15th December

[chenrezig]

1906 The opening of the Piccadilly tube line on London's Underground. It was the longest underground line at the time, running from Finsbury Park to Hammersmith.

1913 Suffragettes caused a dynamite explosion at Holloway Prison where Emmeline Pankhurst and Lady Constance Lytton were detained.

1916 The Battle of Verdun ended, with 364,000 Allied soldiers and 338,000 Germans dead.

1942 The birth, in Tottenham, of Dave Clark, English musician with 'The Dave Clark Five'. Their single 'Glad All Over' knocked The Beatles' 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' off the top of the UK singles charts in January 1964. They had 12 Top 40 UK hits between 1964 and 1967 and disbanded in late 1970. In 2008, marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the band, The Dave Clark Five was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, located on the shore of Lake Erie in the United States.

1958 The last steam locomotive was made at Crewe. Engine number 92250 was the 7,331st locomotive built since the works opened.

1961 In Jerusalem, Adolph Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, was sentenced to death after being found guilty of 15 criminal charges, including war crimes, charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organization.

1974 New speed limits were introduced. Speed limits on motorways would remain at 70mph , but on dual carriageways they would become 60mph and on all other roads 50mph as the government tried to curb fuel use.

1982 Reputed to be Robin Hood's tree, the 'Major Oak' in Sherwood Forest, was fitted with a fire alarm.

1982 There were scenes of jubilation as the gates isolating the people of Gibraltar from Spain were opened for the first time in 13 years. There were tight restrictions, which included a ban on any British or foreign tourists crossing.

1984 'Do They Know It's Christmas' by Band Aid entered the chart at No.1 and stayed at the top for 5 weeks. At the time it was the biggest selling single ever in the UK, with sales of over three and a half million.

1987 A company in Bedford became the first to be fined (£500) for failing to register personal computer records under the Data Protection Act.

1993 The British and Irish prime ministers John Major and Albert Reynolds signed the historic Joint Declaration for Peace which they hoped would end 25 years of bombing and murder in Northern Ireland.

1994 Former 800m Commonwealth gold-medallist Diane Modahl was found guilty of taking a banned drug, but was cleared a year later on appeal.

2004 The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, resigned after an email implicated him in using his Government position to grant favours to his ex-lover.

2013 Andy Murray was awarded the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. Earlier in the year Murray had become the first Briton in three quarters of a century to win the men’s singles competition at Wimbledon.

2014 Jonathan Paul Burrows, a London hedge fund manager who regularly avoided buying a train ticket on his commute to the City, was banned for life from working in any regulated financial industries. In total, Mr Burrows was believed to have dodged £42,550 in fares.

2015 Forty three year old astronaut Major Tim Peake will become the first Briton to serve a mission on the International Space Station. He will take off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan at 11:03 a.m. alongside Nasa astronaut Tim Kopra and Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko.

[Rosalind]

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