Today in history

24 th December 1980



   Rendlesham forest , UFO incident :
                                                      Witnesses report the first of several sightings of unexplained lights near RAF Woodbridge, in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom, an incident called "Britain's Roswell"
 In late December 1980, there was a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England which have become linked with claims of UFO landings. The events occurred just outside RAF Woodbridge, which was used at the time by the United States Air Force (USAF). USAF personnel, including deputy base commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, claimed to see things they described as a UFO sighting.




https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident

25 th December 1950

     Theft of the Stone of scone ;
                                               The Stone of Scone, traditional coronation stone of British monarchs, is taken from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist students. It later turns up in Scotland on April 11, 1951.
  On Christmas Day 1950, four Scottish students from the University of Glasgow (Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart) removed the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey in London and took the Stone back to Scotland. The students were members of the Scottish Covenant Association, a group that supported home rule for Scotland. In 2008 the incident was made into a film called Stone of Destiny




https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_removal_of_the_Stone_of_Scone

26 th December 2004

    The Indian ocean earthquake and tsunami :
                                                                    The 9.1–9.3 M_w  Indian Ocean earthquake shakes northern Sumatra with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). One of the largest observed tsunamis, it affected coastal and partially mainland areas of Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Indonesia; death toll is estimated at 227,898.
            
 
 
 
 
 
 






Not only did it register at approximately a 9.3 magnitude (only the 1960 Chile earthquake measured higher at 9.5, though there may have been stronger tremors prior to the invention of seismographic equipment) and last nearly 10 minutes, the quake moved a full 750 miles of 





https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami

27 th December 1966

   The discovery of the cave of swallows :
                                                            The Cave of Swallows, the largest known cave shaft in the world, is discovered in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico .
             At 1,220 feet (370 meters) deep, the Cave of  Swallows (Sótano de las Golondrinas in Spanish) in San Luis Potosi state in Central Mexico is the largest cave shaft in the world, the second deepest pit in Mexico, and the 11th deepest in the world. It’s also home to tens of thousands of swifts.



https://www.smithjournal.com.au/blogs/adventure/2879-jumping-down-the-cave-of-swallows

[size=19][size=14]SIMPLY STARING DOWN INTO THE Cave of Swallows is a test of one’s fortitude.

28 th December 1879

                             
The Tay Bridge Disaster :


                    Tay Bridge disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom collapses as a train passes over it, killing 75 people .

At approximately 7:15 p.m. on the stormy night of 28 December 1879, the central navigation spans of the Tay bridge collapsed into the Firth of Tay at Dundee, taking with them a train, 6 carriages and 75 souls to their fate.

At the time, a gale estimated at Beaufort force 10/11 was blowing down the Tay estuary at right angles to the bridge. The collapse of the bridge, only opened 19 months and passed safe by the Board of Trade, sent shock waves through the Victorian engineering profession and general public.




https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster

29th December 1170


   Murder of Thomas Becket :
                                          



Archbishop Thomas Becket was martyred on 29 December 1170, [size=18]brutally murdered in front of the altar at Canterbury Cathedral. It was the culmination of years of opposition to his former friend and master King Henry II.[/size]
              On the evening of 29th December 1170 the four assassins – Richard le Breton, Reginald Fitznurse, William de Tracey and Hugh de Moreville – cornered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral . There were several witnesses to the attack who related how Thomas faced his attackers with dignity, commending his soul to god. The knights hacked at the prelate until one sliced the top of his head open. They fled the bloody scene with their job done.



http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/becket.htm

30 th December 2006

    The execution of Saddam Hussein :
                                                      


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein

31 st december 1759

  Arthur buys a brewery and starts brewing Guinness :
                                                                             Arthur Guinness started brewing ales from 1759 at the St. James's Gate Brewery, Dublin. On 31 December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery. Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain.
          




