David O'Leary was announced as the new manager of Leeds on this day in 1998, replacing George Graham. Having been Graham's assistant, O'Leary was put in caretaker charge at the club after the Scot departed for Tottenham, before being handed the job permanently on October 25. The former Republic of Ireland international guided Leeds to a fourth-placed finish in the Premier League in 1998-99, and that improved to third a year later.
O'Leary guided Leeds to third place in the 1999-2000 Premier League, which took them into the Champions League qualifying rounds. The team also reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup in 1999-2000, and the following season, in the Champions League, there was another run to the last four.
That famous campaign included O'Leary's men beating AC Milan 1-0 and drawing 1-1 with Barcelona at Elland Road in the first group stage. They ended up losing 3-0 on aggregate to Valencia in the semis.
Leeds came fourth again domestically, then fifth the next season before O'Leary's tenure came to an end in June 2002.
Leeds' plc announced the club and O'Leary had parted company "by mutual consent", but it soon became clear he had been sacked.
After O'Leary was sacked by Leeds, chairman Peter Risdale spoke about the money invested in players and failure to qualify for the Champions League. Chairman Peter Ridsdale subsequently spoke about the feeling that it had been time for a change with around £100million invested in players and the team having failed to qualify for the Champions League for two years running.
Ridsdale also made reference to a lack of silverware and "pressure off the field". The Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate court case had cast a huge cloud over Leeds' 2001-02 season.
O'Leary – who went on to manage Aston Villa from 2003 to 2006 and later had a brief stint with United Arab Emirates outfit Al-Ahli – was succeeded by Terry Venables. Peter Reid and Eddie Gray also had spells in charge before Leeds were relegated in 2004.
I seem to remember that Leeds were a joy to watch back then.
I used to run a Ladbrokes in Cockfosters that David O'Leary used to pop into occasionally when he was still playing. No airs and graces with him. A proper down to earth fella.
Most people who have actually met him say the same about him.
Leicester City owner among five dead in helicopter crash
The owner of Leicester City FC died when his helicopter crashed outside the stadium, the club has confirmed.
Billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, two members of his staff, the pilot and a passenger were killed when the aircraft spiralled out of control and crashed in a fireball on Saturday.
It had just cleared the King Power Stadium when it came down at 20:30 BST.
A tragic end to Leicester's fairytale Mr Vichai, 60, who was married and had four children, bought Leicester City for £39m in 2010.
Under his ownership the Foxes won the Premier League in 2016, having started the season as 5,000/1 outsiders.
In a statement, Leicester City said the club's thoughts were with "the Srivaddhanaprabha family and the families of all those on-board at this time of unspeakable loss".
Prince William, who is president of the FA, said Mr Vichai made a big contribution to football, adding that Leicester City's Premier League title-winning season "captured the imagination of the world".
"He will be missed by all fans of the sport and everyone lucky enough to have known him," he said.
Speaking outside the stadium, club ambassador Alan Birchenall said Leicester City owed "everything" to Mr Vichai.
"We wouldn't have won it [the Premier League] without him," he said. "We wouldn't have got near it without him.
The club described Mr Vichai as "a man of kindness, of generosity and a man whose life was defined by the love he devoted to his family and those he so successfully led".
"Leicester City was a family under his leadership. It is as a family that we will grieve his passing and maintain the pursuit of a vision for the club that is now his legacy," it added.
Kasabian band member and Foxes fan Serge Pizzorno called Mr Vichai "an unbelievable human being".
"It never felt like he acquired this club to then sell on after a few years," he said. "He bought into everything, bought into the city, supported everything around it.
"He made all our dreams come true."
The helicopter came down in a car park near the stadium just over an hour after Leicester had drawn 1-1 against West Ham United in the Premier League.
Freelance photographer Ryan Brown, who was covering the game, saw the helicopter clear the King Power Stadium before it crashed.
He told BBC Radio Leicester: "The engine stopped and I turned round and it made a bit of a whirring noise, like a grinding noise.
"The helicopter just went silent, I turned round and it was just spinning, out of control. And then there was a big bang and then a big fireball."
1959: The UK’s first radio carphone service In October 1959, BT forebear the General Post Office introduced the service as a trial in the north of England.
The first ever UK call was made by Reginald Bevin MP, then the Postmaster General, between his car in south Lancashire and automobile mogul Lord Rootes in London. The first carphone service, known as System 1, could handle 320 customers upon launch.
This 1959 video from British Pathé explains how drivers within range of two VHF (very high frequencies) radio stations could make a call to the exchange, which could connect the call with a landline. Landline users could call the exchange and ask to be connected to a car registered with the service.
The technology wouldn’t make it to the capital until 1965 with the first call being made by Prime Minister Harold Wilson. This coincided with the installation of transmitters atop the brand new Post Office Tower.
A 24-year-old man has been jailed for life for killing five members of his family at their farmhouse in Essex. Jeremy Bamber will now serve a minimum of 25 years for the murders of his step-parents, sister and her two six-year-old sons.
As the guilty verdict was delivered at Chelmsford Crown Court, Bamber slumped slightly but gave no further reaction.
Sentencing Bamber to five life prison terms, the judge Mr Justice Drake said he was "warped and evil beyond belief".
"I find it difficult to foresee whether it will ever be safe to release someone who can shoot two little boys as they lie asleep in their beds," he said.
The trial also highlighted failings on the part of Essex police. he judge commented on the fact Bamber had "so nearly got away with five murders".
The court heard how all five victims were shot by Bamber last August at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex.
He then placed the rifle and a bible on the chest of his sister Sheila Caffell to imply she had committed the murders before killing herself.
Detectives suspected Miss Caffell as she suffered from mild schizophrenia and had not been taking her medication.
However Mr Bamber's fingerprints were later found on the gun and his girlfriend, Julia Mugford, revealed he had talked about killing his parents.
Her mother Mary said: "We feel very sad about it all - knowing someone that well and knowing they are capable of such an act."
Outside the court Bamber's cousin David Boutflour said: "There are feelings of sadness and relief. No one wins, we all lose".
The motive for the murders is thought to have been financial. He was set to inherit £436,000 in what he thought was the perfect crime.
In Context
Bamber has always protested his innocence. In July 2001 a team of police officers were given four months to complete fresh inquiries into the case.
It was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.
Bamber angered his surviving family in 2002 when he offered a £1m reward for any fresh information which would help him have his sentence quashed.
In December 2002 Bamber lost his appeal against his conviction for multiple murder.
In 2004 he lost a High Court action to recover £1.27m he claimed he should have received from his grandmother's will.
He also lost another High Court case to recover £326,000 of his family's caravan site firm.
The parliamentary battle to join the European Economic Community
Michael Cockerell
It was a Commons showdown that divided parties and defined political careers. As a young reporter, Michael Cockerell covered the story of Britain’s entry into the European Community. As MPs vote on the Agreement to leave Europe, he looks back on the parliamentary fight to take us in
Nearly half a century ago the Commons was obsessed and convulsed for a year by a whole series of meaningful votes on whether Britain should join the European Community. The passionately europhile Prime Minister Ted Heath had personally managed to persuade President Pompidou of France to rescind his nation’s veto on Britain’s entry. But Heath faced a monumental struggle to get the necessary legislation through Parliament.
