The French have a long association with nuclear research since the days of Marie Curie. In 1945 the French government created the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA) - the French Atomic Energy Commission - under the direction of the Nobel laureate Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Nevertheless, Joliot-Curie's communist sympathies resulted in him being removed from his position before the beginning of the nuclear power programme in the 1950s.
In 1956 a secret committee met to review the possible military applications for atomic energy. Work began on delivery systems for nuclear weapons, but another year passed before President René Coty authorised the creation of the Centre Saharien d'Expérimentations Militaires (C.S.E.M.) - a military research facility in what was then the French Sahara. In 1958 the newly installed President Charles de Gaulle gave the final authorisation for France to develop a nuclear bomb, only the fourth country to do so after the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.
At 7.04am on 12th February 1960 the scientists at C.S.E.M. conducted their first nuclear explosive test, codenamed Gerboise Bleue ("blue jerboa" - a jerboa is desert rodent). The scientists had mounted the pure fission plutonium implosion device on a 105 meter high tower near Reganne in the desert of Tanezrouf (now in Algeria). The resultant explosion was the most powerful first nuclear test by any nation with a yield of seventy kilotons. They conducted two other tests of much smaller devices in April and December of that year codenamed Gerboise Blanche and Gerboise Rouge - making up the three colours of the tricolore. In April 1961 the scientists detonated the final bomb in the programme, Gerboise Verte.
The first European to set foot on the Galápagos Islands was the fourth Bishop of Panama, the Dominican Fray Tomás de Berlanga. In order to settle a territorial dispute between the conquistadors Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, Berlanga sailed to Peru but strong winds blew his ship off course. He arrived at the islands on 10th March 10 1535 before continuing his journey.
For over two centuries from Richard Hawkin's visit to the islands in 1593, the English pirates and privateers that preyed on Spanish bullion ships and settlements often used the archipelago to evade attack. One such privateer, Woodes Rogers, stopped at the islands to make repairs after having rescued the castaway Alexander Selkirk, who inspired Daniel Defoe's character Robinson Crusoe. The islands attracted a wide range of naturalists including the Italian nobleman Alessandro Malaspina, James Colnett and famously Charles Darwin.
On 12th February 1832, the newly independent Ecuador annexed the islands calling them the Archipelago of Ecuador. The islands initially served as a penal colony governed by General José de Villamil, who sent an exploratory commission there in the previous October. He then set up the Colonising society of the Archipelago of the Galápagos to exploit the lichens that grew there, which served as a dye. Artisans and farmers soon joined the convicts to colonise the islands.
Nelson Mandela was born on 18th July 1918 in a small village called Mvezo, near Umtata the capital of the Transkei. His father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a member of the Thembu royal family and chief of Mvezo until the colonial authorities removed him following an argument with a European. The family moved to Qunu where Mphakanyiswa died when Nelson was only nine years old.
The regent of the Thembu, Jongintaba, became Mandela's guardian, sending him to a Wesleyan mission school where he was a gifted pupil. Mandela attended a Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort before enrolling at Fort Hare University, where he became involved in student politics. His involvement in agitation against university policy resulted in him being expelled.
To escape from an arranged marriage, Mandela moved to Johannesburg with Jongintaba, the regent's son. He eventually found employment with a legal firm and completed a BA by correspondence with the University of South Africa. He then began to law at the University of Witwatersand where he first met many people who would later be part of the anti-apartheid movement.
Following the 1948 election victory of the National Party cemented the apartheid policy, Mandela became a political activist. In December 1956 the South African authorities arrested Mandela along with 150 others on charges of treason. A five year trial followed, during which all defendants received acquittals.
To begin with Mandela was committed to the principles of non-violent resistance made famous by Mahatma Gandhi, but in response to an increase in state repression, he co-founded and became leader of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"). The group engaged in bombing campaigns against government and military buildings, while not harming any people. Mandela coordinated these campaigns and travelled abroad to raise funds for the group.
On 5th August 1962, the security police followed a CIA tip-off and arrested Mandela. He faced charges of inciting workers to strike and travelling abroad illegally for which he was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment. Following the arrest of many leaders of the ANC in 1963, Mandela faced trial again on charges of sabotage and other treasonous activities. Found guilty he escaped the death penalty, but received a sentence of life imprisonment.
Robben Island became Mandela's home for eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison. While there he engaged in hard labour in a lime quarry and also received a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of London after studying by correspondence. Meanwhile he became a cause célèbre as international opinion turned against the South African government and their segregationist policies.
In 1982, the authorities relocated Mandela and the other ANC leaders to Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town. Three years later Mandela met with a representative of the National Party government at the Volks Hospital in Cape Town where he was undergoing treatment on his prostate. Nevertheless, no progress was made until Frederik Willem de Klerk became president in August 1989.
The following February de Clerk lifted the ban on the ANC and the other anti-apartheid organisations and announced the imminent release of Nelson Mandela. On 11th February 1990, millions of television viewers watched Nelson Mandela leave Victor Verster Prison in Paarl as a free man. He resumed his role as a leader of the ANC taking part in the four years of negotiations with the government.
In recognition of the attempts at peace and reconciliation the Nobel prize committee awarded Mandela and de Clerk with the Peace Prize in 1993. A year later the first South African multi-racial elections took place. The ANC received 62% of the vote and Mandela became the first black president of South Africa. He remained in office for five years becoming a world statesman, a position he still holds.
In 1756, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria formed a new alliance with Russia and France in order to recover territories lost to Prussia during the War of Austrian Succession, particularly Silesia. Meanwhile, the British no longer felt that the Austrians could contain French power in Europe. So rather than remain allied with the Austrians they signed a pact with King Frederick II of Prussia in return for his protection of Hanover - the ancestral home of the British royal dynasty - from French aggression.
Hostilities began when Frederick invaded Saxony, which was allied with the Austrians. The Austrians and their allies - France, Russia, Sardinia, Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire - declared war on Prussia, their German allies and Great Britain. While the Prussian army, which was the most formidable in Europe at that time, fought the Austrian alliance on land, the powerful British navy engaged the allies at sea.