Arthur Guinness is left £100 (about $147 US dollars) in the will of Archbishop Price. He uses the money and signs a 9,000-year lease on an unused brewery at St. James’s Gate, Dublin. It costs him an initial £100 with an annual rent of £45 – this includes crucial water rights. The brewery covers four acres and consists of a copper, a kieve, a mill, two malthouses, stabling for 12 horses and a loft to hold 200 tons of hay. Arthur begins brewing porter and ale.




https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinness_Brewery

1 st January 1985

  Ernie Wise makes the U.Ks  first mobile phone call ( or did he ) :
                                 
Image: BBC
The first ever (civilian) mobile phone call made in the UK. The call was made from London's St Katharine Docks on 1 January 1985, via the Vodafone network, by comedian Ernest Wise. The patronage of Little Ern may seem a little incongruous, but Wise had already done an ad for Atari with Eric Morecambe earlier that decade, and was already well-versed in hawking grey, clunky pieces of tech, for presumably a neat little pay packet.



https://londonist.com/2014/12/how-ernie-wise-almost-made-the-uks-first-mobile-phone-call

2 nd January 1981


   Yorkshire ripper is arrested :
                                            One of the largest investigations by a British police force ends when serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper", is arrested in Sheffield, South Yorkshire .
 
  

On 2 January 1981, Sutcliffe was stopped by the police with 24-year-old prostitute Olivia Reivers in the driveway of Light Trades House in Melbourne Avenue, Broomhill, Sheffield. A police check by probationary constable Robert Hydes revealed Sutcliffe's car had false number plates and he was arrested and transferred to Dewsbury Police Station. At Dewsbury, he was questioned in relation to the Yorkshire Ripper case as he matched many of the known physical characteristics. The next day police returned to the scene of the arrest and discovered a knife, hammer and rope he had discarded when he briefly slipped away from the police after telling them he was "bursting for a pee". Sutcliffe hid a second knife in the toilet cistern at the police station when he was permitted to use the toilet. The police obtained a search warrant for his home in Heaton and brought his wife in for questioning



                  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutcliffe

3 rd January 1911


   The siege of Sydney St :
                                      A gun battle in the East End of London leaves two dead. It sparked a political row over the involvement of then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill.
  The Siege of Sidney Street of January 1911, also known as the Battle of Stepney, was a gunfight in the East End of London between a combined police and army force and two Latvian revolutionaries. The siege was the culmination of a series of events that began in December 1910, with an attempted jewellery robbery at Houndsditch in the City of London by a gang of Latvian immigrants which resulted in the murder of three policemen, the wounding of two others, and the death of George Gardstein, the leader of the Latvian gang.




            


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sidney_Street

4 th January 1974

  The toubles , Thr Reavey and O'Dowd killings :
                                                                     The Reavey and O'Dowd killings were two co-ordinated gun attacks on 4 January 1976 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Six Irish Catholic civilians died after members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group, broke into their homes and shot them. Three members of the Reavey family were shot at their home in Whitecross and four members of the O'Dowd family were shot at their home in Ballydougan.Two of the Reaveys and three of the O'Dowds were killed outright, with the third Reavey victim dying of brain hemorrhage almost a month later.
 The next day, gunmen shot dead ten Ulster Protestant civilians in the Kingsmill massacre. This was claimed as retaliation for the Reavey and O'Dowd shootings. Kingsmill was the climax of a string of tit-for-tat killings in the area during the mid-1970s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reavey_and_O%27Dowd_killings

5 th January 1941

  Amy Johnson goes missing :
                                          When amazing aviator Amy Johnson bailed out of her plane and vanished beneath the icy waves Britain lost an icon.
Her body was never found and historian Dr Alec Gill believes the evidence points to a grisly end for Amy, chopped up by the propeller blades of the ship sent to rescue her from perishing cold Thames Estuary.

                                          





                        

Amy Johnson lands in a crowded field as part of the celebration to mark her solo flight from England to Australia in 1930 


https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mystery-behind-death-aviator-amy-9528648

6 th January 1839


        The night of the big wind :
                                              The Night of the Big Wind (Irish: Oíche na Gaoithe Móire. In certain parts of Ireland wind was, and is still, pronounced wine ,was a powerful European windstorm that swept across Ireland and the United Kingdom beginning on the afternoon of 6 January 1839, causing severe damage to property and several hundred deaths; 20% to 25% of houses in north Dublin were damaged or destroyed, and 42 ships were wrecked. The storm attained a very low barometric pressure of 918 hPa (27.1 inHg) and tracked eastwards to the north of Ireland, with gusts of over 100 knots (185 km/h; 115 mph), before moving across the north of England to continental Europe, where it eventually dissipated. At the time, it was the worst storm to hit Ireland for 300 years. Liverpool also suffered severely, with many shipwrecks and structural damage resulting from strong winds. 120 people died as a result of such accidents in the city alone. Two major shipwrecks resulted in damage worth at least £500,000, equivalent to £52.2 million in 2020

