23rd January

[chenrezig]

1570 James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, and regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, was fatally shot by James Hamilton, a supporter of Mary Queen of Scots. It was the first recorded assassination by a firearm.

1571 Queen Elizabeth I opened the Royal Exchange, London, as a bankers’ meeting house. It was founded by the financier Sir Thomas Gresham .

1643 Sir Thomas Fairfax took Leeds for the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War.

1713 The signing of the Treaty of Utrecht redrew the map of Europe. The treaty signalled the end of the long and bloody War of Spanish Succession. As part of the agreement Gibraltar and Minorca become British.

1806 Death of William Pitt ‘The Younger’ at the age of 46. He was Britain's youngest Prime Minister and served twice, from 19th December 1783 to 14th March 1801 and again from 10th May 1804 until his death 'on this day'.

1849 English-born Elizabeth Blackwell, who was constantly ostracized and harassed by the male students, graduated from a New York medical school to become the first woman doctor.

1875 Charles Kingsley, the English clergyman who wrote The Water Babies, died.

1900 Second Boer War: The defeat of the British at the Battle of Spion Kop, 24 miles west-south-west of Ladysmith on a steep terraced hilltop. Many football grounds in the English Premier League and Football League, have one terrace or stand 'Spion Kop' or 'Kop' because of the steep nature of their terracing.

1931 The official opening of Whipsnade Zoo near Dunstable.

1943 The British captured Tripoli. The Germans retreated, and the Eighth Army crossed into Tunisia in pursuit.

1955 Fourteen people died and dozens were injured when an express train travelling from York to Bristol derailed at Sutton Coldfield station.

1963 At 7.30 pm in Beirut, the American Eleanor Philby was waiting for her husband Kim, a Middle East correspondent for two London journals, to collect her. Instead, he was on his way to Moscow - ‘the most damaging double agent in British history’.

1985 PC George Hammond was viciously stabbed while on the beat in London, and it took 120 pints of blood to save his life. He never fully recovered, and two years later he committed suicide.

198 A House of Lords debate was televised for the first time.

1989 Legislation came into force which permitted garages to display fuel prices by litre only, not by the gallon.

2015 The owner of the mobile network 'Three' confirmed that it was in exclusive negotiations to acquire O2 UK from Spanish telco Telefonica for £10.25bn. It would make the combined Three and O2 operator the biggest in the UK, with a 41% share of the market.

[annie]

than999