He knew he couldn’t command a majority on Tory votes alone, as he was up against a fervent band of some forty anti-Europeans in his own party, led by Enoch Powell. Nor could the PM rely on Labour votes. Harold Wilson had reversed his party’s previous pro-Europe stance, to the dismay of the large body of Labour europhile MPs led by Roy Jenkins.
Parliament’s most mesmerising orator, Enoch Powell – once a keen European – was now Heath’s deadly enemy. In the Commons, Powell declaimed that the battle over Europe “is a life and death struggle for Britain’s independence and authority. A struggle as surely about the future of Britain’s nationhood as were the combats which raged in the skies over Southern England in the autumn of 1940. The gladiators are few, their weapons are but words: and yet the fight is everyman’s”.
As a young BBC television reporter, I followed the Parliamentary story of Britain’s entry into Europe and talked to the key players both at the time and subsequently.
The first big vote on the principle of joining Europe came in October 1971. It followed weeks of open and covert pressure by the party whips on both sides. Disinformation, bluff and counter-bluff were matched by what the Euro-historian, Uwe Kitzinger, described as “nose counting, arm twisting, weak knees and stiff upper lips”. As the great debate began, the galleries in the Commons were so crowded that one world-weary doorkeeper confided: “I haven’t seen it so full since we used to matter in the world.”
The debate lasted six days. Among the 176 MPs who spoke were the party leaders, including the debonair Jeremy Thorpe, as well as Jim Callaghan, Dennis Skinner, Tony Benn, Enoch Powell, and Jeffrey Archer.
In his speech, Harold Wilson declared that if he were returned to Number 10, “if the Community refused to renegotiate the Tory terms, we would sit down amicably and discuss the situation with them.” The House, crowded and tense, just laughed at him.
In his summing up speech Ted Heath said: “I do not think that any Prime Minister has stood at this box in time of peace and asked the House to take a positive decision of such importance as I am asking them to take tonight.”
The division was on a motion carefully framed by the government in consultation with the Jenkinsites to garner maximum possible support. It simply invited the House to “prove the government’s decision to join the Community on the basis of the arrangements that have been negotiated”.
While Labour imposed a three-line Whip instructing its MPs to vote against the government, Ted Heath, himself a former Chief Whip had been more cunning. He had eventually agreed with his own Chief Whip, Francis Pym, to have a free vote. This made it easier for Labour’s pro-European MPs to defy their own party. In the division sixty-nine of them did so, while thirty-nine Tory eurosceptics led by Enoch Powell voted against their government.
The Prime Minister had won by over a hundred – but that big margin was illusory. The real problem he faced was to pass the legislation he needed to turn the vote into law.
Wilson declared that the result was a one-off: he would allow no more voting in support of Heath. As he put it: “I cannot imagine a single Labour Member who, faced with this legislation, will not be in the lobbies against the government.”
Roy Jenkins and his fellow pro-Europeans were in a bind. They now felt, illogically, that having voted for the principle they could not vote for the enabling legislation. From now on they would grit their teeth and follow the official party line, arguing it was the government’s own responsibility to carry its business – or resign.
For their part, Powell and the antis were not downcast. They knew that there was still a very long way to go. And many of them were procedural specialists, who felt confident they could tie government in knots.
Meanwhile, Ted Heath and Francis Pym realised that they would need to deploy all the dark arts of whipping to deradicalise the Powellites. And they would need a number of Labour europhiles to support them or at least abstain.
The Anglo-Scottish Cup: When Little England Met Big Scotland
By The Football History Boys - February 21, 2020
Chesterfield FC have fallen on difficult times in the last few years and are now part of the English non-league football scene. Despite this, many supporters of lower league UK football would say they still have the potential to be one of the biggest clubs outside the top two tiers of the English game. It might surprise many football fans, in Scotland in particular, to discover that the greatest day in the club’s history is still regarded by many of their supporters as the day they saw off Rangers in the final season of a now defunct cross-border tournament.
The Texaco Cup of the early 1970s was the first attempt to establish a ‘British Cup’ after frequent discussion concerning such a tournament becoming a permanent fixture in the football calendar. Calls were increased during the 1960’s when Celtic met Liverpool, Morton took on Chelsea [and lost heavily in the Fairs Cup] and Spurs and Wolves played Rangers. Adding weight to the arguement was the still popular Home Nations Championships in which Scotland v England proved an annual highlight.
When the petroleum giants pulled the plug on the cup, the competition continued as the Anglo-Scottish Cup which carried into 1980/1. The participation of Rangers in the last Anglo-Scottish Cup did add a bit of prestige to the tournament, although for the club itself the embarrassment of missing out on European qualification hardly made the competition attractive.
The start of the 1980/81 season promised so much though as the club embarked on a 15 match unbeaten run in the league, but a woeful display in the Anglo-Scottish Cup was just around the corner. Despite not immediately ruining the season, it certainly planted seeds of doubt regarding John Greig’s squad of the day.
It would be Chesterfield who would face the daunting task of tackling Rangers in the two-legged quarter final of the ‘80/1 Anglo-Scottish Cup. Even with Rangers in mind, confidence was flowing through manager Frank Barlow’s team. Before the first leg at Ibrox took place, the side was sitting proudly on top of the Third Division table.
A few hundred Chesterfield fans made the journey to Glasgow and witnessed a fine performance from their side, Phil Walker putting them in front direct from a corner, and although Rangers equalised through Gordon Dalziel, the tie was intriguingly poised ahead of the second leg at Saltergate.
Faced with the prospect of thousands of Rangers fans making the journey to Derbyshire, club officials and local police forces met in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the type of trouble that had seen a friendly match with Aston Villa abandoned in 1976. Pubs were closed in Chesterfield, alcohol was banned from coaches and supporters’ club trips were instructed to follow given routes into the town. Furthermore, 500 police were drafted in to cope with the arriving ‘Scottish hoards’ as they were described in the local Derbyshire press.
As an extra measure and as part of a PR exercise aimed at quelling any potential aggravation, Gers manager John Greig and some of his players met the fans before the match and gave away goodies. Come the end of the match it would be safe to assume that the 5,000 travelling Rangers fans would not have been quite so welcoming of Greig and his squad.
A crowd of 13,914 watched on as Gers reject Phil Bonnyman came back to haunt his old club. His two goals after 15 and 18 minutes, both from corners sent in by Chesterfield’s first leg scorer Walker, stunned the Scottish Premier Division high-flyers. During a first half, Chesterfield should have been awarded a penalty for the clearest handball imaginable, and also struck the bar.
When Ernie Moss added a third on 64 minutes, Rangers’ misery was almost complete, and a terrible evening was rounded off aptly when home goalie John Turner saved a McAdam penalty ten minutes later.
“Obviously we thought we could win,” commented Turner the morning after the night before. “I would have settled for 1-0. I’d have settled for no score and win on away goals. I’d have settled to just win the tie, but to win 3-0 is really out of this world.”
Chesterfield went onto win an all English final v Notts County and when I visited Chesterfield’s current Proact Stadium in 2017 ,there it was, the last Anglo Scottish Cup [which the club was allowed to keep] still taking pride of place in their trophy cabinet.
The Statue of Liberty or in full Liberty Enlightening the World was first proposed by the French thinker Édouard René de Laboulaye as a gift from the French people to America and to commemorate the abolition of slavery.