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Big_Wind

                   

7 th January 1928

   The great 1928 Thames flood :
  The 1928 Thames flood was a disastrous flood of the River Thames that affected much of riverside London on 7 January 1928, as well as places further downriver. Fourteen people died and thousands were made homeless when floodwaters poured over the top of the Thames Embankment and part of the Chelsea Embankment collapsed. It was the last major flood to affect central London, and, along with the disastrous North Sea flood of 1953, helped lead to the implementation of new flood-control measures that culminated in the construction of the Thames Barrier in the 1970s.




       

IMAGE COPYRIGHTALAMY

In 1928 the Thames flooded much of central London, with fatal consequences. It was the last time the heart of the UK's capital has been under water. How did the city cope and what has changed?
It was after midnight when the river burst its banks. Most Londoners slept as the floodwaters gushed into some of the nation's grandest buildings and subsumed many of city's narrowest slum streets under 4ft of water.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_Thames_flood

8 th January 1989

  The Kegworth air disaster :
                                         The Kegworth air disaster occurred when British Midland Flight 92, a Boeing 737-400, crashed onto the motorway embankment between the M1 motorway and A453 road near Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, while attempting to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport on 8 January 1989 .


        Disaster struck shortly after the British Midland Boeing 737 took off from Heathrow at 7.52pm, bound for Belfast International Airport.
After climbing to 28,300 feet, a blade detached from the fan of the left port and a pounding noise was suddenly heard, along with severe vibrations.
Smoke began pouring into the cabin of Flight BD 092 through the ventilation system.
The plane was diverted to nearby East Midlands Airport at the suggestion of British Midland Airways Operations.




   The aircraft was on a scheduled flight from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast International Airport when a fan-blade broke in the left engine, disrupting the air conditioning and filling the cabin with smoke. The pilots believed this indicated a fault in the right engine, since earlier models of the 737 ventilated the cabin from the right, and they were unaware that the -400 used a different system. The pilots mistakenly shut down the functioning engine. They selected full thrust from the malfunctioning one and this increased its fuel supply, causing it to catch fire. Of the 126 people aboard, 47 died and 74 sustained serious injuries.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster




       

9 th January 1799

       The first dreaded Taxman :
                                               – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain's war effort in the Napoleonic Wars .




                

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On 9 January 1799, British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduced a desperate and widely abhorred measure to help cover the cost of his country’s wars with France.




https://www.historyhit.com/1799-income-tax-first-introduced-help-fight-french/

10 January 1863

  The birth of the London underground :
                                                        On 10 January 1863 the Metropolitan Railway was opened in London. An unprecedented feat of engineering, the Metropolitan Railway was the first underground railway in the world, forming the basis of the London underground and other global underground systems.





      Originally opened between Paddington and Farringdon Street in 1863, the London Underground in the UK is the oldest metro in Europe and the world. Also the world’s first underground metro system, the Metropolitan Railway was operational between 1863 and 1933 until it was merged with the London Passenger Transport Board.



https://www.oddsalon.com/jan-10-1863-the-london-underground-opens-with-gas-lit-steam-powered-trains-between-paddington-farrington/

11 th January 1568

            England holds its first national lottery :

The first Elizabethans did not need Camelot to warn them: ‘it probably won’t be you.’ They quickly worked out for themselves that odds of 1 in 16,000 in winning Queen Elizabeth I’s great lottery of 1568 – England’s first – were stacked to high and they abstained en masse from playing – much to her embarrassment since she had hoped to raise enough money to repair the nation’s dilapidated harbours. Today’s lottery odds of 1 in 14 million would have been totally beyond their comprehension.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/queen-elizabeth-i-held-englands-first-official-lottery-nearly-450-years-180957804/

12 th January 1918

  The Minnie pit disaster :
                                    The Minnie Pit Disaster coal mining accident occurs in Halmer End, Staffordshire, in which 155 men and boys die .