To check British naval power in the Mediterranean, the French captured the British owned island of Minorca. War soon spread around the globe as British and French colonists fought in Africa, Asia and particularly in North America where they had been skirmishing for years. The deployment of British land forces to their colonies resulted in them making substantial gains at the expense of the French expanding their empire around the world.
In Europe, Portugal entered the fray on the side of the British and Prussians, and Spain joined the Austrian alliance. A series of Prussian defeats brought Frederick to the brink of disaster, especially when the British threatened to withdraw their financial aid. Fortunately for him, in 1762 the Russian Empress Elizabeth died. Her successor, Peter III , who was more friendly to the Prussians immediately withdrew his troops from the war and helped negotiate a peace between Frederick and the Swedes. Having lost an important ally and facing a reverse of fortunes on the battlefield, the Austrians had little choice but to negotiate a peace.
War weariness in Britain contributed to King George III's removal of the Duke of Newcastle's government and the resultant peace negotiations with France. On 10th February 1763, representatives of France, Great Britain, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the conflict that is known as the Seven Years War in Europe, and the French and Indian War in America. The Treaty required a complex exchange of territories between the powers. The French had the choice of keeping either New France (Canada) or Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. They chose to keep the latter as a supply of sugar, but they also had to return Minorca to the British. The British also gained Florida from the Spanish, who received New Orleans and the western part of Louisiana from the French.
The text of the "Treaty of Paris (1763)" is available on the Yale Law School's Avalon Project web site.
With long-distance commercial air travel becoming more popular the President of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), Juan Trippe, urged Boeing to build a much larger passenger aircraft to replace the successful 707 and alleviate traffic congestion at airports. In 1965 Boeing engineer Joe Sutter took control of a development team, which liaised with Pan Am and other airlines to design an aircraft that would meet their requirements. The result was the 747, an aircraft that could be easily adapted to become a freight carrier when the expected supersonic air travel revolution took place.
In April 1966, Pan Am became the first of twenty-six airlines to pre-order 747s, which Boeing undertook to start delivering be the end of the decade. Pan Am again partnered Boeing along with Pratt and Whitney in the design of a new turbofan engine that would produce enough power for the enormous airliner. In spite of the limited development time, the first prototype 747 rolled out of Boeing's purpose-built assembly plant at Paine Field near Everett, Washington, on 30th September 1968.
On 9th February 1969, the first air-worthy prototype called City of Everett made its maiden flight. The flight crew comprised test pilots Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle, and flight engineer Jess Wallick. Apart from a minor fault with one of the flaps the crew reported that the aircraft handled extremely well in flight.
Flight tests continued for the next few months during which time the engineers ironed out any problems, particularly with the engines. On 15th January 1970 Pan Am took possession of the first production 747s that entered service between New York and London a week later. Over the next forty years development continued on the 747 with Boeing manufacturing a number of variants for carrying cargo as well as passengers, including the President of the United States, and even giving a piggy-back to the prototype Space Shuttle.
On the night of 8th/9th February 1855, a series of mysterious footprints appeared in freshly fallen snow. The Times of February 16th reported the 'Extraordinary Occurrence' in the following article:
Considerable sensation has been caused in the towns of Topham, Lympstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and Dawlish, in the south of Devon, in the consequence of the discovery of a vast number of foot-tracks of a most strange and mysterious description. The superstitious go so far as to believe that they are the marks of Satan himself; and that great excitement has been produced among all classes may be judged of from the fact that the subject has been descanted on from the pulpit. It appears that, on Thursday night last, there was a very heavy fall of snow in the neighbourhood of Exeter and the south of Devon. On the following morning the inhabitants of the above towns were surprised at discovering the foot-marks of some strange and mysterious animal, endowed with the power of ubiquity, as the footprints were to be seen in all kinds of unaccountable places - on the tops of houses and narrow walls, in gardens and courtyards, enclosed by high walls and palings, as well as in open fields. There was hardly a garden in Lympstone where these footprints were not observable. The track appeared more like that of a biped than a quadruped, and the steps were generally eight inches in advance of each other. The impression of the foot closely resembled that of a donkey's shoe, and measured from an inch and a half to (in some instances) two and a half inches across. Here and there it appears as if cloven, but in the generality of the steps the shoe was continuous, and from the snow in the centre remaining entire, merely showing the outer crest of the foot, it must have been convex. The creature seems to have approached the doors of several houses and then to have retreated, but no one has been able to discover the standing or resting point of the mysterious visitor. On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Musgrave alluded to the subject in his sermon, and suggested the possibility of the footprints being those of a kangaroo; but this could scarcely have been the case, as they were found on both sides of the estuary of the Exe. At present it remains a mystery, and many superstitious people in the above towns are actually afraid to go outside of their doors after night. The Times (16th February 1855), p. 8.
In August 1770 the English mariner and explorer James Cook (then a lieutenant) took possession of the eastern coast of Australia in the name of King George III, naming it New South Wales. Apart from a flag planted by Cook on Possession Island in the Torres Straight there was little evidence of the British claim over eastern Australia until the arrival of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip. The Home Secretary, Lord Sydney, had charged Phillip with the governorship of a new penal colony to be established at Botany Bay. The fleet of eleven ships set sail in May 1787 carrying 772 convicts (both men and women), most of whom were petty thieves from London, and a small contingent of marines and naval officers.
Reaching Botany Bay in January 1788, Philip found it to be inadequate for his purposes and decided to land the troops and convicts at Sydney Cove, which he named after the Home Secretary, on the southern shore of Port Jackson. On 7th February 1788 Philip assumed the title of Governor of New South Wales formally founding the first British settlement in Australia. Eight days later he established the first colony at Port Jackson and soon after sent a small detachment of men to create a second colony at Norfolk Island both as an alternative food source and to prevent the French from taking possession of it.