Designed by the French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, construction began in 1870 with Gustave Eiffel designing and building the interior metal framework. The statue was completed in France before being disassembled and shipped to America in 1885. It was then reassembled on what was then called Bedloe Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbour and dedicated by President Grover Cleveland in 1886.
The statue depicts Liberty striding forward with a torch raised in her right hand, her left holds a tabula ansata with the date of the declaration of independence. Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus" composed to raise money for the statue was inscribed inside the pedestal in 1903 with its famous lines " "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,". The monument is now not only a symbol of Liberty but of the city of New York and America itself. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.
On this day, Oct. 28, in 1904, the St. Louis Police Department became the first U.S. police department to use fingerprinting.
For 30 years prior, law enforcement officials measured bony parts of the body to identify criminals.
But that system pretty much ended in 1903, when a man named Will West was sentenced to the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. It turned out there was already a prisoner named William West who had the same bone measurements.
The men were identified as the same person, until fingerprints were taken and prison officials discovered they were identical twins.
During the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, a British sergeant from Scotland Yard showed officials from Leavenworth and St. Louis new fingerprint techniques.
October 29, 1986 — At 11.15am on this day, Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Prime Minister at the time, cut a ribbon to open the final stretch of the London Orbital Motorway – the M25.
It was then the world’s longest ring road at 117 miles, had taken 11 years to complete at a cost of £1 billion and was, according to Mrs Thatcher, “a splendid achievement for Britain”.
Thousands of frustrated drivers would come to take a different view over the years. Its first traffic jam developed by 5.15pm on that opening day and delays have since become an almost daily occurrence.
A report in 2011 revealed that roadworks had caused the equivalent of 118 years in hold-ups over 18 months between junctions 16 and 23 alone. The longest traffic jam recorded was 37 miles on December 6, 1995.
Often labelled "the world's first circular car park", or ”the London Orbital car park”, in 1989 pop star Chris Rea put the frustrations of thousands to music when he recorded “The Road To ****”.
Not everyone thought so, though. Many people in the rural East of England had never seen a motorway and were fascinated. So much so that hundreds signed up for a guided coach tour of its lanes.
Today, the Automobile Association, which has offered help to drivers since 1905, says the question most frequently asked by motorists on its online route planner is: "How can I avoid the M25?"
But in those early days it was a tourist attraction – for the rural population, at least.
"It's mad when you think about it," an AA spokesman said recently. "Tourists would spend an afternoon looking at the delights of the road – and no doubt getting caught up in traffic.”
It didn't take long for the "mad" coach tours to be discontinued.
The idea of an orbital road around London was first mooted in 1905 – the same year that the AA was born.
It was intended not for cars, but horses and wagons. The route was to be lined with water troughs, and patrolled by emergency wheelwrights and farriers. Perhaps journey times would not have been much slower than today!
In the 1990 novel Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman spoke for thousands of drivers when they wrote: "Many phenomena – wars, plagues, sudden audits – have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of man.
”But whenever students of demonology get together, the M25 London Orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for Exhibit A.”
Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) was an English adventurer, writer and nobleman. After growing close to Elizabeth I during his time in the army, Raleigh was knighted in 1585 and became captain of the guard. During Elizabeth’s reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the ill-fated Roanoke settlement. He later drew the queen’s wrath and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After Elizabeth’s death in 1603, Raleigh was implicated as an enemy of her successor, James I, and given a death sentence. The sentence was commuted, and Raleigh was freed to lead an expedition to the New World, but its failure sealed his fate.
Sir Walter Raleigh was born in 1552 to Walter Raleigh and Catherine Champernowne. He was raised in a farmhouse near the village of East Budleigh in Devon, England. Raleigh studied at Oxford before serving in the Huguenot army in France (1569). A rival of the Earl of Essex for the queen’s favors, he served (1580) in Elizabeth’s army in Ireland, distinguishing himself by his ruthlessness at the siege of Smerwick and by the plantation of English and Scots Protestants in Munster. Elizabeth rewarded him with a large estate in Ireland, knighted him (1585) and gave him trade privileges and the right to colonize America.
In 1587, Raleigh explored North America from North Carolina to present-day Florida, naming the region Virginia in honor of Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.” In 1587 Raleigh sent an ill-fated second expedition of colonists to Roanoke.
In 1588 he took part in the victory over the Spanish Armada. He led other raids against Spanish possessions and returned with much booty. Raleigh forfeited Elizabeth’s favor by his courtship of and subsequent marriage to one of her maids-of-honor, Bessy Throckmorton, and he was committed to the Tower of London in 1592. Hoping, on his release, to recover his position, he led an abortive expedition to Guiana to search for El Dorado, a legendary land of gold. Instead, he helped to introduce the potato plant and tobacco use in England and Ireland.
James I Elizabeth’s successor, James I, distrusted and feared Raleigh, charged him with treason and condemned him to death, but commuted the sentence to imprisonment in the Tower in 1603. It was there that Raleigh lived with his wife and servants and wrote his History of the World (1614). Walter and Elizabeth (“Bessy”) Raleigh had three children: Carew Raleigh, Damerei Raleigh and Walter Raleigh.
Raleigh was released in 1616 to search for gold in South America. He invaded and pillaged Spanish territory at a time when James I was seeking peace with Spain, and was forced to return to England without booty. Raleigh was arrested on the orders of the king. His original death sentence for treason was invoked and he was executed at Westminster on October 29, 1618. He is buried in St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster.
A gifted poet, writer, and scholar, many of his poems and writings were destroyed. A pioneer of the Italian sonnet-form in English, he was a patron of the arts, notably of Edmund Spenser in his composition of The Faerie Queene (1589–96).
The Great Court Run involves attempting to run around Great Court within the length of time that it takes the College clock to strike the hour of twelve, including the preparatory chiming of the four quarters and the two sets of twelve. (The clock strikes each hour twice.) The course is approximately 370 metres long. Depending upon the state of winding, the clock takes between about 43 and 44½ seconds. It is traditional for athletically-inclined members of Trinity to attempt the run every year at noon on the day of the Matriculation Dinner. The Great Court Run forms a central scene in the film Chariots of Fire (David Puttnam, 1981) (although it was not in fact filmed at Trinity).
In October 1988 the race was recreated for charity by Britain’s two foremost middle-distance runners at that time, Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram. The decathlete Daley Thompson was a reserve. Starting from under the clock-tower and running anti-clockwise, the runners restricted themselves to the customary course dictated by the the flagstones between the cobbles, and hence had to turn very sharply at each corner. Coe won, with his time of 46.0 seconds beating Cram’s of 46.3 seconds. Neither runner, however, beat the clock, which took 44.4 seconds.
On October 20th, 2007, Sam Dobin, a second year undergraduate reading Economics, made it round within the sound of the final chime, with a time of 42.7 seconds. The course taken by the runners of that year was slightly different to that of 1988, in that competitors ran on the cobbles as well as the flagstones.
On October 29th, we celebrate the most important invention in human history. While the internet may not have been possible without a million other monumental inventions that came before it, it’s hard to find any other invention that has had such a monumental impact on mankind. That’s why, since October 29, 2005, we’ve been celebrating the anniversary of the first internet transmission. It is a chance to celebrate the people who helped build the internet, while also giving us a moment to reflect on all the ways that it has changed our lives forever.
