5th March

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5th March

Postby chenrezig » 05 Feb 2016, 07:10

1782 The Spanish defeated British forces and captured the island of Minorca.

1788 The birth, in Bury, Lancashire, of Sir Robert Peel, the firstcommoner to become British Prime Minister, although he was hardly from humble beginnings, as his father was a cotton millionaire.

1811 The Regency Act was passed in Britain, allowing Prince George of Wales to rule because his father, King George III, was considered insane. He later became George IV.

1840 The birth of Scottish vet. John Boyd Dunlop, inventor of the pneumatic bicycle tyre which he tested on his son's tricycle and patented in 1888. Two years after he was granted the patent, Dunlop was officially informed that it was invalid, as Scottish inventor Robert William Thomson had patented the idea in France in 1846 and in the US in 1847.

1852 The embankment of the Bilberry reservoir in West Yorkshire collapsed, releasing 86 million gallons of water down the River Holme and into Holmfirth.. It caused 81 deaths and is recorded as the 23rd most serious, worldwide, in terms of loss of life from floods and landslides.

1918 The SS Tuscania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by the German U-boat UB-77. She sank with the loss of 210 lives and was the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.

1920 Founding of the RAF Training College at Cranwell, in Lincolnshire.

1924 The BBC time signals, ('pips' from Greenwich Observatory) broadcast on the hour, were heard for the first time.

1953 Sweets were taken 'off ration' in Britain, 8 years after the 2nd World War had ended.

1954 Britain opened its first atomic power station, at Harwell.

1958 Parking meters first appeared on the streets, in London's exclusive Mayfair district. The meters were first used in America in 1935.

1967 A ban by the Musicians' Union, 'in the cause of decency', stopped The Rolling Stones' latest record Let's Spend the Night Together, from being performed on television.

1968 Another trawler from Hull sank off the coast of Iceland. Over a period of three weeks 60 fishermen lost their lives in Iceland's worst storms since 1925.

1982 The small, independent Laker Airlines, created by former British pilot Sir Freddy Laker to cut prices and make air travel more accessible, collapsed with debts of £270m.

1993 In the Antarctic, British explorers Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr Michael Stroud broke the record for longest unsupported polar march.

1996 Two British supermarket chains (Safeway and Sainsbury) became the first to stock genetically modified food when they sold GM tomato puree.

1998 Prime Minister Tony Blair, announced that veteran US entertainer Bob Hope, who was born in England, would receive an honorary knighthood.

2004 Twenty-three Chinese people drowned when a group of 35 cockle-pickers were trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire.

2014 Overnight storms caused the loss of the sea wall and railway line at Dawlish, between Exeter and Cornwall. Around 30 residents had to be evacuated from their homes in the seaside town, while beach huts that once stood on the sea wall were destroyed. The line reopened on 4th April 2014, in time for the Easter holidays.

2015 British Telecom agreed to buy the mobile operator EE, in a cash and shares deal worth £12.5bn.
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Re: 5th March

Postby annie » 05 Feb 2016, 09:40

than999
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