Life in the colonies was harsh and chaotic at first. The marines were often nearly as ill-disciplined as the convicts and Philip soon began appointing some convicts as overseers who forced the others to work. The Governor also established friendly relations with the local indigenous population, the Cadigal, who were nevertheless ravaged by diseases the British had brought.
Within a couple of years Philip managed to create a stable settlement with a population of around two thousand. One convict called James Ruse asked for land to establish a farm. When Ruse made a success of an allotment Philip granted him ownership of thirty acres of land inspiring other convicts to follow suit.
Largely forgotten by Britain, Philip continued to administer the colony until ill-health forced him to request permission to return home. He received permission to do so and set sail in December 1792. He left behind him a successful settlement of over four-thousand people.
From its first broadcasts, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) included a time check before their evening news bulletins taking the form of the chimes of Big Ben being played originally on a piano and later on tubular bells. The research department at Marconi suggested that a time signal under the control of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich might be broadcast but the BBC chose to use synchronised clocks. During a radio broadcast in April 1923 the horologist Frank Hope-Jones again mooted the idea of the BBC broadcasting a more accurate time signal in the form of a series of 'pips.' In December 1923, the General Manager of the BBC, Lord Reith, and the Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, agreed on a plan to modify two clocks at the Royal Observatory to produce a signal that the BBC could broadcast.
The system produced a series of six short five seconds before the end of the hour with the last one generated on the stroke of the hour or half-hour. GPO phone cables carried this signal to the BBC where it was converted to an audible signal. At 9.30pm on 5th February 1924 the BBC broadcast the first Greenwich Time Signal, soon to be known as 'the pips,' following an introduction from the Astronomer Royal.
In June 1934, Walt Disney announced the production of his studio's first feature length animation: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Previously the Disney studio had released short films such as those in the Mickey Mouse series. Disney's family tried to dissuade him from the venture, while other industry insiders referred to the moving picture as "Disney's Folly."
Production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had begun earlier that year with a team of writers adapting the original story written by the Brothers Grimm. Frank Churchill (music) and Larry Morey (lyrics) wrote the songs for the movie, while Paul J. Smith and Leigh Harline scored the incidental music. David Hand headed the directorial team having worked for Disney studios since 1930, first as an animator and later as animation director.
Disney chose Adriana Caselotti to play the role of Snow White, then later blacklisted the singer from appearing elsewhere so as not to spoil the magic of Snow White. Lucille La Verne voiced the Queen, eventually doing so without her false teeth to get the voice just right. The voice of Goofy, Pinto Colvig, provided the voices of two of the dwarfs: Grumpy and Sleepy.
Production took three years with costs spiralling from Disney's original budget of $250,000 (ten times more than his animated shorts cost) to nigh on $1,500,000. To continue funding production Disney had to mortgage his own home. Eventually, on 21st December 21 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premièred at the Carthay Circle Theater, Los Angeles to a rapturous reception.
On 4th February 1938 the movie went on general release grossing $66,596,803, a record amount. Snow White was the first full length animated feature requiring the development of many new techniques for which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Disney with a special Oscar (and seven smaller ones). Snow White was also the first American movie to have a soundtrack album released simultaneously.
On 3rd February 1690, the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature issued $40,000 worth of Bills of Credit. The British King authorised the Massachusetts General Court to issue these promissory notes to pay the army it had raised to fight against the French in Canada during King William's War, since it was short of official coinage at that time. Recipients of the notes could later redeem them for coins to the value of the issued note.
Each note read:
This indented Bill of [...] Shillings due from the Massachusetts Colony to the Possessor shall be in value equal to money and shall be accordingly accepted by the Treasurer and Receiver Subordinates to him in all Public payments and for any stock at any time in the Treasury - New England, February the third, 1690. By order of the General Court.
The notes proved a great success, soon entering general circulation.
The legislators spotted the potential of paper money and started issuing more notes not only during emergencies but also to cover the cost of general administration. The other New England colonies soon followed suit, issuing their own banknotes with mixed results. A shortage of gold and silver meant that the notes were rarely redeemed; yet, the authorities continued to print more notes resulting in their devaluation.
In 1962, the United Kingdom granted Independence to Uganda. That same year, a former Lieutenant in the King's Africa Rifles, Idi Amin Dada, became a captain in the newly formed Ugandan army. Amin became the protege of the then Prime Minister, Milton Obote, who quickly promoted Amin through the ranks.
In 1965, Obote made Amin a Commander of the Army, but the following year the Ugandan Parliament demanded an investigation into two men's involvement in an alleged operation to smuggle gold and ivory into Zaire. In response Obote declared himself president and set about crushing any opposition.
In 1966, Amin led an attack against Mutesa, Kabaka (king) of Buganda, who had previously been the ceremonial president of Uganda. Mutesa fled into exile, allowing Obote to cement his rule. The following year, Parliament passed a new constitution creating an executive presidency.
Over the next few years, relations between Obote and Amin became strained to such a degree that on 25th January 1971 Amin took the opportunity to seize power while Obote was attending a Commonwealth summit meeting in Singapore. Amin believed that Obote was planning to have him arrested for misappropriation of army funds. The military coup received widespread popular support, not least because he promised to lead a caretaker government until elections were held.
As it was, on 2nd February, Amin declared himself President of Uganda. His regime became notorious for its corruption and murderous repression of any perceived opposition. He also threatened neighbouring countries by building up his military forces.
In late 1978, Amin ordered the invasion of Tanzania to attack mutinous Ugandan troops, who had fled over the border. The following January, Tanzanian fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giforces counterattacked along with Uganhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdan opposition forces. Amin's forces retreated resulting in him going into exile from 11th April 1979 until his death on 16th August 2003.
On 1st February 1884 the Oxford University Press (OUP) published the first part of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society. The 352 page fascicle had 352 pages containing words from A to Ant, costing 12s.6d. Over the next forty-four years 125 fascicles were published to form the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
The dictionary originated in June 1857 when three members of the Philological Society - Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, and Richard Chenevix Trench - formed an Unregistered Words Committee to identify words missing from existing dictionaries. The following year the society decided to produce a comprehensive dictionary of English words, based on quotations taken from printed works. The society allocated books to volunteers who would produce quotation slips that illustrated the usage of particular words.