It All Began with Leonard Kleinrock Leonard Kleinrock, the father of Internet Day, and IMP1Let’s go back to where it all started. The Internet, defined as a remote connection between two computers, was first achieved on October 29, 1969 (just a few months after Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon). In the glow of a green monochrome screen deep in the bowels of the computer science department at UCLA, a young graduate student picked up his phone and called the computer lab at Stanford. He is preparing to send the first message over an Internet connection. The men on either end of the phone are Charley Kline and Bill Duvall.
While not as famous as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren, Leonard Kleinrock, Charley Kline and Bill Duvall were the key players in the first Internet connection. Working on the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a network funded by the US Defense Department that connected four independent terminals installed at ULCA, Stanford, the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Utah, Charley Kline attempted to send login information from UCLA to Bill Duvall at Stanford.
It almost worked, too. Kleinrock attempted to send the word “login”, and he managed to send “L” and “O” before the connection between the terminals crashed.
“So I’m on the phone to SRI and I type the L and say, “OK I typed in L, you got that?” Bill Duvall, the guy at SRI, is watching his monitor and he has the L. I type the O. Got the O. Typed the G. “Wait a minute”, Bill says, “my system crashed. I’ll call you back”.
Still, the characters “L” and “O” were the first bits of data ever sent over the first long distance computer network. Under the supervision of UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock, Kline was able to send the complete “Login” message about an hour later.
Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” radio play is broadcast “The War of the Worlds”—Orson Welles's realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth—is broadcast on the radio on October 30, 1938.
Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells’s 19th-century science fiction novel The War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of “The Shadow” in the hit mystery program of the same name. “War of the Worlds” was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of how legendary it would eventually become.
The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.”
Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy “Charlie McCarthy” on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.
Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to “the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.
Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. “Good heavens,” he declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here’s another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”
The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired “heat-ray” weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon “Martian cylinders” landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee.
The Federal Communications Commission investigated the unorthodox program but found no law was broken. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future. The broadcast helped Orson Welles land a contract with a Hollywood studio, and in 1941 he directed, wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane—a movie that many have called the greatest American film ever made.
Muhammad Ali wins the Rumble in the Jungle On October 30, 1974, 32-year-old Muhammad Ali becomes the heavyweight champion of the world for the second time when he knocks out 25-year-old champ George Foreman in the eighth round of the “Rumble in the Jungle,” a match in Kinshasa, Zaire. Seven years before, Ali had lost his title when the government accused him of draft-dodging and the boxing commission took away his license. His victory in Zaire made him only the second dethroned champ in history to regain his belt.
The “Rumble in the Jungle” (named by promoter Don King, who’d initially tagged the bout “From the Slave Ship to the Championship!” until Zaire’s president caught wind of the idea and ordered all the posters burned) was Africa’s first heavyweight championship match. The government of the West African republic staged the event—its president, Mobutu Sese Seko, personally paid each of the fighters $5 million simply for showing up—in hopes that it would draw the world’s attention to the country’s enormous beauty and vast reserves of natural resources. Ali agreed. “I wanted to establish a relationship between American blacks and Africans,” he wrote later. “The fight was about racial problems, Vietnam. All of that.” He added: “The Rumble in the Jungle was a fight that made the whole country more conscious.”
At 4:30 a.m. on October 30, 60,000 spectators gathered in the moonlight (organizers had timed the fight to overlap with prime time in the U.S.) at the outdoor Stade du 20 Mai to watch the fight. They were chanting “Ali, bomaye” (“Ali, kill him”). The ex-champ had been taunting Foreman for weeks, and the young boxer was eager to get going. When the bell rang, he began to pound Ali with his signature sledgehammer blows, but the older man simply backed himself up against the ropes and used his arms to block as many hits as he could. He was confident that he could wait Foreman out. (Ali’s trainer later called this strategy the “rope-a-dope,” because he was “a dope” for using it.)
By the fifth round, the youngster began to tire. His powerful punches became glances and taps. And in the eighth, like “a bee harassing a bear,” as one Times reporter wrote, Ali peeled himself off the ropes and unleashed a barrage of quick punches that seemed to bewilder the exhausted Foreman. A hard left and chopping right caused the champ’s weary legs to buckle, and he plopped down on the mat. The referee counted him out with just two seconds to go in the round.
Ali lost his title and regained it once more before retiring for good in 1981. He died in 2016. Foreman, meanwhile, retired in 1977 but kept training, and in 1987 he became the oldest heavyweight champ in the history of boxing. Today, the affable Foreman is a minister and rancher in Texas and the father of five daughters and five sons, all named George. He’s also the spokesman for the incredibly popular line of George Foreman indoor grills.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Upon hearing that vandals have desecrated a graveyard where her grandfather is buried, Sally recruits her boyfriend Jerry, her brother Franklyn, and her friends Pam and Kirk to investigate. On a side trip to the grandfather's deserted farm, the travellers pick up a slimy hitchhiker who cuts himself and slashes Franklyn. After arriving at the farm, Pam and Kirk search for an old swimming hole--Kirk hears a generator and believes he can find some gasoline. He enters the house hoping to find the owner. Unfortunately, this is the home of the hitchhiker, as well as Leatherface, who has some surprises for the travellers consisting of sledgehammers, chainsaws, and assorted cutlery.
A player who perhaps shouldn't have got away with the statement 'I'm off to the match this afternoon, darling' was Southport's Billy Holmes. Married in the morning of Saturday 30th October 1954 the afternoon saw him playing for Southport against Carlisle United in a Division 3 North fixture - and he scored a hat-trick in Southport's 4-1 victory.
Football On This Day – 30th October 1974
Don Revie managed England for the first time and goals from Mick Channon and Colin Bell (2) gave England an impressive 3-0 win over Czechoslovakia in a Euro qualifier at Wembley. Revie's England side didn't concede a goal in his first six matches in charge and were unbeaten in his first nine (including a 2-0 defeat of West Germany) but exactly a year on - 30th October 1975 - England lost for the first time during Revie's reign away to the Czechs in the return match. Czechoslovakia went on to win the qualifying group and then the tournament itself for the only time in its history.
Football On This Day – 30th October 2012
Arsenal were 4-0 down after just 37 minutes of a Capital One (League Cup) tie at Reading but the Arsenal fans weren't despondent and sang 'We're going to win 5-4'. But they were wrong - Arsenal won 7-5.
The Anglo-Scottish Cup: When Little England Met Big Scotland
By The Football History Boys - February 21, 2020
Chesterfield FC have fallen on difficult times in the last few years and are now part of the English non-league football scene. Despite this, many supporters of lower league UK football would say they still have the potential to be one of the biggest clubs outside the top two tiers of the English game. It might surprise many football fans, in Scotland in particular, to discover that the greatest day in the club’s history is still regarded by many of their supporters as the day they saw off Rangers in the final season of a now defunct cross-border tournament.
The Texaco Cup of the early 1970s was the first attempt to establish a ‘British Cup’ after frequent discussion concerning such a tournament becoming a permanent fixture in the football calendar. Calls were increased during the 1960’s when Celtic met Liverpool, Morton took on Chelsea [and lost heavily in the Fairs Cup] and Spurs and Wolves played Rangers. Adding weight to the arguement was the still popular Home Nations Championships in which Scotland v England proved an annual highlight.
