Today in history

31 st Maarch 1990

Poll tax riots :
Approximately 200,000 protesters take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.


“Scum! Scum! Police scum!” The woman penned into Trafalgar Square with me and thousands of others that spring afternoon was old enough to be my grandmother. And I’ve left out her robust expletives. This was a day of protest against Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax that had turned into the most serious riot central London had seen for a century. As missiles flew and police horses charged, it was also the afternoon I woke up politically.

On 31 March 1990 I was 19. I had strapped on the obligatory leather jacket and DM boots that were the student uniform of the era and headed out to my first proper demonstration. Up until then, my political education had come more from the lyrics of Dead Kennedys and Public Enemy records than dry lectures about Gramsci. But I was fired up by criticism of the poll tax, the argument that asking a millionaire to pay the same council charge as his cook was a reactionary act by Mrs Thatcher – a reversal of decades of progressive taxation. Also, that this was toxic for her politically, because of that ingrained British sense of fairness. I’d seen documentaries about demos against the Vietnam war and I foolishly thought that this was my generation’s chance to change things by taking to the streets. It wasn’t. But in the chaos of those hours I witnessed how venomous a crowd could become when enraged by a police force that seemed determined to provoke and prolong the disorder.


It might have been different if everyone had obeyed Tony Benn. There had already been a bit of trouble outside Downing Street before he ended the day with his rallying cry against the iniquities of the tax. He told us all that we’d shown the system that we numbered in the tens of thousands but we should now disperse peacefully. He was our dad telling us to go to bed before there was trouble. Not everyone was in the mood. I clocked an anarchist who put on punk gigs in Bristol violently shaking his head. In what seemed like seconds later people around him were lobbing placards at the police.

What happened next has stayed with me for a quarter of a century. For no discernible reason a riot squad van drove from Charing Cross Road straight into the Trafalgar Square crowd and knocked a young woman yards across the road. It was an incendiary moment. The air then filled with bottles and missiles and mayhem ensued. Thousands of non-rioters were trapped in the square and before my girlfriend and I could escape, we saw a photographer’s arm broken by a policeman’s truncheon, people viciously trampled and a scaffolding pole that nearly killed a police officer. There were almost surreal moments of levity too. Huge cheers erupted when a failed attempt was made to torch the apartheid South African embassy.


We rushed home. In my naivety I thought Mrs Thatcher couldn’t survive the next few days with London in tatters. At the very least I thought the TV news would show what had really happened. But viewers were given a police estimate of the numbers in the square that was laughably small. Nothing was reported about police provocation. Politically, the riot temporarily helped the government tarnish its opponents as far-left rioters, but I still think it was a turning point. Years later, on the eve of the Iraq war, I was able to ask John Redwood what the protest felt like from within the administration. I wished then that I had known he was telling colleagues the poll tax was a bad idea. His response is worth repeating. “I was inside government saying ‘you’re doing the wrong thing, can’t you understand’. So one side of me was saying ‘this is marvellous, all these people agree and they are putting pressure on to help me win the argument from within’. But on the other hand it was miserable – as a loyal member of the government I couldn’t say ‘I’m on your side. I’m trying to win the battle’. They didn’t know and so I got the brickbats as well. It was very unpleasant.”

How do I feel, 33 years on? I’m glad I was there that day to observe the carnage. The protest, and finally Tory MPs themselves, put paid to the tax and to Mrs T – so the thousands of us in Trafalgar Square did play our part. And while the super-rich are now richer beyond our 1990 imaginings it still looks politically impossible to introduce a similar flat tax. As for the policing of demonstrations, I’m just glad Boris wasn’t around to deploy water cannon on London’s streets. I’d have been drenched.

1 st April 1984

Marvin Gaye shooting:
Singer Marvin Gaye is shot to death by his father in his home in Arlington Heights, Los Angeles, California.

On April 1, 1984, Marvin Gaye, an American musician who gained worldwide fame for his work with Motown Records, was shot and killed on the day before his 45th birthday by his father, Marvin Gay Sr., at their house in the Arlington Heights district of Los Angeles, California. Gaye was shot twice following an altercation with his father after he intervened in an argument between his parents. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the California Hospital Medical Center. His father later pleaded no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter.

Gaye's death inspired several musical tributes over the years including recollections of the incidents leading to his death. Gaye was given a burial plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery, and was later cremated and his ashes spread around the Pacific Ocean.

Circumstances

Marvin Gaye had a bitter relationship with his father, Marvin Gay Sr., since his childhood. Marvin Sr. was a Christian minister who was a strict disciplinarian and often physically punished his children. He was also a crossdresser, which was widely known in the family's Washington, D.C., neighborhood and made the younger Marvin a target of bullying. It was because of this, added with rumors of Gaye's own homosexuality (and in tribute to one of Gaye's favorite singers, Sam Cooke), that he added an "e" to his last name when he became famous. Gaye's father never approved of his son's career in music, and gradually grew resentful that Gaye was closer to his mother, Alberta, and had become the breadwinner for the family. Despite a brief improvement in their relationship after Gaye found success with his album What's Going On, father and son never found any lasting peace.