Coleridge became the first editor in 1860. When he died the following year, he had received around 100,000 quotation slips. Furnivall took over as editor before recruiting James Murray as his successor in 1879. Furnivall and Murray met with a number of publishers before finally securing an agreement with the OUP in 1879, which published the first fascicle five years later.
In 1895, the title Oxford English Dictionary first appeared on the outer covers of the fascicles. Following the publication of the final fascicle on 19th April 1928, the OUP published the entire Dictionary in bound volumes. The OUP published a second edition in 1989, and is currently working on a third.
To learn more, visit the Dictionary's web pages, which include a History of the OED.
In the 1910s and 1920s the urban sprawl around Glasgow, including the towns Clydebank, Greenock, and Paisley were centres of working class radicalism. This era, known as 'Red Clydeside' involved strikes and other forms of labour unrest as well as opposition to the First World War and rent strikes. After the end of the war the Clydeside trades unions organised a campaign for the reduction of the working week to forty hours from fifty-four to improve conditions and create jobs for the returning troops who swelled the ranks of the unemployed.
The Scottish Trade Union Congress and the Clyde Workers' Committee called a strike and organised a large rally on 31st January 1919 in George Square, Glasgow. A crowd of between sixty- and ninety-thousand gathered to hear the result of a meeting between of strike leaders and the Lord Provost. During the meeting scuffles broke out between the strikers and the police. Various causes have been attributed to the outbreak of violence including an unprovoked baton charge by the police, and the continued use of trams through the square during the meeting.
Whatever the cause, the delegation themselves became caught up in the pitched battles when they left the meeting to attempt to calm the strikers. Police attacks on the crowd, which included women and children, were met with the retaliation of strikers and their improvised weaponry that included stones, bottle and iron railings. Running battles continued for hours through central Glasgow in what became known as 'Bloody Friday.'
In the aftermath, not only did the authorities arrest the leaders of the strike, but they also sent around 10,000 English soldiers to Glasgow along with a number of tanks. The authorities confined Scottish troops to their barracks for fear that they may join their fellow Scots in open revolt. Since it was only fourteen months since the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the Coalition government may have feared that a similar insurrection was in the offing.
Tanks and soldiers in Saltmarket area of Glasgow
Ten days after the riot, the strike leaders called off the action after securing a 47-hour week. Those who the police took into custody faced trial at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, which found them guilty. Manny Shinwell, William Gallacher and David Kirkwood each served several months in prison with each later being elected as Members of Parliament.
The German engine designer and automobile engineer Karl Benz was born on 25th November 1844 in Karlsruhe, Baden, to Josephine Vaillant. A few months after he was born, his mother married his father, a locomotive driver named Johann George Benz, who died in a railway accident when Karl was only two years old. The death left the family in financial difficulty, but Josephine managed to provide her son with a quality education.
Karl was an excellent student, attending the local grammar school and technical college before gaining a place at the city's university to study mechanical engineering at the age of fifteen. He graduated in 1864 at the age of nineteen and spent the next seven years moving between jobs where he received professional training. In 1871 Benz opened a mechanical workshop in Mannheim with August Ritter.
Ritter turned out to be a liability. The business only survived when Benz's fiancée, Bertha Ringer, used her dowry to buy Ritter's shares. The business continued to struggle financially, so from 1878 Benz started working on patenting various innovations in engine design, including the two stroke engine, an ignition system using sparks from a battery, spark plugs, the carburettor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator. Nevertheless, the high production costs of Benz's Gas Factory resulted in the local banks demanding that his business become incorporated.
The creation of the joint-stock company Gasmotoren Fabrik Mannheim in 1882 left Benz with only five per cent of the shares in the business. He also became marginalised when it came to designing new products. Dissatisfied, a year later he left the company that he had built to enter into a partnership with the owners of a bicycle repair business, Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger.
The company called Benz & Company Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik produced a successful range of industrial machines and quickly expanded. The success of the business enabled Benz to start developing his ideas for a horseless carriage that he had been considering since his youth. In 1885 he produced the Benz Patent Motorwagen. A three wheeled vehicle powered by a 0.8hp four-stroke engine with a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph).
On 29th January 1886, Benz patented his Motorwagen. Over the next few years Benz tested his design on public roads, refined his design and produced two more models of his Motorwagen, which he made available for sale to the public. In 1888 he made his first sales, including one to the Paris-based bicycle manufacturer Emile Roger. Roger had previously produced Benz's engines under license, now he also started manufacturing the automobiles and selling them to Parisians.
Benz continued to produce innovative designs of motor vehicles. In 1894 he produced the Velo, which many regard as the first production automobile and a year later he designed the first truck. He died in 1929 at the age of eighty-four as one of the key figures in the development of the automobile industry.
In 1493, Christopher Columbus led the first European exploration of the islands located where the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. He named each of the islands of the Lesser Antilles including one which he dubbed San Jorge ("Saint George"). Later explorers misinterpreted Columbus' charts and the island became known as San Cristobal ("Saint Christopher") or, more commonly, Saint Kitts.
In the sixteenth century, French Huguenots refugees founded a colony on the island, naming it after their home-town: Dieppe. Only months after its establishment, the Spanish raided the settlement and deported all its inhabitants. The next attempt to colonise the island did not occur until the next century with the arrival of the English under Thomas Warner.
Warner was the son of a Suffolk landowner and former captain in the bodyguard of King James I and lieutenant of the Tower of London. In 1620 he set off with Captain Roger North to help found a colony in Guiana, but James revoked their charter and recalled North, to placate the Spanish, leaving the colonists to fend for themselves. In the meantime, Warner had met Thomas Painton who suggested that he found a colony on St Kitts or another of the smaller Caribbean islands.