When the petroleum giants pulled the plug on the cup, the competition continued as the Anglo-Scottish Cup which carried into 1980/1. The participation of Rangers in the last Anglo-Scottish Cup did add a bit of prestige to the tournament, although for the club itself the embarrassment of missing out on European qualification hardly made the competition attractive.
The start of the 1980/81 season promised so much though as the club embarked on a 15 match unbeaten run in the league, but a woeful display in the Anglo-Scottish Cup was just around the corner. Despite not immediately ruining the season, it certainly planted seeds of doubt regarding John Greig’s squad of the day.
It would be Chesterfield who would face the daunting task of tackling Rangers in the two-legged quarter final of the ‘80/1 Anglo-Scottish Cup. Even with Rangers in mind, confidence was flowing through manager Frank Barlow’s team. Before the first leg at Ibrox took place, the side was sitting proudly on top of the Third Division table.
A few hundred Chesterfield fans made the journey to Glasgow and witnessed a fine performance from their side, Phil Walker putting them in front direct from a corner, and although Rangers equalised through Gordon Dalziel, the tie was intriguingly poised ahead of the second leg at Saltergate.
Faced with the prospect of thousands of Rangers fans making the journey to Derbyshire, club officials and local police forces met in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the type of trouble that had seen a friendly match with Aston Villa abandoned in 1976. Pubs were closed in Chesterfield, alcohol was banned from coaches and supporters’ club trips were instructed to follow given routes into the town. Furthermore, 500 police were drafted in to cope with the arriving ‘Scottish hoards’ as they were described in the local Derbyshire press.
As an extra measure and as part of a PR exercise aimed at quelling any potential aggravation, Gers manager John Greig and some of his players met the fans before the match and gave away goodies. Come the end of the match it would be safe to assume that the 5,000 travelling Rangers fans would not have been quite so welcoming of Greig and his squad.
A crowd of 13,914 watched on as Gers reject Phil Bonnyman came back to haunt his old club. His two goals after 15 and 18 minutes, both from corners sent in by Chesterfield’s first leg scorer Walker, stunned the Scottish Premier Division high-flyers. During a first half, Chesterfield should have been awarded a penalty for the clearest handball imaginable, and also struck the bar.
When Ernie Moss added a third on 64 minutes, Rangers’ misery was almost complete, and a terrible evening was rounded off aptly when home goalie John Turner saved a McAdam penalty ten minutes later.
“Obviously we thought we could win,” commented Turner the morning after the night before. “I would have settled for 1-0. I’d have settled for no score and win on away goals. I’d have settled to just win the tie, but to win 3-0 is really out of this world.”
Chesterfield went onto win an all English final v Notts County and when I visited Chesterfield’s current Proact Stadium in 2017 ,there it was, the last Anglo Scottish Cup [which the club was allowed to keep] still taking pride of place in their trophy cabinet.
Comments
The owner of Leicester City FC died when his helicopter crashed outside the stadium, the club has confirmed.
Billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, two members of his staff, the pilot and a passenger were killed when the aircraft spiralled out of control and crashed in a fireball on Saturday.
It had just cleared the King Power Stadium when it came down at 20:30 BST.
A tragic end to Leicester's fairytale
Mr Vichai, 60, who was married and had four children, bought Leicester City for £39m in 2010.
Under his ownership the Foxes won the Premier League in 2016, having started the season as 5,000/1 outsiders.
In a statement, Leicester City said the club's thoughts were with "the Srivaddhanaprabha family and the families of all those on-board at this time of unspeakable loss".
Prince William, who is president of the FA, said Mr Vichai made a big contribution to football, adding that Leicester City's Premier League title-winning season "captured the imagination of the world".
"He will be missed by all fans of the sport and everyone lucky enough to have known him," he said.
Speaking outside the stadium, club ambassador Alan Birchenall said Leicester City owed "everything" to Mr Vichai.
"We wouldn't have won it [the Premier League] without him," he said. "We wouldn't have got near it without him.
The club described Mr Vichai as "a man of kindness, of generosity and a man whose life was defined by the love he devoted to his family and those he so successfully led".
"Leicester City was a family under his leadership. It is as a family that we will grieve his passing and maintain the pursuit of a vision for the club that is now his legacy," it added.
Kasabian band member and Foxes fan Serge Pizzorno called Mr Vichai "an unbelievable human being".
"It never felt like he acquired this club to then sell on after a few years," he said. "He bought into everything, bought into the city, supported everything around it.
"He made all our dreams come true."
The helicopter came down in a car park near the stadium just over an hour after Leicester had drawn 1-1 against West Ham United in the Premier League.
Freelance photographer Ryan Brown, who was covering the game, saw the helicopter clear the King Power Stadium before it crashed.
He told BBC Radio Leicester: "The engine stopped and I turned round and it made a bit of a whirring noise, like a grinding noise.
"The helicopter just went silent, I turned round and it was just spinning, out of control. And then there was a big bang and then a big fireball."
1959: The UK’s first radio carphone service
In October 1959, BT forebear the General Post Office introduced the service as a trial in the north of England.
The first ever UK call was made by Reginald Bevin MP, then the Postmaster General, between his car in south Lancashire and automobile mogul Lord Rootes in London. The first carphone service, known as System 1, could handle 320 customers upon launch.
This 1959 video from British Pathé explains how drivers within range of two VHF (very high frequencies) radio stations could make a call to the exchange, which could connect the call with a landline. Landline users could call the exchange and ask to be connected to a car registered with the service.
The technology wouldn’t make it to the capital until 1965 with the first call being made by Prime Minister Harold Wilson. This coincided with the installation of transmitters atop the brand new Post Office Tower.
A 24-year-old man has been jailed for life for killing five members of his family at their farmhouse in Essex.
Jeremy Bamber will now serve a minimum of 25 years for the murders of his step-parents, sister and her two six-year-old sons.
As the guilty verdict was delivered at Chelmsford Crown Court, Bamber slumped slightly but gave no further reaction.
Sentencing Bamber to five life prison terms, the judge Mr Justice Drake said he was "warped and evil beyond belief".
"I find it difficult to foresee whether it will ever be safe to release someone who can shoot two little boys as they lie asleep in their beds," he said.
The trial also highlighted failings on the part of Essex police. he judge commented on the fact Bamber had "so nearly got away with five murders".
The court heard how all five victims were shot by Bamber last August at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex.
He then placed the rifle and a bible on the chest of his sister Sheila Caffell to imply she had committed the murders before killing herself.
Detectives suspected Miss Caffell as she suffered from mild schizophrenia and had not been taking her medication.
However Mr Bamber's fingerprints were later found on the gun and his girlfriend, Julia Mugford, revealed he had talked about killing his parents.
Her mother Mary said: "We feel very sad about it all - knowing someone that well and knowing they are capable of such an act."
Outside the court Bamber's cousin David Boutflour said: "There are feelings of sadness and relief. No one wins, we all lose".
The motive for the murders is thought to have been financial. He was set to inherit £436,000 in what he thought was the perfect crime.
In Context
Bamber has always protested his innocence.
In July 2001 a team of police officers were given four months to complete fresh inquiries into the case.
It was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.
Bamber angered his surviving family in 2002 when he offered a £1m reward for any fresh information which would help him have his sentence quashed.
In December 2002 Bamber lost his appeal against his conviction for multiple murder.