By 1983, after a period as a European tax exile, Gaye had re-entered the public eye with the hit song "Sexual Healing" and its album, Midnight Love. For a time, he had also achieved sobriety during his extensive stay in Belgium. Returning to the U.S., he embarked on his final Sexual Healing Tour in April of that year. Gaye, who had a profound dislike for touring, returned to cocaine abuse to cope with the pressures of the road, and midway through the tour he developed paranoia over an alleged attempt on his life, wearing a bulletproof vest until he was on stage.

When the tour ended in August 1983, Gaye returned to the U.S. to nurse his mother, who was recovering from kidney surgery, and moved into his parents' residence at 2101 South Gramercy Place, a home which he bought for them in 1973. During his stay, Gaye's father was absent. That October, his father returned from a business trip in Washington during which he purchased insurance on his family's previous residence. Initially, Gaye's sisters Jeanne and Zeola lived in the house before Marvin Sr. returned to the property, and left shortly afterwards due to the growing conflict between father and son.

For the next six months, the two men struggled to keep their distance from one another. During one quarrel at the house, the elder Gay called police to have his son leave the property. After staying with one of his sisters, however, Gaye returned to the property stating to a friend of his, "After all, I have just one father. I want to make peace with him." Jeanne Gay later told David Ritz that her father had told her if Marvin ever touched him, he'd "kill him".

On Christmas Day 1983, Gaye gave his father a Smith & Wesson .38 Special pistol so that he could protect himself from intruders. Friends and family members contended that the younger Marvin was often suicidal and paranoid, and by now was afraid of leaving his room and spoke of little besides suicide and death. Gaye sometimes wore three overcoats and put his shoes on the wrong feet.Four days before his death, according to his sister Jeanne, Gaye had tried to kill himself by jumping out of a speeding sports car, suffering only minor bruises. Jeanne contended that "there was no doubt Marvin wanted to die" and that he "couldn't take any more."

Killing

Marvin Gay Sr. at his sentencing hearing following the shooting of his son, September 1984
In the days prior to his death, Gaye's parents had arguments mainly over a misplaced insurance policy letter.[18] The day before his death, the arguments spread to Gaye's bedroom. Angered by his father confronting his mother, Gaye commanded Marvin Sr. to leave her alone; Marvin Sr. complied without incident and there was no violence that night, but Marvin Sr. continued yelling throughout the house.

At approximately 12:30 p.m. (PST; 20:30 UTC)[20] on April 1, 1984, an impatient Marvin Sr. shouted at his wife about the document. Gaye, dressed in a maroon robe, shouted back downstairs, telling his father if he had something to say, he should do it in person. According to Alberta, when Marvin Sr. refused his son's request, Gaye warned him not to come to his room. Marvin Sr., however, instead charged upstairs to the bedroom to verbally attack Alberta over the document, causing Gaye to jump out of his bed and once again order his father out of the room. When ordering did not work, Gaye, enraged, reportedly shoved his father out of the room into the hallway then began kicking and punching him.

Alberta later told Ritz: "Marvin hit him. I shouted for him to stop, but he paid no attention to me. He gave my husband some hard kicks." Jeanne later recalled that it was understood in the family that if one of the children ever dared to strike their father that he would "murder him or her", saying her father "made it very clear" and "said so publicly on more than one occasion." Gaye reportedly followed his father to the bedroom and, according to his mother, continued to kick him brutally. Eventually, Alberta separated Gaye from his father and returned him to his bedroom.

Minutes later, at 12:38 p.m. (PST; 20:38 UTC), Marvin Sr. entered his bedroom, returning with the .38 pistol his son had earlier bought him, pointed it at Gaye and shot him directly in the heart, as Alberta later explained to police:

I was standing about eight feet away from Marvin, when my husband came to the door of the bedroom with his pistol. My husband didn't say anything, he just pointed the gun at Marvin. I screamed but it was very quick. He, my husband, shot – and Marvin screamed. I tried to run. Marvin slid down to the floor after the first shot.

The first shot, which proved to be fatal, entered the right side of Gaye's chest, perforating his right lung, heart, diaphragm, liver, stomach and left kidney before coming to rest against his left flank. Marvin Sr. stepped closer after the first shot and shot him a second time at point-blank range.

In a 2018 episode of the Reelz TV series Autopsy: The Last Hours of..., forensic pathologist Michael Hunter expressed his belief that Gaye was initially shot nonfatally in the left shoulder by his father while the two men were standing two feet apart while facing each other. Hunter believed that this first shot "penetrated the left shoulder just below the clavicle and exited his back without causing any serious injury", the impact of which caused Gaye to fall down. Hunter also believed that Gaye was then shot fatally in the chest, which "had a very damaging and odd trajectory," traveling "diagonally down through the lung, heart, diaphragm, liver, and kidney, finally embedding itself on the left side of the torso." From Hunter's point of view, "the direction of the bullet's trajectory suggests Marvin was positioned toward his father, and that his father was likely to have been moving away at the time."