Warner returned to England to find support for this venture. In 1623 he set off with his family and fourteen other colonists for Virginia, from where they sailed for the Lesser Antilles. The group arrived on St Kitts on 28th January 1624. Undaunted by initial setbacks - a hurricane destroyed their first tobacco crop and many of their houses - the settlement grew and in September 1625, Warner transported their first tobacco crop back to England. While in England, Warner received letter patent from James' recognising the colony and giving it Royal protection. Warner also received the title of lieutenant of St Kitts (or 'Merwar's Hope' as it was called in the document, referring to himself and one of the major investors, the London merchant Ralph Merifield), Nevis, Barbados, and Montserrat.
He secured more investment and returned to the colony with around one-hundred more settlers and sixty slaves. When he arrived he found that the French had also established a colony on the island. The colonists had welcomed the French probably because they offered mutual protection against the local Carib population should they attack.
As it was, the Europeans made a pre-emptive strike against the Caribs, killing their King, taking a number of the women as slaves, and driving the rest of the survivors from the island. In 1627, the English and French then concluded a treaty formalising their mutual protection pact against both the Caribs and the Spanish. The terms of the treaty also divided the island between the two groups, with the English taking the territory middle and the French occupying either end.
At the end of the Second World War, France reoccupied the territories known as French Indochina that had been captured by the Japanese. The French forces quickly came into conflict with the Việt Minh, a communist national liberation movement, which had fought against the Japanese occupation. This First Indochina War resulted in the defeat of France and the provisional partition of the country into communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam in 1954.
The partition did not satisfy the communists, particularly those in the South, who started an insurgency there in 1959. The actions of the insurgents, known as the National Liberation Front (NLF) or Việt Cộng, escalated into war between the two states, in which the other countries soon became embroiled, particularly the United States. Successive U.S. administrations escalated military operations in Vietnam in order to curb the spread of communism.
During the 1960s, opposition to the war in the United States grew, culminating in the relative success of Eugene McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign on an anti-war ticket. In May of that year, the belligerent parties met in Paris to begin peace talks. These talks stalled as soon as they began with arguments about the shape of the conference table, and NLF refusal to recognise the legitimacy of the South Vietnam government, who in turn refused to accept the presence of NLF negotiators.
The table problem was solved by delegates from the North and South sitting at a round table, while all other parties sat at square tables around them, and the issue of NLF and South Vietnamese negotiators was solved by them joining the North Vietnamese and U.S. delegations respectively. Nevertheless, no agreement was reached and the war continued.
While negotiations rumbled on in Paris, in 1969, secret negotiations began between the U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's chief negotiator Lê Ðức Thọ, who insisted that the U.S. remove the South Vietnamese President, Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, from power. This remained a stumbling block to negotiations until 1972 when North Vietnamese concerns about their lack of military success and the détente that President Nixon had achieved with the U.S.S.R and the People's Republic of China forced them to compromise. Within days both parties drew up a draft agreement of a final settlement.
When informed of the secret negotiations, Nguyễn Văn Thiệu responded angrily to Kissinger and Nixon, refusing to agree to the settlement unless significant changes were made. The U.S. wanted a speedy withdrawal of American forces and applied substantial diplomatic pressure to the South Vietnamese, who had little choice but to accede. The agreement resulted in the suspension of U.S. offensive military action in Vietnam.
On 27th January 1973, the leaders of the official delegations met at the Majestic Hotel in Paris to sign the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. Later that year Kissinger and Thọ jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize for their roles in bringing peace to the region. In spite of the agreement, both sides violated the peace accord and within two years the North Vietnamese captured the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon.
On 26th January 1905, Frederick Wells noticed something catching the light of the setting sun while making a routine inspection of the Premier Mine in the Transvaal Colony, South Africa where he worked as a superintendent. He climbed up the side of the mineshaft and removed what appeared to be a diamond crystal of such a size that he initially suspected that it was piece of glass. It turned out to be the largest gem-quality diamond ever discovered.
The 3,106.75 carat crystal weighed just over 621 grammes (roughly 1.4 pounds). It became known as the Cullinan Diamond, after the owner of the mine, Sir Thomas Cullinan, who sold it to the Transvaal Government. They presented it to the British King, Edward VII, to mark his 66th birthday on 9th November 1907.
In order that the diamond be transported safely from South Africa to Britain, a team of British detectives travelled on the steamer that - rumour had it - would carry the stone. The 'diamond' on the ship was actually a fake. The real diamond was sent to London by parcel post in a plain package.
Asscher Brothers of Amsterdam received the contract to finish the rough diamond. Joseph Asscher's first attempt to cleave the crystal failed when the steel blade broke leaving the stone undamaged. He succeeded on his second attempt cutting the diamond into two pieces as planned.
The nine largest pieces of the Cullinan Diamond
In all Asscher cut nine major gems and 96 smaller brilliants from the Cullinan Diamond. The largest of these became part of the British Crown Jewels: Cullinan I (530.2 carats), or the Great Star of Africa, is mounted on the Sceptre with the Cross; Cullinan II (317.4 carats), known as the Lesser Star of Africa, is part of the Imperial State Crown; Cullinan III (94.40 carats) is in the finial of Queen Mary's Crown. The other major gems became dress jewellery worn by members of the Royal Family.
The parliamentary constituencies of eighteenth century Britain had a variety of ways of electing their Members of Parliament. The Westminster constituency in London was of the 'Scot and Lot' type where those adult males paying a form of local property tax could vote for the constituency's two MPs. In the city of Bath only the twenty or so members of the Corporation could vote for the city's two MPs. Meanwhile, some northern towns had no representation at all.
In the latter half of the century a number of people called for reform of the electoral system to make it more uniform and more representative, but all these attempts failed. On 25th January 1792 a shoemaker called Thomas Hardy held a meeting at The Bell tavern on Exeter Street, near the Strand, where he and a group of eight other men formed the London Corresponding Society (LCS). Their aim was parliamentary reform, especially the extension of the franchise to include all men.