In 2004 he lost a High Court action to recover £1.27m he claimed he should have received from his grandmother's will.
He also lost another High Court case to recover £326,000 of his family's caravan site firm.
The parliamentary battle to join the European Economic Community
Michael Cockerell
It was a Commons showdown that divided parties and defined political careers. As a young reporter, Michael Cockerell covered the story of Britain’s entry into the European Community. As MPs vote on the Agreement to leave Europe, he looks back on the parliamentary fight to take us in
Nearly half a century ago the Commons was obsessed and convulsed for a year by a whole series of meaningful votes on whether Britain should join the European Community. The passionately europhile Prime Minister Ted Heath had personally managed to persuade President Pompidou of France to rescind his nation’s veto on Britain’s entry. But Heath faced a monumental struggle to get the necessary legislation through Parliament.
He knew he couldn’t command a majority on Tory votes alone, as he was up against a fervent band of some forty anti-Europeans in his own party, led by Enoch Powell. Nor could the PM rely on Labour votes. Harold Wilson had reversed his party’s previous pro-Europe stance, to the dismay of the large body of Labour europhile MPs led by Roy Jenkins.
Parliament’s most mesmerising orator, Enoch Powell – once a keen European – was now Heath’s deadly enemy. In the Commons, Powell declaimed that the battle over Europe “is a life and death struggle for Britain’s independence and authority. A struggle as surely about the future of Britain’s nationhood as were the combats which raged in the skies over Southern England in the autumn of 1940. The gladiators are few, their weapons are but words: and yet the fight is everyman’s”.
As a young BBC television reporter, I followed the Parliamentary story of Britain’s entry into Europe and talked to the key players both at the time and subsequently.
The first big vote on the principle of joining Europe came in October 1971. It followed weeks of open and covert pressure by the party whips on both sides. Disinformation, bluff and counter-bluff were matched by what the Euro-historian, Uwe Kitzinger, described as “nose counting, arm twisting, weak knees and stiff upper lips”. As the great debate began, the galleries in the Commons were so crowded that one world-weary doorkeeper confided: “I haven’t seen it so full since we used to matter in the world.”
The debate lasted six days. Among the 176 MPs who spoke were the party leaders, including the debonair Jeremy Thorpe, as well as Jim Callaghan, Dennis Skinner, Tony Benn, Enoch Powell, and Jeffrey Archer.
In his speech, Harold Wilson declared that if he were returned to Number 10, “if the Community refused to renegotiate the Tory terms, we would sit down amicably and discuss the situation with them.” The House, crowded and tense, just laughed at him.
In his summing up speech Ted Heath said: “I do not think that any Prime Minister has stood at this box in time of peace and asked the House to take a positive decision of such importance as I am asking them to take tonight.”
The division was on a motion carefully framed by the government in consultation with the Jenkinsites to garner maximum possible support. It simply invited the House to “prove the government’s decision to join the Community on the basis of the arrangements that have been negotiated”.
While Labour imposed a three-line Whip instructing its MPs to vote against the government, Ted Heath, himself a former Chief Whip had been more cunning. He had eventually agreed with his own Chief Whip, Francis Pym, to have a free vote. This made it easier for Labour’s pro-European MPs to defy their own party. In the division sixty-nine of them did so, while thirty-nine Tory eurosceptics led by Enoch Powell voted against their government.
The Prime Minister had won by over a hundred – but that big margin was illusory. The real problem he faced was to pass the legislation he needed to turn the vote into law.
Wilson declared that the result was a one-off: he would allow no more voting in support of Heath. As he put it: “I cannot imagine a single Labour Member who, faced with this legislation, will not be in the lobbies against the government.”
Roy Jenkins and his fellow pro-Europeans were in a bind. They now felt, illogically, that having voted for the principle they could not vote for the enabling legislation. From now on they would grit their teeth and follow the official party line, arguing it was the government’s own responsibility to carry its business – or resign.
For their part, Powell and the antis were not downcast. They knew that there was still a very long way to go. And many of them were procedural specialists, who felt confident they could tie government in knots.
Meanwhile, Ted Heath and Francis Pym realised that they would need to deploy all the dark arts of whipping to deradicalise the Powellites. And they would need a number of Labour europhiles to support them or at least abstain.
By The Football History Boys - February 21, 2020
Chesterfield FC have fallen on difficult times in the last few years and are now part of the English non-league football scene. Despite this, many supporters of lower league UK football would say they still have the potential to be one of the biggest clubs outside the top two tiers of the English game. It might surprise many football fans, in Scotland in particular, to discover that the greatest day in the club’s history is still regarded by many of their supporters as the day they saw off Rangers in the final season of a now defunct cross-border tournament.
The Texaco Cup of the early 1970s was the first attempt to establish a ‘British Cup’ after frequent discussion concerning such a tournament becoming a permanent fixture in the football calendar. Calls were increased during the 1960’s when Celtic met Liverpool, Morton took on Chelsea [and lost heavily in the Fairs Cup] and Spurs and Wolves played Rangers. Adding weight to the arguement was the still popular Home Nations Championships in which Scotland v England proved an annual highlight.
When the petroleum giants pulled the plug on the cup, the competition continued as the Anglo-Scottish Cup which carried into 1980/1. The participation of Rangers in the last Anglo-Scottish Cup did add a bit of prestige to the tournament, although for the club itself the embarrassment of missing out on European qualification hardly made the competition attractive.
The start of the 1980/81 season promised so much though as the club embarked on a 15 match unbeaten run in the league, but a woeful display in the Anglo-Scottish Cup was just around the corner. Despite not immediately ruining the season, it certainly planted seeds of doubt regarding John Greig’s squad of the day.
It would be Chesterfield who would face the daunting task of tackling Rangers in the two-legged quarter final of the ‘80/1 Anglo-Scottish Cup. Even with Rangers in mind, confidence was flowing through manager Frank Barlow’s team. Before the first leg at Ibrox took place, the side was sitting proudly on top of the Third Division table.
A few hundred Chesterfield fans made the journey to Glasgow and witnessed a fine performance from their side, Phil Walker putting them in front direct from a corner, and although Rangers equalised through Gordon Dalziel, the tie was intriguingly poised ahead of the second leg at Saltergate.
Faced with the prospect of thousands of Rangers fans making the journey to Derbyshire, club officials and local police forces met in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the type of trouble that had seen a friendly match with Aston Villa abandoned in 1976. Pubs were closed in Chesterfield, alcohol was banned from coaches and supporters’ club trips were instructed to follow given routes into the town. Furthermore, 500 police were drafted in to cope with the arriving ‘Scottish hoards’ as they were described in the local Derbyshire press.
As an extra measure and as part of a PR exercise aimed at quelling any potential aggravation, Gers manager John Greig and some of his players met the fans before the match and gave away goodies. Come the end of the match it would be safe to assume that the 5,000 travelling Rangers fans would not have been quite so welcoming of Greig and his squad.
A crowd of 13,914 watched on as Gers reject Phil Bonnyman came back to haunt his old club. His two goals after 15 and 18 minutes, both from corners sent in by Chesterfield’s first leg scorer Walker, stunned the Scottish Premier Division high-flyers. During a first half, Chesterfield should have been awarded a penalty for the clearest handball imaginable, and also struck the bar.