Afraid of being shot next, Alberta screamed and ran out of the bedroom, all the while pleading in fear to her husband not to shoot her. According to reports, Gaye's father hid the gun underneath his pillow. In the meantime, Gaye's brother Frankie and his sister-in-law, Irene, heard the shots as they lived in a guest house on the property. After the first shot, Frankie initially thought it sounded like a car backfired. Afterwards, they heard screams from outside, rushed out, and saw Alberta who ran into Irene's arms, shouting, "He's shot Marvin. He's killed my boy."

Frankie ran to the house and carefully walked into the hallway to his brother's room, not knowing if Marvin Sr. was still armed, whether he was still in the room, or if his brother was dead. After walking into Gaye's bedroom, an emotional Frankie held him as Gaye bled rapidly. Frankie alleges that Marvin, barely speaking above a whisper, told him, "I got what I wanted... I couldn't do it myself, so I had him do it... it's good, I ran my race, there's no more left in me." After police arrived, Irene went to Marvin Sr. in his bedroom and asked him where the gun was. After searching over his bedroom, Irene located it under his pillow. Upon exiting the house, Irene dropped the gun on the lawn. Immediately following this, Marvin Sr., who had by now taken a seat on the front porch outside the house, was arrested.

The police arrived twenty minutes after the shooting. Gaye's body was taken out of the house and sent to the California Hospital Medical Center. At approximately 1:01 p.m. (PST; 21:01 UTC), Gaye was pronounced dead on arrival.[28] He died just one day before his 45th birthday. As soon as his death was announced, several of Gaye's neighbors and onlookers paraded around the house, many in stunned shock and silence.

2 nd April2015


The Hatton Gaeden robbery:
Four men steal items worth up to £200 million from an underground safe deposit facility in London's Hatton Garden area in what has been called the "largest burglary in English legal history."[13]

The Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary occurred in April 2015, when an underground safe deposit facility in Hatton Garden, London, owned by Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd., was burgled.

According to official sources, the total stolen had an estimated value of up to £14 million (equivalent to £17 million in 2021), of which only £4.3 million (equivalent to £5.1 million in 2021) has been recovered. The heist was planned and carried out by six elderly men who were experienced thieves, all of whom were arrested, pleaded guilty and received prison sentences in March 2016. Four other men were also tried on suspicion of involvement; three were found guilty and sent to prison, while the fourth was cleared.

Burglary


The burglars worked through the four-day weekend of the Easter Bank Holiday, when many of the nearby businesses (several of them also connected with Hatton Garden's jewellery trade) were closed. There was no externally visible sign of a forced entry to the premises. It was reported that the burglars had entered the premises through a lift shaft, then drilled through the 50 cm (20 in) thick vault walls with a Hilti DD350 industrial power drill.

The police first announced that the facility had been burgled on 7 April, and reports based on CCTV footage (released by the Daily Mirror before the police released it) state that the attack on the facility commenced on Thursday 2 April.[11][12] The video showed people nicknamed by the newspaper as "Mr Ginger, Mr Strong, Mr Montana, The Gent, The Tall Man and The Old Man". On 22 April, the police released pictures of the inside of the vault showing damage caused by the burglary, and how the burglars had used holes drilled through the vault's wall to bypass the main vault door.

The theft was so significant that the investigation was assigned to the Flying Squad, a branch of the Specialist, Organised & Economic Crime Command within London's Metropolitan Police Service. On 8 April, press reports emerged speculating that a major underground fire in nearby Kingsway may have been started to create a diversion as part of the Hatton Garden burglary. The London Fire Brigade later stated that the fire had been caused by an electrical fault, with no sign of arson.

3 rd April 1888

The Whiechapel murders :
The first of 11 unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs.


APRIL 3RD 1888

Today sees the anniversary of an attack in 1888 which became the first of the Whitechapel Murders.

The crime in question was almost certainly not carried out by the murderer who became known as Jack the Ripper, but it is safe to say that it did cause outrage, not just in the East End of London but throughout the country a a whole, as can be gleaned from the following newspaper headlines.

THE WHITECHAPEL OUTRAGE
Early in the evening of the bank holiday Monday, April 2nd 1888, Emma Elizabeth Smith, whom newspaper reports described as a “widow”, had left the lodging house at 18 George Street, where she had been living for the previous 18 months, intending to raise some money through prostitution.

Her movements throughout the rest of the evening were somewhat sketchy, although a woman later testified that she had seen her in the early hours of Tuesday April 3rd in the vicinity of Burdett Road chatting with a man dressed in dark clothing who sported a white neckerchief.

The woman testified that there had been some “rough work” going on in the neighbourhood that night and recounted that she herself had been assaulted by two men just before seeing Emma Smith, albeit she also stated that the man talking to Smith was not one of the men who had attacked her.

EMMA ARRIVES HOME
The next ascertained sighting of Emma Smith was between four and five in the morning of April 3rd 1888, when she arrived back at the George Street lodging house in terrible state having been, according to Mary Russell, the deputy lodging house keeper, “horribly injured.”

Her face was bleeding, her ear was cut and she had, evidently, suffered some form of violent trauma to her lower abdomen, as she had pressed her shawl between her legs to staunch the bleeding from the injury. She told Mary Russell that she had been shockingly ill-treated by some men who had also robbed her of her money.