In spite of its humble beginnings the LCS quickly grew and by May that year the Society had nine divisions, each with at least thirty members paying the penny a week subscription. The LCS leadership formed fraternal bonds with other working-men's societies with whom they shared common aims, including those in Sheffield and Norwich. They also cultivated links with predominantly middle-class reformers such as the Society for Constitutional Information.
As the French Revolution became increasingly radical and following the declaration of war by the French against Britain in 1793 many Britons became fearful of revolution spreading across the Channel. The LCS became the target of government investigation and attacks from loyalist societies and 'Church and King' mobs. In May 1794 the authorities arrested the leaders of the LCS and other reform organisations. Later that year, Hardy, John Horne Tooke and John Thelwall stood trial on charges of treason, but the jury acquitted them through lack of evidence.
Official repression of working class reform movements did not stop there. That same year the government suspended Habeas Corpus, enabling detention without trial. Five years later in 1799 Parliament passed the Corresponding Societies Act, making the LCS an illegal organisation, effectively bringing it to an end. Nevertheless, calls for reform of parliament continued in the eighteenth century culminating in the Chartist movement and the Great Reform Act of 1832, which Hardy lived just long enough to witness as he died later that same year.
In April 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple to market their first personal computer, the Apple I, in kit form. A little after a year later Wozniak and Jobs introduced the ground-breaking Apple II, Wayne having sold his stake to his co-founders when they incorporated the company. In 1980, the Apple III went on sale, but it was not a great commercial success.
By that time, an Apple employee called Jeff Raskin had begun developing a cheap personal computer called the Macintosh (named after his favourite apple, the McIntosh). In 1979, a number of Apple employees including Raskin and Jobs visited Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, where they saw a Xerox Alto computer. The Alto ran an innovative graphical user interface (GUI) controlled by a new device called a mouse, alongside the traditional keyboard.
Apple began developing their own GUI to run not only on the Macintosh, but also on a business machine that they had in development called the Lisa. Jobs initially headed up the Lisa project, but soon realised that the Macintosh was a better commercial prospect. In 1981, a personality conflict between Raskin and Jobs resulted in Raskin departing the Macintosh project team, which was taken over in 1982 by Jobs following him being forced out of the Lisa team.
On 24th January 1984, the Apple Macintosh went on sale for $2,495. It had a 8Mhz Motorola 68000 processor and 128KB of RAM (boosted by a 64KB ROM chip). The built in 9-inch black and white screen had a resolution of 512x342 pixels. A 3.5-inch floppy drive was included with which software was loaded and files could be saved.
Two days prior to the Macintosh going on sale, an Orwellian themed advertisement for the Macintosh was shown during Super Bowl XVIII. This now famous advert was directed by Ridley Scott and cost in the region of $1.5 million. Whether due to this advertisement or not, the Macintosh proved an immediate success, selling over 70,000 units within four months.
The Princely family of Liechtenstein took their name from a castle in Austria that they owned in the twelfth- and thirteenth-centuries (the name means "bright stone"). This wealthy dynasty acquired lands across the Holy Roman Empire, but they only held these territories as fiefdoms under superior feudal nobles, to whom they often acted as close advisers. The Third Prince, Hans-Adam I, occasionally worked for the Imperial Court as a financial advisor when he wasn't acquiring a substantial fortune for himself.
Hans-Adam used his fortune to fulfil a dynastic ambition: to hold lands directly under the Imperial throne and thus gain the power associated with a seat in the Imperial diet, called the Reichstag. He purchased the domain of Schellenberg in 1699 and the county of Vaduz thirteen years later just before he died. On 23rd January 1719 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV decreed that the two lands were united as a Fürstentum ("principality") with the name Liechtenstein in honour of the Fifth Prince Anton-Florian, who had served the Emperor as Chief Intendant and Prime Minister when he was Archduke of Austria.
On New Year's Day 1927, the British Broadcasting Company Ltd received a Royal Charter and became the publicly funded British Broadcasting Corporation. Two weeks later the BBC made the first ever live radio broadcast of a sporting event - a Rugby Union international match between England and Wales at Twickenham. A week later, on 22nd January, BBC radio broadcast the first live coverage of an association football match between Arsenal and Sheffield United.
The game was a First Division fixture played at Arsenal's ground, Highbury, in North-London. The commentator was Captain Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam, a former rugby player, who commentated on the rugby international the week before. The producer of the show, Lance Sieveking, came up with an idea to help the listeners keep track of the action. The Radio Times magazine of that week included a diagram of the pitch that was divided up into numbered sections. As Wakelam described the action, a fellow broadcaster, C.A. Lewis, told the listeners which sector the ball was in.
Bad visibility hampered the commentators but they still managed to keep their listeners informed of the goals. On an icy pitch, Arsenal took the lead when Charlie Buchan headed home with ten minutes to go. The Sheffield United captain, Billy Gillespie, soon equalised and the match ended as a 1:1 draw.
The position of King Louis XVI and his family became increasingly tenuous following his attempt to escape revolutionary France in June 1791. The authorities arrested them at Varennes-en-Argonne, returned them to Paris, and placed them under house arrest at the Tuileries Palace. The royal houses of Europe became increasingly concerned about the fate of Louis and as a result the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II - the Austrian brother of Queen Marie Antoinette - and King Frederick William II of Prussia made the Declaration of Pilnitz in August, after consulting French émigré nobles.
The Declaration warned the revolutionaries that they could expect swift reprisals should any harm befall the French royal family. Hoping to restore favour with his people, Louis accepted the Legislative Assembly's declaration of war against the Holy Roman Empire in April 1792. The French army, devastated by revolution, faired badly resulting in a Prussian invasion. In July, the commander in chief of the allied forces, the Duke of Brunswick, declared that the Austrians and Prussians intended to restore Louis to his full powers, effectively undoing the revolution.
While the Duke and his émigré advisers hoped that this declaration would ensure the safety of the King, the actual effect was the opposite of this. Many saw this as collusion between Louis and the foreign powers and the on the night of 10th August supporters of the hard-liner municipal government in the capital, the Paris Commune, besieged the Tuileries. The King sought sanctuary with the Legislative Assembly, which suspended the monarchy. Three days later the authorities arrested the King for High Treason and other offences against the State, imprisoning him in the Temple fortress.