When Ernie Moss added a third on 64 minutes, Rangers’ misery was almost complete, and a terrible evening was rounded off aptly when home goalie John Turner saved a McAdam penalty ten minutes later.
“Obviously we thought we could win,” commented Turner the morning after the night before. “I would have settled for 1-0. I’d have settled for no score and win on away goals. I’d have settled to just win the tie, but to win 3-0 is really out of this world.”
Chesterfield went onto win an all English final v Notts County and when I visited Chesterfield’s current Proact Stadium in 2017 ,there it was, the last Anglo Scottish Cup [which the club was allowed to keep] still taking pride of place in their trophy cabinet.
Blimey, The Texaco Cup, that takes me back.
Loving these posts @lucy4 , & I do hope you keep them coming.
The Statue of Liberty or in full Liberty Enlightening the World was first proposed by the French thinker Édouard René de Laboulaye as a gift from the French people to America and to commemorate the abolition of slavery.
Designed by the French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, construction began in 1870 with Gustave Eiffel designing and building the interior metal framework. The statue was completed in France before being disassembled and shipped to America in 1885. It was then reassembled on what was then called Bedloe Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbour and dedicated by President Grover Cleveland in 1886.
The statue depicts Liberty striding forward with a torch raised in her right hand, her left holds a tabula ansata with the date of the declaration of independence. Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus" composed to raise money for the statue was inscribed inside the pedestal in 1903 with its famous lines " "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,". The monument is now not only a symbol of Liberty but of the city of New York and America itself. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.
On this day, Oct. 28, in 1904, the St. Louis Police Department became the first U.S. police department to use fingerprinting.
For 30 years prior, law enforcement officials measured bony parts of the body to identify criminals.
But that system pretty much ended in 1903, when a man named Will West was sentenced to the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. It turned out there was already a prisoner named William West who had the same bone measurements.
The men were identified as the same person, until fingerprints were taken and prison officials discovered they were identical twins.
During the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, a British sergeant from Scotland Yard showed officials from Leavenworth and St. Louis new fingerprint techniques.
October 29, 1986 — At 11.15am on this day, Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Prime Minister at the time, cut a ribbon to open the final stretch of the London Orbital Motorway – the M25.
It was then the world’s longest ring road at 117 miles, had taken 11 years to complete at a cost of £1 billion and was, according to Mrs Thatcher, “a splendid achievement for Britain”.
Thousands of frustrated drivers would come to take a different view over the years. Its first traffic jam developed by 5.15pm on that opening day and delays have since become an almost daily occurrence.
A report in 2011 revealed that roadworks had caused the equivalent of 118 years in hold-ups over 18 months between junctions 16 and 23 alone. The longest traffic jam recorded was 37 miles on December 6, 1995.
Often labelled "the world's first circular car park", or ”the London Orbital car park”, in 1989 pop star Chris Rea put the frustrations of thousands to music when he recorded “The Road To ****”.
Not everyone thought so, though. Many people in the rural East of England had never seen a motorway and were fascinated. So much so that hundreds signed up for a guided coach tour of its lanes.
Today, the Automobile Association, which has offered help to drivers since 1905, says the question most frequently asked by motorists on its online route planner is: "How can I avoid the M25?"
But in those early days it was a tourist attraction – for the rural population, at least.
"It's mad when you think about it," an AA spokesman said recently. "Tourists would spend an afternoon looking at the delights of the road – and no doubt getting caught up in traffic.”
It didn't take long for the "mad" coach tours to be discontinued.
The idea of an orbital road around London was first mooted in 1905 – the same year that the AA was born.
It was intended not for cars, but horses and wagons. The route was to be lined with water troughs, and patrolled by emergency wheelwrights and farriers. Perhaps journey times would not have been much slower than today!
In the 1990 novel Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman spoke for thousands of drivers when they wrote: "Many phenomena – wars, plagues, sudden audits – have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of man.
”But whenever students of demonology get together, the M25 London Orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for Exhibit A.”
Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) was an English adventurer, writer and nobleman. After growing close to Elizabeth I during his time in the army, Raleigh was knighted in 1585 and became captain of the guard. During Elizabeth’s reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the ill-fated Roanoke settlement. He later drew the queen’s wrath and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After Elizabeth’s death in 1603, Raleigh was implicated as an enemy of her successor, James I, and given a death sentence. The sentence was commuted, and Raleigh was freed to lead an expedition to the New World, but its failure sealed his fate.
Sir Walter Raleigh was born in 1552 to Walter Raleigh and Catherine Champernowne. He was raised in a farmhouse near the village of East Budleigh in Devon, England. Raleigh studied at Oxford before serving in the Huguenot army in France (1569). A rival of the Earl of Essex for the queen’s favors, he served (1580) in Elizabeth’s army in Ireland, distinguishing himself by his ruthlessness at the siege of Smerwick and by the plantation of English and Scots Protestants in Munster. Elizabeth rewarded him with a large estate in Ireland, knighted him (1585) and gave him trade privileges and the right to colonize America.
In 1587, Raleigh explored North America from North Carolina to present-day Florida, naming the region Virginia in honor of Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.” In 1587 Raleigh sent an ill-fated second expedition of colonists to Roanoke.
In 1588 he took part in the victory over the Spanish Armada. He led other raids against Spanish possessions and returned with much booty. Raleigh forfeited Elizabeth’s favor by his courtship of and subsequent marriage to one of her maids-of-honor, Bessy Throckmorton, and he was committed to the Tower of London in 1592. Hoping, on his release, to recover his position, he led an abortive expedition to Guiana to search for El Dorado, a legendary land of gold. Instead, he helped to introduce the potato plant and tobacco use in England and Ireland.
James I Elizabeth’s successor, James I, distrusted and feared Raleigh, charged him with treason and condemned him to death, but commuted the sentence to imprisonment in the Tower in 1603. It was there that Raleigh lived with his wife and servants and wrote his History of the World (1614). Walter and Elizabeth (“Bessy”) Raleigh had three children: Carew Raleigh, Damerei Raleigh and Walter Raleigh.
Raleigh was released in 1616 to search for gold in South America. He invaded and pillaged Spanish territory at a time when James I was seeking peace with Spain, and was forced to return to England without booty. Raleigh was arrested on the orders of the king. His original death sentence for treason was invoked and he was executed at Westminster on October 29, 1618. He is buried in St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster.
A gifted poet, writer, and scholar, many of his poems and writings were destroyed. A pioneer of the Italian sonnet-form in English, he was a patron of the arts, notably of Edmund Spenser in his composition of The Faerie Queene (1589–96).
GREAT COURT RUN
The Great Court Run involves attempting to run around Great Court within the length of time that it takes the College clock to strike the hour of twelve, including the preparatory chiming of the four quarters and the two sets of twelve. (The clock strikes each hour twice.) The course is approximately 370 metres long. Depending upon the state of winding, the clock takes between about 43 and 44½ seconds. It is traditional for athletically-inclined members of Trinity to attempt the run every year at noon on the day of the Matriculation Dinner. The Great Court Run forms a central scene in the film Chariots of Fire (David Puttnam, 1981) (although it was not in fact filmed at Trinity).