Mary insisted that they should go immediately to the London Hospital and they duly set off to walk there. As they passed along Osborn Street, Smith pointed out a spot at its junction with Wentworth Street and Brick Lane as the location at which she had been attacked.

TREATED AT THE HOSPITAL
On arrival at the London Hospital, Emma was seen by House Surgeon, Dr George Ernest Haslip (1864 – 1924). He later testified to the severity of her injuries, which he described as “horrible.” In addition to the aforementioned injuries to her face and ear, he also noted that “there was a rupture of the peritoneum and other internal organs, caused by some blunt instrument.”

SHE TOLD HIM WHAT HAPPENED
Emma also went into a little more detail as to the circumstances of the attack. She had, she said, been passing St Mary’s Church on Whitechapel Road at around 1.30am on the Tuesday morning when she noticed a group of men coming towards her.

Evidently, something about them made her wary and she crossed over the Road to avoid them.

However, and to her horror, they followed her as she turned along Osborn Street and they then proceeded to attack her at the junction she had pointed out to Mary Russell.

She couldn’t describe the “two or three” men who had carried out the assault, other than to say that one of them looked to be a youth aged around nineteen.

HER DEATH AND THE POST MORTEM
Despite the best endeavours of Haslip, Emma Smith condition continued to worsen, and she died of peritonitis at around 9am on Wednesday April 4th 1888.

Later that morning he had made a post mortem examination and discovered that the lower abdominal injuries had “been caused by some blunt instrument, which had been used with great force.”

THE INQUEST INTO HER DEATH
The inquest into her death, presided over by Coroner Wynne Baxter, was opened at the London Hospital on Saturday 7th April 1888.

Both Mary Russell and Dr Haslip were called as witnesses, as was Chief Inspector John West of the Metropolitan Police’s H- Division, in whose jurisdiction the attack had taken place.

West testified that he had “no official information of the occurrence”, and stated that he was only aware of the circumstances surrounding the attack and the murder from what he had read in the papers.

He had, he said, questioned the constables on duty in the Whitechapel-road at the time, but “none of them had either seen or heard any such disturbance as that indicated in the evidence, nor had they seen anyone taken to the hospital. He would make inquiries as to Osborn-street in consequence of what had transpired at the inquest.”

WILFUL MURDER
Summing up, Coroner Baxter stated that it was more than obvious that the woman had been “barbarously murdered” and he opined that “it was impossible to imagine a more brutal case.”

The jury subsequently returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person unknown.

THE GANGS OF WHITECHAPEL
Emma Smith’s account of her assault makes it evident that she was attacked by a local gang and that the motive was robbery.

Indeed, it is highly probable that she was the victim of one of the neighbourhood’s so called “High Rip” gangs who, at the time, were notorious for attempting to extort money from the local prostitutes under the threat of violence if they didn’t comply.

It is, therefore, highly unlikely that she was a victim of the lone assailant who became known as Jack the Ripper.

THE FIRST WHITECHAPEL MURDER
However, her death prompted the police to open a file on her murder which they titled “The Whitechapel Murder.”

By the end of 1888 that file would become the Whitechapel Murders file and would, over the next few years, grow to contain the names of eleven murder victims, five of whom would be the so-called “canonical five” victims of Jack the Ripper.

The first name on that list of victims was Emma Elizabeth Smith who, therefore has the dubious historical distinction of being the first Whitechapel Murders victim.

4 th April 1581

Sir Francis :
Francis Drake is knighted by Queen Elizabeth I for completing a circumnavigation of the world.


1581: Francis Drake, having completed the first circumnavigation of the world a few months earlier, is knighted by Queen Elizabeth aboard his ship, the Golden Hind.

Drake left England with five ships in late 1577 on a "trading expedition to the Nile." It was only after reaching the African coast that Drake informed his companions of the real purpose of this voyage – to sail across the Atlantic and into the Pacific in order to disrupt shipping and raid Spanish settlements along the California coast.

Which is precisely what he did. Whatever else Drake was – and he could rightfully claim navigator, explorer, slave trader and civil engineer among his occupations – he was first and foremost a privateer.

It was not an easy passage. By the time he had sailed through the Strait of Magellan and into the Pacific, he was down to three ships. They encountered vile weather and tempest-tossed seas off the South American coast. One ship, Marigold, sank with all hands; another was forced to turn back to England. That left Drake’s flagship, Pelican, which he renamed Golden Hind, to harry the Spanish.

But from then on, his fortunes improved. The weather cleared and Drake spent the next five months sacking Spanish settlements and capturing merchant ships all the way up the Pacific Coast. Somewhere along the coast in northern California or Oregon, Drake put in and proclaimed Nova Albion, claiming it for Britain.


Laden with plunder and her stocks replenished, the Golden Hind set sail across the Pacific, enjoying an uneventful passage lasting 68 days. Drake spent some time in the Indonesian archipelago establishing commercial contacts, then crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and headed for home.

When the Golden Hind dropped anchor in Plymouth in late 1580, roughly 36,000 miles of ocean had passed under her keel.

5 th April 1902


   Ibrox Park disaster :
                                 A stand box collapses at Ibrox Park (now Ibrox Stadium) in Glasgow, Scotland, which led to the deaths of 26 and injuries to more than 500 supporters during an international association football match between Scotland and England.