              
The Minnie Pit at Halmerend


   What happened at Minnie pit :

                                              

• The explosion happened just before the morning "snap" time, when the miners were due a break
  
  
• Many of those working in the mine were boys, or men who had been sent home from the trenches due to injury
  
  
• Of the 155 who died, 44 were aged under 16
  
  
• An inquiry into the disaster found it had been caused by a build up of methane gas in two of the pit's main seams
  
  
• As a result of the gas in the mine, it was 18 months until the last body was recovered
  
  
• Investigators concluded a faulty safety lamp had almost certainly caused the explosion
  
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie_Pit_Disaster
  
  

13 th January 2012

  Costa Concordia disaster :
                                         The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia sinks off the coast of Italy due to the captain Francesco Schettino's negligence and irresponsibility. There are 32 confirmed deaths.


              
 
         What is certain is that, soon after the voyage began, passengers heard a bang and the ship was plunged into darkness. The first theory is based on the captain’s account of events – that he hit an uncharted rock and reacted by bringing the vessel into safer shallow waters off the island of Giglio. There it was damaged again on rocks and rolled on to its side.
Under International Maritime Organisation rules, captains are supposed to use the ship itself as a ‘lifeboat’ and return to port for evacuation.
The second is that there was a massive electrical failure which affected the ship’s navigation equipment, or a computer failure that sent the navigation systems haywire causing it to go too close to shore where it hit the rocks.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia_disaster

14 th January 1967

       The human be-in , starts the " summer of love " :
                                                                              Counterculture of the 1960s: The Human Be-In takes place in San Francisco, California's Golden Gate Park, launching the Summer of Love.


       

The Human Be-In, 1967 - a picture from the past

Thousands of hippies congregated in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on 14 January 1967 for an event which was billed as a Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In. The crowd, many of whom had taken doses of the powerful LSD known as of White Lighting, watched performances by Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Allen Ginsberg amongst others. The happening became known as a precursor to the Summer of Love and was a major event in the countercultural movement of the 1960s





https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/san-francisco-be-in/

15 th January 1867

   The Regents park ice skating disaster :
                                                           Forty people die when ice covering the boating lake at Regent's Park, London, collapses .

[i][

[size=16]The date was 15 January 1867. Hundreds of pleasure seekers descended on Regent's Park to take advantage of the frozen-over lake in the south-west corner. Affluent Londoners of this period had something of a mania for ice skating, and frozen ponds and lakes were frequently advertised in the press.
Despite warnings of thin ice, many visitors got their skates on and started taking a turn around the gelid surface.
Then, the unthinkable happened. The ice began to weaken close to the banks and eventually cracked. Around 200 skaters plunged into the frigid waters. The icy temperatures, heavy Victorian clothing and limited swimming ability all conspired to tragedy. Despite the best efforts of those on shore, who broke off branches and assembled ropes, there were many fatalities.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regent%27s_Park_skating_disaster

16 th January 1862

  The Hartley colliery mining disaster :
                                                        Hartley Colliery disaster: Two hundred and four men and boys killed in a mining disaster, prompting a change in UK law which henceforth required all collieries to have at least two independent means of escape .


        


image captionThe monument in Earsdon commemorates the 204 victims
After one of the worst mining accidents in England, a monument in Northumberland bears testament to the victims.
Inscribed on the obelisk in Earsdon churchyard are the names of the 204 men and boys who died in the Hartley Colliery disaster on 16 January 1862.
The youngest was 10, the eldest 71, and the same surnames are repeated time and time again. One family, the Liddles, lost nine members.
Such was the impact of the disaster that it resulted in a change of law, spelling the end of one-shaft mines, and the beginning of more support for miners' families.
The disaster in 1862 began when a beam supporting the steam engine which was used to pump sea water from the Hester pit broke, crashing down and blocking the single mineshaft.
Five men, who were in the lift coming up at the end of a shift, were killed instantly. Three others survived.
In common with many 19th Century coalmines the Hester pit had only one shaft. With this blocked, 199 men - almost double the normal numbers, as the accident happened during a changeover - were left trapped underground.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartley_Colliery_disaster