The Legislative Assembly also created a National Convention to draw up a new constitution. When it first met on 20th September it became the de facto executive power in France and the next day it abolished the monarchy and declared a republic. On 11th December the King was brought before the Convention to face the charges brought against him. The King's counsel, Raymond Desèze detailed Louis' defence on the 26th, speaking for three hours he explained that the charges were unconstitutional and questioned the right of the Convention to sit as judge and jury over the monarch.
On 15th January 1793 the 721 deputies of the Convention made a decision on the verdict; 693 of them voted that he was guilty, none of them voted for an acquittal. The next day they voted on the king's punishment; 361 voted for his immediate execution, 72 voted for delayed execution on certain conditions and, 288 voted for an alternative punishment. When the Convention voted down a motion to grant a reprieve the next day - 380 to 310 - the King's fate was sealed.
On Monday 21st January 1793, stripped of all titles, Citizen Louis Capet ascended the scaffold at the Place de la Révolution (formerly the Place Louis XV, now the Place de la Concorde). He started to make a speech to the jubilant crowd in which he declared his innocence and pardoned those that had sent him to his fate. Louis continued to speak but a general in the National Guard, Antoine-Joseph Santerre, cut him short by ordering a drum-roll. Accounts suggest that the guillotine blade did not sever the neck on the first attempt. Following the decapitation many members of the crowd dipped handkerchiefs in Louis' blood as a memento of that fateful day.
During the night before the inauguration of the thirty-fifth President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, heavy snow fell on Washington D.C. Nevertheless, on the morning of 20th January 1961, snow ploughs and gangs of workers cleared the processional route so that the ceremony could go ahead. Meanwhile, Kennedy attended Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown before joining President Eisenhower to travel in procession to the Capitol.
Hundreds of thousands of people watched as Cardinal Cushing of Boston delivered the Invocation prayer, the first time a Roman Catholic had done so. The eighty-six year old poet Robert Frost intended to read a poem he had written for especially for the occasion called Dedication, but the glare of the sun prevented him from doing so. Instead he recited another of his poems, The Gift Outright, from memory.
Following the swearing in of Vice President Johnson by Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the presidential oath of office to Kennedy. The youngest ever President of the United States then delivered his inaugural address. After giving his address, Kennedy processed to the White House where he witnessed a parade, which had peace as its central motif.
In June 1762, the Member of Parliament for Aylesbury, John Wilkes, started an anti-government newspaper entitled North Briton; although, he was careful to do so anonymously. He produced it in response to a newspaper called The Briton, which supported the Earl of Bute's new government. Bute was a favourite of King George III, having tutored him while he was Prince of Wales.
In issue number 45 of North Briton, Wilkes criticised the King's speech, particularly the comments concerning the recent Treaty of Paris, which Wilkes considered generous to France. Wilkes' accusations that the King had lied resulted in George ordering his arrest for libel along with forty-nine other people associated with the newspaper. Copies of the edition were seized and Wilkes was sent to the Tower of London.
Wilkes successfully challenged the legality of his arrest under General Warrant, gaining a great deal of popular support in the process as a champion of liberty. In his defence he cited his parliamentary privilege, which gave MPs a degree of legal immunity. Although, the Commons later decided that parliamentary privilege did not apply in the case of seditious libel.
Wilkes' enemies in Parliament continued their campaign against him, particularly the Earl of Sandwich, who Wilkes had embarrassed by bringing a costumed baboon to a meeting of the Hellfire Club. The following year, the Earl read the House of Lords a pornographic poem co-authored by Wilkes entitled 'An Essay on Woman', which parodied Alexander Pope's 'An Essay on Man'. The Lords declared that the poem was both obscene and blasphemous, and moved to expel Wilkes from the Commons.
On 19th January 1764, the House of Commons expelled Wilkes for being an unworthy member, having received proof that he had published North Briton. Wilkes had already fled to France and was tried in absentia for libel. His failure to return to face trial resulted in him being outlawed that November. He remained abroad for four years before returning to England to serve a sentence of twenty-months.
Born in April 1555, Naresuan was the son of Prince Maha Thammaracha, who later became King Sanphet I of Ayutthaya (part of modern day Thailand). At that time the Burmese occupied the Kingdom of Ayutthaya and as such they took the seven year old Naresuan as hostage to ensure the fealty of his father. For the next nine years the Burmese King Bayinnaung raised Naresuan as a prince in his palace at Pegu, until Narusuan returned home in exchange for his sister Princess Suphan Thewi. Soon after his return, Naresuan became Governor of Phitsanulok at the instigation of his father, who was now King.
Three years after the death of the King Bayinnaung, Naresuan's father declared that he was no longer a vassal of the Burmese. During the ensuing war Crown Prince Naresuan led his father's forces as well as those he recruited from neighbouring regions. Rather than fight a defensive campaign he decided to take the fight to the enemy occupying Lanna, a buffer states between the two countries.
In 1590, Naresuan's father died and he became King Sanphet II. One year later the Burmese invaded and again Naresuan went on the offensive in spite of the numerical superiority of the Burmese forces. On 18th January 1591, along with his younger brother, Prince Ekatosrost, he led a small force in an attempt to lure the opposing army into a trap. The Burmese forces took the bait, chasing Naresuan's small force into an ambush at Nongsarai.
During the battle, Naresuan spotted the Burmese Crown Prince Minchit Sra, who he challenged to single combat. The two fought atop their war elephants until Naresuan killed Minchit Sra with a blow from his lance. So demoralised were the Burmese that they retreated with the body of the Prince, effectively ending the Burmese aggression against Ayutthaya.
The date of the battle is celebrated today in Thailand as Royal Thai Armed Forces Day.