           Ibrox disaster of 1902 - Football ground tragedy that killed 26 and injured hundreds
Tragedy struck when a newly built stand collapsed during the Scotland v England match.

              On April 5 1902, 68,000 football fans paid the shilling entrance fee to watch the British Home Championship match between Scotland and England.

It was one of the biggest crowds Ibrox stadium had ever seen, with thousands of supporters travelling to Glasgow from all over the country to watch the clash against Auld Enemy.

           The atmosphere was electric, with the sound of fans applause and chants soaring from the stadium.

Prior to that day in 1902, Ibrox's 80,000 capacity had never reached more than half full.

             The match was a tense one. Ten minutes in it looked like Scotland was set to score the first goal. The opportunity came to nothing, but reports at the time suggested that it may have been a contributory factor to the horror that would soon unfold.

TheScotsman reported how the crowd pushed forward, down the terracing, as the Scots came close to scoring. The open spaces soon become filled with supporters, pressing up from the packed stairway. According to the paper, 'an extraordinary congestion' took place, which put an unbearable pressure on the flooring.

Then, 51 minutes in, disaster struck. The start joists of the newly built West Tribune Stand began gave away and a giant hole opened up on the terracing, sending hundreds of supporters plunging towards the ground.

A tangled mass of fans dropped 45 feet, tumbling through the broken boards towards the wood, steel and concrete below. For many, it proved a fatal drop.  

The scale of the horror was immeasurable. One father went to the Western Infirmary in the hope of finding his 25-year-old son, William Robertson and was quickly ushered to the mortuary. He was arranging the funeral when his son arrived home at Bainsford, Falkirk.

Despite all this, the match continued, the teams battling it out for a 1-1 draw. Those in charge that day feared a riot would erupt if the game was abandoned and were concerned that the swelling crowds would prevent the injured from being rescued. The match was later declared void.

The match was replayed at Villa Park a month later, finishing 2-2. The proceeds, £1000, went to the Ibrox Disaster Relief Funds.

        The final death toll was recorded as 26 with a further 587 injured. Though the horror of 1902 has faded into the cracks of time, with many unaware of the true scale of the tragedy that unfolded that day, the first Ibrox disaster reinforced the belief that the design of football grounds had to be improved.

It also marks the beginning of the stadium's century of horror. Disaster was to hit Ibrox four more times over the next 70 years. On September 16, 1961, two people were killed at an Old Firm game when a wooden barrier gave way on Stairway 13. It was replaced with an iron barrier.

          Then, in September 1967 eight were injured in another incident.

On January 2, 1969 – again on Strairway 13 at another Old Firm game – 24 were injured.      


                             

                  April 1902: A section of the terracing which collapsed at Ibrox Park football ground in Glasgow, killing 26 people and injuring 587, during the Scotland v England match. The tragedy led to a shift from wooden terracing to earthen embankments at football grounds.

6 th April 1580

The Dover Straits earthquake :
One of the largest earthquakes recorded in the history of England, Flanders, or Northern France, takes place:



Though severe earthquakes in the north of France and Britain are rare, the Dover Straits earthquake of 6 April 1580 appears to have been one of the largest in the recorded history of England, Flanders or northern France. It occurred about 6 o'clock in the evening.

A study undertaken during the design of the Channel Tunnel estimated the magnitude of the 1580 quake at 5.3–5.9ML and its focal depth at 20–30 km, in the lower crust. Being relatively deep, the quake was felt over a large area and it is not certain where the epicentre was located. The Channel Tunnel study proposed three possible locations, two south of Calais and one offshore. The barycentre of the isoseismals with intensities IV to VII lies in the Boulonnais, 10 km east of Desvres, the barycentre of the VII isoseismal lies about 1 km northeast of Ardres, and the barycentre of the only pleistoseismal zone lies in the English Channel.[2]

The British Geological Survey estimates the magnitude to be 5.7–5.8 ML.

Records
The earthquake is well recorded in contemporary documents, including the "earthquake letter" from Gabriel Harvey to Edmund Spenser, mocking popular and academic methods of accounting for the tremors. It fell during Easter week, an omen-filled connection that was not lost on the servant-poet James Yates, who wrote ten stanzas on the topic:

Oh sudden motion, and shaking of the earth,
No blustering blastes, the weather calme and milde:
Good Lord the sudden rarenesse of the thing
A sudden feare did bring, to man and childe,
They verely thought, as well in field as Towne,
The earth should sinke, and the houses all fall downe.
Well let vs print this present in our heartes,
And call to God, for neuer neede we more:
Crauing of him mercy for our misdeedes,
Our sinfull liues from heart for to deplore,
For let vs thinke this token doth portend,
If scourge nere hand, if we do still offend.
Yates' poem was printed in 1582 in The Castell of Courtesy.

