
Football On This Day - 21st December 1996.
Middlesbrough were due visit Blackburn Rovers on this day in 1996 for a Premier League match but the fixture was called off by Boro as they had 23 players unavailable because of illness,injury and suspension. No permission was given for the postponement by the Premier League though and Middlesbrough were fined £50,000 and docked three points. They were relegated at the seasons' end - just two points short of safety.
1550 The death of Richard Plantagenet (Richard of Eastwell). Shorty before the Battle of Bosworth (Richard - then aged 16) was taken to see King Richard III at his encampment. The King informed the boy that he was his son, and told him to watch the battle from a safe vantage point, telling him that, if he won, he would acknowledge him as his son. If he lost, the boy was told that he had to forever conceal his identity. King Richard was killed in the battle, the boy fled to London and was apprenticed to a bricklayer, but kept up the Latin he had learned by reading during his work.
1715 James Edward Stuart, son of James II, the deposed Catholic King of England, landed at Petershead in north-east Scotland, after his exile in France, to lead a Jacobite rebellion against England. The rebellion failed.
1716 Lincoln's Inn Theatre in London put on England's first pantomime which included the characters Harlequin, Columbine and Pantaloon.
1882 1st string of Christmas tree lights created by Thomas Edison.
1919 The Government of Ireland Act of Power (Home Rule for Ireland) came into being. It was signed by King George V. Ireland was divided into two parts, each with its own parliament.
1932 "The Mummy" directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff is released in the US - 1st Mummy horror film.
1942 World War II: Adolf Hitler signed the order to develop the V-2 rocket as a weapon. It was the world's first, long-range weapon and was developed specifically to target London and later Antwerp. Over 3,000 V-2s were launched as military rockets against Allied targets during the war.
1949 The birth, in the Isle of Man, of the twin brothers Maurice and Robin Gibb, musicians with The Bee Gees.
1962 Pop group the Tornados started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with their record Telstar. It was the first major hit from a UK act in the American charts.
1965 The government introduced an 'experimental' speed limit of 70mph on motorways in England. The limit is still in force.
1967 "The Graduate" American comedy-drama film directed by Mike Nichols, starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, is released.
1973 Elton John started a two week run at No.1 on the UK chart with the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
1974 The Provisional IRA threw a bomb onto the 1st floor balcony of the home of the Conservative leader and former Prime Minister Edward Heath. He arrived home 10 minutes after the bomb exploded.
2000 The American singer Madonna married British film maker Guy Ritchie at an exclusive ceremony in Skibo Castle near Dornoch in Sutherland, hours after their son was christened.
2014 Six people were killed by an out-of-control bin lorry in Glasgow. A 'Fatal Accident Inquiry' into the incident showed that the driver (58-year old Harry Clarke) had a history of health issues including fainting and dizziness dating back to the 1970s and that he had lied on his HGV renewal application form.
2014 A grey seal was spotted in a farmer's field in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, 20 miles inland. The disorientated animal was captured and transferred to a wildlife centre in Nantwich, Cheshire.
Tommy Docherty was appointed Manchester United manager at a reputed salary of £15,000 a year. Mainly remembered, perhaps, as being in charge when the Holy Trinity of Charlton, Best and Law finished their playing days at Old Trafford, seeing United relegated to Division 2 and setting up home with the wife of the club physio.
In December 1972, when Frank O'Farrell was sacked as manager of Manchester United, Docherty was poached by Manchester United and quit his job with Scotland to become manager. His first game in charge was against Leeds United at Old Trafford. The game finished 1–1 with Ted MacDougall scoring one of his few goals for United. Although United were in serious trouble when he took them over, because of an ageing squad, he managed to keep them in the First Division in 1972–73. The 1973–74 season saw United continue to struggle and they were eventually relegated to the Second Division.
In the following season, United returned to the top flight as Second Division champions. In 1975–76 they finished in third place in the First Division and also reached the 1976 FA Cup Final, but lost 1–0 to Southampton who were then in the Second Division. Docherty led United to the FA Cup final again in 1977, this time as underdogs against Liverpool; United won 2–1, denying Liverpool the second trophy of a possible treble of League, FA Cup and European Cup.
Shortly afterwards, news that Docherty was having an extramarital affair with the wife of a United physiotherapist, Laurie Brown, became public. He was sacked in a blaze of publicity in July 1977. Docherty was replaced at Old Trafford by the same man who had replaced him at Chelsea, Dave Sexton. The affair also resulted in the end of his marriage to Agnes, who had been his wife since December 1949. Docherty later married Mary Brown, and the couple are still together. Docherty has subsequently had a frosty relationship with the club.