In October 1988 the race was recreated for charity by Britain’s two foremost middle-distance runners at that time, Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram. The decathlete Daley Thompson was a reserve. Starting from under the clock-tower and running anti-clockwise, the runners restricted themselves to the customary course dictated by the the flagstones between the cobbles, and hence had to turn very sharply at each corner. Coe won, with his time of 46.0 seconds beating Cram’s of 46.3 seconds. Neither runner, however, beat the clock, which took 44.4 seconds.
On October 20th, 2007, Sam Dobin, a second year undergraduate reading Economics, made it round within the sound of the final chime, with a time of 42.7 seconds. The course taken by the runners of that year was slightly different to that of 1988, in that competitors ran on the cobbles as well as the flagstones.
While the internet may not have been possible without a million other monumental inventions that came before it, it’s hard to find any other invention that has had such a monumental impact on mankind. That’s why, since October 29, 2005, we’ve been celebrating the anniversary of the first internet transmission. It is a chance to celebrate the people who helped build the internet, while also giving us a moment to reflect on all the ways that it has changed our lives forever.
It All Began with Leonard Kleinrock
Leonard Kleinrock, the father of Internet Day, and IMP1Let’s go back to where it all started. The Internet, defined as a remote connection between two computers, was first achieved on October 29, 1969 (just a few months after Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon). In the glow of a green monochrome screen deep in the bowels of the computer science department at UCLA, a young graduate student picked up his phone and called the computer lab at Stanford. He is preparing to send the first message over an Internet connection. The men on either end of the phone are Charley Kline and Bill Duvall.
While not as famous as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren, Leonard Kleinrock, Charley Kline and Bill Duvall were the key players in the first Internet connection. Working on the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a network funded by the US Defense Department that connected four independent terminals installed at ULCA, Stanford, the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Utah, Charley Kline attempted to send login information from UCLA to Bill Duvall at Stanford.
It almost worked, too. Kleinrock attempted to send the word “login”, and he managed to send “L” and “O” before the connection between the terminals crashed.
“So I’m on the phone to SRI and I type the L and say, “OK I typed in L, you got that?” Bill Duvall, the guy at SRI, is watching his monitor and he has the L. I type the O. Got the O. Typed the G. “Wait a minute”, Bill says, “my system crashed. I’ll call you back”.
Still, the characters “L” and “O” were the first bits of data ever sent over the first long distance computer network. Under the supervision of UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock, Kline was able to send the complete “Login” message about an hour later.
1938 October 30.
Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” radio play is broadcast
“The War of the Worlds”—Orson Welles's realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth—is broadcast on the radio on October 30, 1938.
Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells’s 19th-century science fiction novel The War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of “The Shadow” in the hit mystery program of the same name. “War of the Worlds” was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of how legendary it would eventually become.
The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.”
Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy “Charlie McCarthy” on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.
Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to “the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.
Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. “Good heavens,” he declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here’s another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”
The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired “heat-ray” weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon “Martian cylinders” landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee.
The Federal Communications Commission investigated the unorthodox program but found no law was broken. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future. The broadcast helped Orson Welles land a contract with a Hollywood studio, and in 1941 he directed, wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane—a movie that many have called the greatest American film ever made.
1974 October 30.
Muhammad Ali wins the Rumble in the Jungle
On October 30, 1974, 32-year-old Muhammad Ali becomes the heavyweight champion of the world for the second time when he knocks out 25-year-old champ George Foreman in the eighth round of the “Rumble in the Jungle,” a match in Kinshasa, Zaire. Seven years before, Ali had lost his title when the government accused him of draft-dodging and the boxing commission took away his license. His victory in Zaire made him only the second dethroned champ in history to regain his belt.
The “Rumble in the Jungle” (named by promoter Don King, who’d initially tagged the bout “From the Slave Ship to the Championship!” until Zaire’s president caught wind of the idea and ordered all the posters burned) was Africa’s first heavyweight championship match. The government of the West African republic staged the event—its president, Mobutu Sese Seko, personally paid each of the fighters $5 million simply for showing up—in hopes that it would draw the world’s attention to the country’s enormous beauty and vast reserves of natural resources. Ali agreed. “I wanted to establish a relationship between American blacks and Africans,” he wrote later. “The fight was about racial problems, Vietnam. All of that.” He added: “The Rumble in the Jungle was a fight that made the whole country more conscious.”
At 4:30 a.m. on October 30, 60,000 spectators gathered in the moonlight (organizers had timed the fight to overlap with prime time in the U.S.) at the outdoor Stade du 20 Mai to watch the fight. They were chanting “Ali, bomaye” (“Ali, kill him”). The ex-champ had been taunting Foreman for weeks, and the young boxer was eager to get going. When the bell rang, he began to pound Ali with his signature sledgehammer blows, but the older man simply backed himself up against the ropes and used his arms to block as many hits as he could. He was confident that he could wait Foreman out. (Ali’s trainer later called this strategy the “rope-a-dope,” because he was “a dope” for using it.)
By the fifth round, the youngster began to tire. His powerful punches became glances and taps. And in the eighth, like “a bee harassing a bear,” as one Times reporter wrote, Ali peeled himself off the ropes and unleashed a barrage of quick punches that seemed to bewilder the exhausted Foreman. A hard left and chopping right caused the champ’s weary legs to buckle, and he plopped down on the mat. The referee counted him out with just two seconds to go in the round.
Ali lost his title and regained it once more before retiring for good in 1981. He died in 2016. Foreman, meanwhile, retired in 1977 but kept training, and in 1987 he became the oldest heavyweight champ in the history of boxing. Today, the affable Foreman is a minister and rancher in Texas and the father of five daughters and five sons, all named George. He’s also the spokesman for the incredibly popular line of George Foreman indoor grills.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Upon hearing that vandals have desecrated a graveyard where her grandfather is buried, Sally recruits her boyfriend Jerry, her brother Franklyn, and her friends Pam and Kirk to investigate. On a side trip to the grandfather's deserted farm, the travellers pick up a slimy hitchhiker who cuts himself and slashes Franklyn. After arriving at the farm, Pam and Kirk search for an old swimming hole--Kirk hears a generator and believes he can find some gasoline. He enters the house hoping to find the owner. Unfortunately, this is the home of the hitchhiker, as well as Leatherface, who has some surprises for the travellers consisting of sledgehammers, chainsaws, and assorted cutlery.
30th October
Football On This Day – 30th October 1954
A player who perhaps shouldn't have got away with the statement 'I'm off to the match this afternoon, darling' was Southport's Billy Holmes. Married in the morning of Saturday 30th October 1954 the afternoon saw him playing for Southport against Carlisle United in a Division 3 North fixture - and he scored a hat-trick in Southport's 4-1 victory.
Football On This Day – 30th October 1974
Don Revie managed England for the first time and goals from Mick Channon and Colin Bell (2) gave England an impressive 3-0 win over Czechoslovakia in a Euro qualifier at Wembley. Revie's England side didn't concede a goal in his first six matches in charge and were unbeaten in his first nine (including a 2-0 defeat of West Germany) but exactly a year on - 30th October 1975 - England lost for the first time during Revie's reign away to the Czechs in the return match. Czechoslovakia went on to win the qualifying group and then the tournament itself for the only time in its history.
Football On This Day – 30th October 2012
Arsenal were 4-0 down after just 37 minutes of a Capital One (League Cup) tie at Reading but the Arsenal fans weren't despondent and sang 'We're going to win 5-4'. But they were wrong - Arsenal won 7-5.