English writer Thomas Churchyard, then aged 60, was in London when the quake struck and he drafted an immediate account which was published two days later, notwithstanding that it was Good Friday. In his 2007 biography of Richard Hakluyt, historian Peter C. Mancall provides extensive extracts from Churchyard's 8 April 1580 pamphlet, A Warning to the Wyse, a Feare to the Fond, a Bridle to the Lewde, and a Glasse to the Good; written of the late Earthquake chanced in London and other places, the 6th of April, 1580, for the Glory of God and benefit of men, that warely can walk, and wisely judge. Set forth in verse and prose, by Thomas Churchyard, gentleman. Mancall notes that Churchyard's pamphlet provides a sense of immediacy so often lacking in retrospective writing. According to Churchyard, the quake could be felt across the city and well into the suburbs, as a wonderful motion and trembling of the earth shook London and Churches, Pallaces, houses, and other buildings did so quiver and shake, that such as were then present in the same were toosed too and fro as they stoode, and others, as they sate on seates, driven off their places.

The English public was so eager to read about the quake that a few months later, Abraham Fleming was able to publish a collection of reports of the Easter Earthquake, including those written by Thomas Churchyard, Richard Tarlton (described as the writing clown of Shakespeare’s day), Francis Schackleton, Arthur Golding, Thomas Twine, John Philippes, Robert Gittins, and John Grafton, as well as Fleming’s own account. Published by Henry Denham on 27 June 1580, Fleming's pamphlet was titled: A Bright Burning Beacon, forewarning all wise Virgins to trim their lampes against the coming of the Bridegroome. Conteining A generall doctrine of sundrie signes and wonders, specially Earthquakes both particular and generall: A discourse of the end of this world: A commemoration of our late Earthquake, the 6 of April, about 6 of the clocke in the evening 1580. And a praier for the appeasing of Gods wrath and indignation. Newly translated and collected by Abraham Fleming.

Impact
Further from the coast, furniture danced on the floors and wine casks rolled off their stands. The belfry of Notre Dame de Lorette and several buildings at Lille collapsed. Stones fell from buildings in Arras, Douai, Béthune and Rouen. Windows cracked in the cathedral of Notre Dame at Pontoise, and blocks of stone dropped ominously from the vaulting. At Beauvais the bells rang as though sounding the tocsin.

In Flanders chimneys fell and cracks opened in the walls of Ghent and Oudenarde. Peasants in the fields reported a low rumble and saw the ground roll in waves.

On the English coast, sections of wall fell in Dover and a landslip opened a raw new piece of the White Cliffs. At Sandwich a loud noise emanated from the Channel, as church arches cracked and the gable end of a transept fell at St Peter's Church. In Hythe, Kent, Saltwood Castle — made famous as the site where the plot was hatched in December 1170 to assassinate Thomas Becket — was rendered uninhabitable until it was repaired in the nineteenth century.

In London, half a dozen chimney stacks came down and a pinnacle on Westminster Abbey; two children were killed by stones falling from the roof of Christ's Church Hospital. Indeed the many Puritans blamed the emerging theatre scene of the time in London, which was seen as the work of the devil, as a cause of the quake. There was damage far inland, in Cambridgeshire; stones fell from the Ely Cathedral. Part of Stratford Castle in Essex collapsed.

In Scotland, local report of the quake disturbed the adolescent James VI, who was informed that it was the work of the Devil.[9]

There were aftershocks. Before dawn the next morning, between 4 and 5 o'clock further houses collapsed near Dover due to aftershocks, and spate of further aftershocks were noticed in east Kent on 1-2 May.

7 th April 1976

John Stonehouse :
Member of Parliament and suspected spy John Stonehouse resigns from the Labour Party after being arrested for faking his own death.



John Stonehouse: Bizarre tale of the MP who faked his own death

Ask anyone today who it was in the 1970s who left his clothes on a beach and wandered into the sea in search of a new life, and the answer would probably be Reginald Perrin, not John Stonehouse.

Yet the enduring comedy of Reggie's fictional crack-up, in the classic BBC sitcom, has a matching drama in the real story of the missing MP, a posse of Czechoslovak spies and the mysterious trail he left behind.

Stonehouse was a young star in Harold Wilson's first Labour government of 1964, apparently heading for high office.

But within a few years he was interrogated by MI5 on suspicion of espionage, sank into financial ruin as his political career fell apart, and ended up faking his own death in Miami in 1974 in a desperate effort to create a new life. A rise and fall of epic proportions.

Now, by coincidence, two books by members of his own family tell the story in radically different ways.

John Stonehouse, My Father, by his daughter Julia, paints a sympathetic picture of a wronged man, broken by his public disgrace.

Stonehouse, by the barrister Julian Hayes - a relation through the author's father, who was the MP's nephew and his lawyer - concludes that he was indeed a spy (though not a particularly useful one to the Czechs) and knew for certain from the start that he was the author of his own misfortunes.

Where does the truth lie?

Bulging files now available in Prague reveal that for more than 10 years Stonehouse had regular meetings with "diplomats" from the Czech Embassy in London - all of them intelligence operatives - when, at the height of the Cold War, such relations were fraught with danger.

The Czechs claimed to have paid him a total of about £5,000 - well over double an MP's salary at the time - but his daughter Julia claims that none of it reached him.

She says that proper contacts with the embassy - his ministerial duties at one stage involved trying to sell commercial aircraft to the Czechs - were cooked up into a conspiratorial relationship that may have been naive, but not criminal.