1688 As part of the Glorious Revolution to overthrow King James II of England (James VII of Scotland), the KIng fled to Paris 'On This Day' after being deposed in favour of his nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary.
1732 The birth, in Preston, Lancashire, of Sir Richard Arkwright, the youngest of 16 children. A self-made man, he was a leading entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolution and the cotton spinning industry. He was the creator of the modern factory system, especially in his mill at Cromford, Derbyshire which also had the world's first water-powered mill.
1834 English architect Joseph Hansom, who designed the Town Hall at Lutterworth, Leicestershire patented the horse drawn taxi,known as the Hansom Cab. He went on to sell the patent to a company for £10,000 but the sum was never paid. The first Hansom Cab travelled down Hinckley's Coventry Road in 1835. They were exported worldwide and became a feature of the 19th-century street scene.
1888 The birth, in Hull, of the film magnate J. Arthur Rank. He was founder of the Rank Organisation, now known as The Rank Group Plc.
1888 Vincent van Gogh cuts off his left ear with a razor, after argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, and sends to a prostitute for safe keeping.
1905 The earliest recorded British beauty show was held at Newcastle Upon Tyne, in north-east England.
1937 The first flight of the Vickers Wellington, a British twin-engine, long range medium bomber designed at Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey. It was widely used as a night bomber in the early years of the Second World War, before being displaced as a bomber by the larger four-engine "heavies" such as the Avro Lancaster.
1943 General Bernard Montgomery told he is appointed commandant for D-day.
1952 Alain Bombard arrives in Barbados after 65 days at sea proving his theory that a shipwrecked person could survive with almost no provisions, despite having lost 25 kg (65 lbs) in weight.
1961 Fidel Castro announces Cuba will release 1,113 prisoners from failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion for $62M worth of food & medical supplies.
1962 Cuba starts returning US prisoners from Bay of Pigs invasion.
1970 The Mousetrap reached its 7511th consecutive performance to break the world record for the longest running play.
1972 16 plane crash survivors rescued from Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 after 72 days on the Andean Mountains, after only surviving through cannibalism.
1987 The first ‘Scrooge’ award by the Low Pay Unit was made to a Wiltshire stable-owner who paid a qualified groom only £28 a week. The runner-up was a doctor employing a telephonist for 30p an hour. The prize was a copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
1994 Fearing arrest by the FBI, Whitey Bulger flees Boston, and successfully hides from law enforcement for the next 16 years.
2013 Former MP Denis MacShane was jailed for six months for expenses fraud after admitting submitting 19 fake receipts amounting to £12,900. MacShane said 'cheers' as the sentence was delivered, before adding, 'quelle surprise' as he was led from the dock. He became the fifth MP to get a prison sentence after the 2009 expenses scandal.
2014 Ashley Stansfield, 48, a prisoner released on licence, was sentenced to spend Christmas in jail after he was punished for taking a job which started at 6.15 in the morning, 45 minutes before his night-time curfew expired.
A Plane Carrying 45 People Crashed In The Andes – 16 Of Them Survived By Eating The Others
"We made a pact that, if we died, we would be happy to put our bodies to the service of the rest of the team."
The Story Of The Miracle in the Andes
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash site.
How far could you go to survive? Would you do whatever it takes? Would you even eat human flesh? It’s something many people have asked themselves when they hear tales of survival in extreme circumstances. But Roberto Canessa doesn’t have to wonder. He’s done it.
In 1972, Canessa was a 19-year-old medical student accompanying his rugby team on a trip from Uruguay to attend a match in nearby Chile. To get there, they needed to fly a small plane over the rugged Andes mountains. But after entering severe turbulence, the pilot made a mistake and began descending while they were still over the mountains. Within a few seconds, the plane smashed into a snow-capped peak.
Canessa survived the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, but he was one of the few who did. Dozens of passengers were dead or in serious condition with broken bones or bits of debris embedded in their body.
Over the next few days, several more passengers died from exposure on the freezing mountainside or from their injuries. And one night, an avalanche crashed over the survivors and swept another eight people to their deaths.
Canessa and the other survivors did everything they could to combat the elements. They fashioned blankets out of the plane seats and used aluminum from the plane to melt snow so that they would have something to drink. But the one thing they couldn’t find was food.
In desperation, they turned to the one source of sustenance they had available: the bodies of their dead friends. In his book I Had To Survive, Canessa lays out his account of the ordeal, “You had to eat these dead bodies, and that was it. The decision to accept it intellectually is only one step, though. The next step is to actually do it.”