On 17th January 1982 much of the United States experienced the coldest temperatures since records began. A high pressure system of Arctic proportions formed over the Canadian province of Saskatchewan where recent snowfall had left the land with no way to retain its heat. Consequently temperatures plummeted creating a mass of cold air that moved south across the US on what became known as "Cold Sunday."
Meteorologists measured record low temperatures the length of the country. These included temperatures of −27°F (−33°C) in Chicago, −26°F (−32°C) in Milwaukee, −5°F (−21°C) in Washington, DC and −2°F (−19°C) in Birmingham, Alabama. The lowest temperature of −52°F (−47°C) was recorded near Tower, Minnesota.
US National Weather Service: High and Low temperature map (Fahrenheit)
Born in August 1530, Ivan became the Grand Prince of Moscow at the age of three following the death of his father, Vasili III. Initially, his mother Elena Glinskaya acted as regent, but she too died (possibly from poisoning) when Ivan was only eight years old. Members of the aristocratic Shuisky family took over as regents until Ivan became old enough to take the reigns of power in 1544.
On 16th January 1547, he became Ivan IV when he had himself crowned Tsar of all Russia with the Monomakh's Cap at the Cathedral of the Dormition, Moscow. In the early part of his reign, Ivan embarked on the process of modernising the state. He reformed the legal code, created an assembly of the three estates of the realm called the Zemsky Sobor and a council of nobles, established a standing army, opened new trade routes and ordered the construction of St Basil's Cathedral to commemorate his conquest of the Khanates of Kazan.
Ivan was also capable of violent outbursts, possibly due to mental illness. These may explain why he became known as 'Ivan the Terrible' - a translation of his Russian nickname, Ivan Grozny, which some suggest may be better translated as 'Ivan the Fearsome'. He ordered the assassinations of a number of nobles who he suspected were plotting against him, including Philip II, Metropolitan of Moscow, and Prince Alexander Gorbatyi-Shuisky.
In a fit of anger Ivan killed his son and chosen heir the Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. The young Tsarevich had witnessed the Massacre of Novgorod, where his father had ordered the killing of thousands of denizens of the city. The Oprichniki, a repressive force created by Ivan, carried out the massacre as well as being responsible for the murder of thousands of suspected opponents of the Tsar and for conscripting peasants for the disastrous Livonian War.
Ivan died on 18th March 1584, probably while playing chess with one of his advisers Bogdan Belsky. Following the opening of his tomb in the 1960s, scientists discovered that his body contained large amounts of mercury, suggesting that he had been poisoned. Ivan was succeeded by his pious but reputedly mentally deficient son Feodor I who died childless, thus ending the Rurik dynasty.
Over the course of his life the physician and president of the Royal Society, Sir Hans Sloane, built up a large collection of books, natural specimens, antiquities and other curiosities. Some of these he collected himself, starting with his voyage to Jamaica; others he received from friends. He also bought other collections to add to his own, which he made available to learned visitors.
In 1753 Sloane died and as part of his will he bequeathed his collection to King George II for the nation in return for payment of £20,000 to his daughters. Since he wanted the collection to be kept together, if the King showed no interest then the collection would be offered to other centres of learning abroad under the same conditions. While George II showed indifference to the proposal, a number of Members of Parliament - led by the Speaker, Arthur Onslow - were interested in acquiring the collection on behalf of the nation.
After Sloane's former curator valued the collection at between £80,000 to £100,000, Parliament passed an act in July of that year establishing the British Museum. The act enabled them to purchase the collection with money raised by a public lottery. To Sloane's collection they added the Cotton collection of manuscripts, which he bequeathed to the nation in 1700, and the Harleian collection of manuscripts, which they bought for £10,000. In 1757, the King donated the 'Old Royal Library' to the Museum.
On 15th January 1759, the British Museum opened its doors to the public for the first time. The seventeenth-century mansion Montagu House, in the Bloomsbury district of London, housed the collection on the site of the present buildings. Parliament appointed a Board of Trustees to administer the collection, which the public could now view for free.
The British Museum's website includes a number of pages about its history.
During the afternoon and evening of 14th January 1967, over 20,000 people gathered at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco in the largest expression of counter-cultural values yet seen. This "Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In" was the brainchild of the artist Michael Bowen as an attempt to bring together the hippies of the Haight-Ashbury district of the city with the anti-war and free-speech movements emanating from the Berkeley campus of the University of California.
Bowen was the co-founder of the San Francisco Oracle underground newspaper along with Allen Cohen. They had previously organised the Love Pageant Rally to protest a new law banning LSD, which also provided the central theme for the Human Be-In. The pair contacted Berkeley radicals such as Jerry Rubin and Max Scheer, as well as a number of rock bands, beat poets and other counter-cultural figures.
The event itself provided worldwide media exposure to the emerging hippie movement. Connections to the earlier "Beat Generation" were provided by the poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The Hells Angels provided security and a group called the Diggers handed out food. The psychologist, Dr Timothy Leary, suggested that everyone "Turn on, tune in, drop out"; while, Owsley Stanley distributed his "White Lightning" LSD. Music was provided by Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
The end of the American Civil War and the resultant emancipation of slaves produced economic changes, which brought about a growth in interest in trade unions. In 1866 Andrew Cameron founded the National Labor Union (NLU) to provide a national organisation for local worker associations. The NLU proved ineffective when it came to defending the rights of black workers, who were not even permitted to attend NLU conferences.
On 13th January 1869, 214 African Americans assembled in Washington D.C. where they founded their own workers' association, the Colored National Labor Union (CNLU), in pursuit of equal representation in the workplace. The foundation of the CNLU soon had an effect: the NLU invited its first president, Isaac Myers, to speak at their conference later that year, which was also attended by eight other black delegates. Under Myers the CNLU also successively petitioned Congress to give some southern public lands to African Americans.
The French have a long association with nuclear research since the days of Marie Curie. In 1945 the French government created the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA) - the French Atomic Energy Commission - under the direction of the Nobel laureate Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Nevertheless, Joliot-Curie's communist sympathies resulted in him being removed from his position before the beginning of the nuclear power programme in the 1950s.