Julian Hayes doesn't buy her story.

"He knew exactly what he was dealing with," Hayes told me.

Alarm bells
To which Julia Stonehouse says: "I'm laying down the gauntlet here. Where's the evidence that he gave them any secrets?"

She can point to the documented frustration in the Czech intelligence agency, the StB, that they weren't getting much for their money, and insists that her father did nothing wrong.

But there was an alarm bell ringing in Whitehall.

By the end of the 1960s, the minister - he was the last to hold the office of postmaster general, in which role he introduced the system of first and second-class stamps - was sinking into a miasma of suspicion.


He flatly denied to MI5, who'd been alerted by a defector to the identity of their "Agent Kolon", that he'd done anything wrong.

Although the suspicion didn't become public, his political rise was over.

Comic denouement
In opposition after 1970 he was sidelined by Wilson, and then embarked, in a sign of desperation, on a series of financial manoeuvres that promised disaster from the start.

By 1974, with his personal life also upended by an affair with his secretary, he was panicked enough to flee to Miami, there to stage his crude suicide caper and head to Australia under an assumed name.

The denouement was comic.

Alerted to the odd behaviour of an Englishman who was visiting banks across Melbourne and making suspicious transactions, the police interviewed him and asked a question that must have seemed appropriate at the time.

Was he the fugitive peer who was wanted for the murder of his nanny in London, Lord Lucan?
Lord Lucan remains on the missing list
Since he didn't have the long scar on his thigh that was known to be Lucan's giveaway mark, Stonehouse survived the accusation.

But when the police then put it to him that he must therefore be that other missing Englishman, the MP whose Miami "suicide" had convinced no one, he folded and confessed.

Back home, soon declared bankrupt, he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years after a trial in which he conducted his own defence. By the end of the decade, he was freed on account of his good behaviour but he was a broken man.

'Let matters lie'
Whitehall papers show that after another Czech defector's claims about him, the Thatcher government concluded that he probably had been a spy, but decided that there was no clinching evidence that would convince a jury.

The government was still stung by the naming of Anthony Blunt as a Soviet spy the year before, and was relieved to close the file on Stonehouse and, as the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong put it in typically lapidary style, "let matters lie".

Now, in these two books, the story has come back to life - though readers are bound to come to different conclusions about where the truth might lie.

On one matter, however, the two authors come to an unlikely agreement.

Julian Hayes says: "It keeps being repeated. Nobody learns the lesson."

Get too close to the fire and you will be burned.

And Julia Stonehouse, fiercely defensive of her father's character and intentions, says the lasting effect of the spying allegations is a warning to anyone in public life, as relevant now as it was in the fevered days of the Cold War.


Take care, she says.

"Don't even think about going to Russia, or learning Russian, or China, or learning Chinese, because if you do meet people from other places they'll call you a spy, or your side they'll call you a spy. Watch out.

"And if you're going to have a nervous breakdown, make sure you pay your bills before you go."

Anyone revisiting the Stonehouse story, whatever they take from it, will understand the force of those words.

8 th April 1820

   Venus Di Milo :
                         The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.

               


On This Day In History: Statue Of Venus de Milo Is Discovered On The Aegean Island Of Milos - On Apr 8, 1820

     

However, the exact circumstances in which the statue was discovered are uncertain.

Today, the place - famous for being next to the Catacombs and the Roman theatre - is a small town of Tripiti on the island of Milos, in the Aegean, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire.

The French sailor Jules Dumont D'urville bought the statue in the name of the French ambassador to Turkey, the Marquis de Rivière. It was identified as a representation of Venus. In 1821, it became a gift of the Marquis de Rivière to Louis XVIII (1755–1824, king of France and the first ruler of the restored monarchy following the French Revolution. The figure, at the time, had hands, but it lost them when D'urville's ship smashed into rocks near the island.


The king donated it to the Louvre Museum in 1821.

It is said that the artwork is five feet tall and was carved from the Parian marble (from the island of Paros) by an anonymous creator from a school of Hellenistic sculpture known as the Rhodian School, dated to about 130-100 BC.

Some researchers believe that the creator may have been the Agesandros of Rhodes. The sculpture imitates the Venus of Capua (4th century BC).


The half-naked goddess has a robe lowered below her hips (like Venus lifting her hair from the Vatican museum). The left leg is supported by something. It's supposed to be on a turtle. Once in her left hand, she probably held an apple, and the limb was kept on a column supporting her weight.

Today, Venus de Milo (also known as Aphrodite of Milos) represents one of the world's most iconic works of art.

An inscription that is not displayed with the statue states: "Alexandros, son of Menides, citizen of Antioch of Maeander, made the statue."

Despite lacking attributes, this marble statue's size and attitude allow its identification as the goddess Aphrodite, often represented half nude. However, the fact that the figure was discovered on the island of Melos has led some to think she may be Amphitrite, the Greek goddess of the sea, venerated on the island of Melos.


Though reconstructed to standing, the statue's arms were never found. The general composition derives from a 4th-century-BC Corinthian figure, and the artifact is an example of the Hellenistic sculptural tradition.

9 th April 1860

First 'tape recorder':
On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.