Like many of the survivors, Canessa struggled with the idea of eating human flesh. “That was very tough. Your mouth doesn’t want to open because you feel so miserable and sad about what you have to do.”
But it seems that he and the other survivors took comfort in the idea that they would have been willing to sacrifice their bodies if needed. According to Canessa, “We made a pact that, if we died, we would be happy to put our bodies to the service of the rest of the team.”
Eating the dead created a deep sense of a spiritual bond among the survivors, not just for those who were left but also for the dead whose sacrifice allowed them to carry on.
To Canessa, the decision to eat their bodies gave spiritual sustenance as well as physical nourishment. “I feel that I shared a piece of my friends not only materially but spiritually because their will to live was transmitted to us through their flesh,” he stated.
Canessa credits that will to live with his survival. And the food that the dead provided certainly sustained him as he and two other men embarked on a long trek through the mountains to find help.
The men hiked for 10 days through below freezing temperatures before finally finding rescue. Of the 45 people on board Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, only 16 survived the two-month ordeal in the mountains. Their survival became known as the “Miracle In The Andes” and inspired numerous books and films, including Alive.
Roberto Canessa carried his experience into a career as a pediatric cardiologist. “It’s my revenge on death,” he says, “I tell the mother, “You have a big mountain to climb. I was there before. But the joy… that awaits you on the other side is spectacular!”
An early Christmas present for Arsenal who gain a 5-0 First Division victory over Tottenham at White Hart Lane. A 42,073 crowd witnessed Alan Sunderland score three goals,the first Arsenal player to score a hat-trick against Spurs since Ted Drake in 1934.
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1914 World War 1 - Not a shot was fired, as German & British soldiers played football & handed out drinks, cigars & souvenirs. It was possibly the most poignant moment of the 'Great War' & for several days afterwards the two sides appeared reluctant to fire on the men they had met face to face. Will we ever learn from history of the futility of war?
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1166 The birth of King John, youngest son of Henry II, who was forced by the barons to sign the Magna Carta. When he tried to revoke his authorization, civil war broke out. He was jokingly nicknamed 'Lackland' as it seemed unlikely that John would ever inherit substantial lands.
1650 Edinburgh Castle surrendered to troops commanded by Oliver Cromwell.
1777 Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is discovered by James Cook.
1814 The war of 1812 between the US and Britain was brought to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.
1818 Christmas carol "Silent Night" composed by Franz Xaver Gruber is first sung at St Nicholas parish church in Oberndorf, Austria.
1828 William Burke who, with his partner William Hare, dug up the dead and murdered to sell the corpses for dissection, went on trial in Edinburgh. The other bodysnatcher, William Hare, had turned King’s evidence and was not therefore brought to trial.
1904 The London Coliseum opened with the first revolving stage in Britain.
1914 A German monoplane dropped a single bomb on Dover, the first ever to be dropped on British soil. It landed on a rectory garden lawn and blew out the house windows.
1922 The BBC broadcast 'The Truth About Father Christmas' by Phillis M Twigg, the first play written for radio in Britain.
1965 A meteorite weighing about 100 lb (45kg) was the largest to fall on Britain and landed in the village of Barwell, Leicestershire.
1968 Ballon d'Or: Manchester United's winger George Best wins award for best European football player ahead of teammate Bobby Charlton and Red Star Belgrade winger Dragan Džajić; first Northern Irish national to win the award.
1974 Former UK minister John Stonehouse was found in Australia after apparently faking his own death.
1979 The first European Ariane rocket was launched. It had been officially agreed upon at the end of 1973 after delicate discussions between France, Germany and Britain. The project was Western Europe's second attempt to develop its own launcher, following the unsuccessful Europa project.
1988 Three North Sea oil fields were shut down after a giant floating storage vessel, the Medora, broke free of its moorings in gale-force winds.
2013 Alan Turing, the World War Two codebreaker at Bletchley Park was granted a Royal pardon over his homosexuality conviction. The work done at Bletchley Park, particularly the codebreaking feats of Alan Turing, were credited with shortening the Second World War by several years. In August 2014 a film 'The Imitation Game' was released, based on the biography 'Alan Turing: The Enigma'.
2013 Several thousand passengers were stranded at Gatwick Airport following stormy weather. The airport said electricity sub-stations on the airfield had flooded with water from the River Mole.
2018 Christmas Eve - Because of ongoing major conservation work on Parliament's Elizabeth Tower, the bell of Rochdale Town Hall replaced the usual chimes of Big Ben on BBC Radio 4 news bulletins. The Rochdale bell was selected, in part, because it uses the same 'Westminster chime' as Big Ben.
1 1st Christmas, according to calendar-maker Dionysus Exiguus.
337 Earliest possible date that Christmas was celebrated on Dec 25th.
352 1st definite date Christmas was celebrated on Dec 25th.
440 Church leaders agreed to fix the date of the birth of Christ. Previously some people had celebrated it in May, others in January.
597 England adopts Julian calendar.
1066 William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England, was crowned at Westminster Abbey. To press his claim to the English crown, William had invaded England in October 1066, leading his army to victory over the English forces of King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings.
1176 The first Eisteddfod (Festival of the Arts) took place at Cardigan Castle.
1621 Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony (now in Massachusetts) forbids game playing on Christmas.
1643 Christmas Island (a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean) was discovered and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Company.
1651 Massachusetts General Court ordered a five shilling fine for "observing any such day as Christmas".
1652 The Puritan government ordered all Churches to remain closed on Christmas Day.
1800 The first Christmas tree in Britain was erected at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor by the German-born Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. She brought the idea over from Germany where the first reports of Christmas trees go back to 1521.
1864 The traditional swim in the ice-cold Serpentine in London’s Hyde Park was initiated.
1865 Evangeline Booth, the 4th General of The Salvation Army was born, in South Hackney, London, She was the seventh of eight children born to William Booth and Catherine Mumford, who had earlier in the year founded The Christian Mission, which became the Salvation Army in 1878.
1866 The US yacht Henrietta sailed into Cowes harbour on the Isle of Wight, and thus became the winner of the first Transatlantic Yacht Race.
1914 The Christmas truce between British and German troops continued. At 2 a.m. a German band went along the trenches playing Home Sweet Home and God Save the King.
1932 King George V made the first Royal Christmas broadcast to the Empire. During King George V's Christmas dinner speech his chair collapses. Queen Elizabeth II made her first Christmas broadcast in 1952, and her first television Christmas message was broadcast in 1957.
1950 The Stone of Scone, the Scottish coronation stone which had been in Westminster Abbey for 650 years was stolen by Scottish nationalists. The Stone, weighing 458lb (208kg) was said to have been taken from Scotland by Edward I.
1957 Richard Starkey (later better known as Ringo Starr) receives his first drum set.
1963 Walt Disney's "The Sword in the Stone" is released.
1973 "The Sting" directed by George Roy Hill, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford and music inspired by Scott Joplin premieres in Los Angeles and New York.
1977 Charlie Chaplin, the English born comic genius of silent films, died, aged 88.
1989 Show trial of Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena on charges of genocide and personal enrichment. The couple are found guilty and executed by firing squad the same day.
2003 Scientists failed to make contact with the British built Mars probe Beagle 2, which should have landed on the Red Planet 'on this day'. Beagle 2 was named after HMS Beagle, which twice carried Charles Darwin during expeditions which would later lead to the theory of natural selection. Beagle 2 was officially declared lost on 6th February 2004. As of 2010 only 19 of 38 launch attempts to reach Mars have succeeded.
2013 Earlier storms across southern England, stretching through Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey and Kent, led to extensive power cuts, with around 50,000 homes remaining without power through the Christmas period. Southern Electric said that it would guarantee a £75 payment for any customer who was without electricity for any time on Christmas Day.
2014 The parcel delivery company City Link, which employed 2,727 people, went into administration.
After losing 14 Division 2 matches and drawing 5 – and not scoring a goal in the last 11 of those matches - Coventry City finally won their first match of the season, 3-2 against Stoke at Highfield Road. The following day they lost 6-1 at Stoke in the return fixture.
Football On This Day - 25th December 1924.
Leicester City’s John Duncan scored a club record six goals in the 7-0 Second Division defeat of Port Vale at Filbert Street on Christmas Day 1924. The scorer of the seventh goal that day - Arthur Chandler - later equalled that record scoring 6 in Leicester's club record 10-0 League victory over Portsmouth in October 1928.
Football On This Day - 25th December 1936.
Not a happy Christmas Day for Wrexham’s Ambrose Wilson in a Division 3 (North) match at Hull City – he was sent off after just 20 seconds!
Football On This Day - 25th December 1957.
Jimmy Greaves scored his first League hat-trick (he eventually scored 4) in Chelsea's 7-4 victory over Portsmouth at Stamford Bridge on Christmas Day 1957.
Football On This Day - 25th December 1965.
This day in 1965 saw the last Football League match played on Christmas Day – Blackpool 4 Blackburn Rovers 2 in front of 20,851 at Bloomfield Road.