This Is The First Song Ever Recorded In History

Edouard Leon Scott Martinville, a French printer and bookseller who also invented the phonautograph, the world’s first tool for recording sound.


On April 9, 1860, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville created the earliest documented human voice recording, 20-second audio of someone performing the popular French folk song “Au Clair de la Lune.” You can hear the music by clicking here.



How Did Scott Record His Song?
Scott performed ‘Au Clair de la lune,’ a traditional French ballad, into the phonautograph, which recorded his voice’s sound waves and showed them on a phonautograph, a sheet of lines that visually recreated the patterns of the sounds picked up by the phonautograph.

The recording was recorded on April 9th, 1860, but because the phonautograph could only capture sound, not play it, the phonautogram of Scott singing was not heard until 2008.

The phonautogram was turned into an audio recording, and while scientists initially assumed the recording was of a woman or girl singing the song, they later reported that the playback speed was too fast, and when slowed significantly, the recording revealed itself to be that of a man’s voice, most likely Scott’s.

What Is A Phonautograph?
The “phonautographe,” originally designed as a shorthand device, recorded sound by focusing sound waves onto a drum where an exotic boar’s bristle was connected, leading the bristle to move and engrave the sound onto glass plate, which was gradually replaced by lamp-blackened paper positioned on a drum or cylinder.

This device was not designed to play back recorded sound and could not do so. It did little more than trace a graphical depiction of the sound waves that struck the bristle. Researchers didn’t figure out how to recreate the sound waves that would have been utilized to trace the pattern in the soot until 2008.

The lyrics to the song were first published in 1843 in the collection Chants et chansons populaires de France. The four lyrics were included in the 1858 collection Chants et Chansons populaires de France.

Conclusion
‘Au Clair de la Lune’ is actually an 18th-century French folk tune. A woman sang a few lines of this song, which Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville taped on paper with a phonautograph in 1860.

Scott de Martinville had found out how to create recordings before Edison, but he couldn’t figure out how to play them back. Finally, in 2008, the recording was restored back to sound after more than a century.

Although the sound is a touch scratchy and unsettling, as if the century-old voice is fighting to be heard through time, it’s rather astounding.

10 th April 1858

Big Ben :
After the original Big Ben, a 14.5 tonnes (32,000 lb) bell for the Palace of Westminster, had cracked during testing, it is recast into the current 13.76 tonnes (30,300 lb) bell by Whitechapel Bell Foundry.




On April 10, 1858, Big Ben’s big bell was finally finished. For the second time. It had seemed that Big Ben would never be finished for some time because the bell’s creation turned into something of a comedy of errors that delayed the project for years.


The project was an ambitious one. Big Ben was huge, and the bell needed to be huge as well. In fact, the design called for a bell so large that making it pushed the limits of the technology of the era. It was supposed to weigh almost 14 tons. Furthermore, something that big needed to be made out of just the right alloy so that it wouldn’t break, and there was no way to accurately determine the precise percentage of metals used in the casting.

John Warner & Sons of Cripplegate was chosen to make the bell, and on August 6, 1856, they fired up the furnaces and cast the bell, getting a good casting on the very first try. It seemed that, after more than 20 years of construction, Big Ben was just about to be finished.

However, nobody had given much thought to how they would get a 14-ton bell from Stockton-on-Tees to London. Nobody had given any thought at all about how they were going to get a 16-ton bell from Stockton-on-Tees, either, which turned out to be the more relevant question when the bell turned out to be two tons overweight. The bell was too heavy for the train, and the roads were in too poor a condition to make the journey practical. So they decided to ship it by sea. Once there, its support collapsed, and the falling bell crippled the boat. After it finally set sail, it was nearly lost in a storm.

When they finally got it into place, they found they needed to use larger hammers because of the extra weight. And the larger hammers, combined with the inexact alloying, ended up cracking the bell after just a year. So they had to start all over again, this time with the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Fortunately, the second time was the charm.

11 th April 1981

Brixton riot :
A massive riot in Brixton, south London results in almost 300 police injuries and 65 serious civilian injuries.



1981: Brixton ablaze after riot
The arrest of a black man led to hundreds of youths rampaging through the streets of Brixton in south London.
They hurled petrol bombs at police, burnt cars and looted shops in an outbreak of violence which started in the early evening.

A school and two pubs were set alight and firefighters have been unable to reach some other fires due to the threat of attacks.

More than 50 police officers were injured and at least 20 people have been arrested.

The rioting broke out in the area of Railton Road and Atlantic Road in central Brixton, where police and black youths had already clashed on Friday night.

That disturbance was soon stamped out but the trouble on Saturday evening - which began after the arrest of a young black man - quickly spiralled out of control.

When other officers arrived and tried to make more arrests the ever-increasing crowd started throwing bottles and bricks.

Missiles

Reinforcements from other police areas were called in but in the 30 minutes it took for them to arrive the violence had escalated sharply.

A charge by about 200 officers with riot shields and batons down Atlantic Road misfired when they were forced to retreat under a hail of missiles.

Many local people are blaming a special police operation carried out the previous week for helping spark unrest.

During Operation Swamp, police stopped and questioned people supposedly at random in an attempt to crack down on street crime.

However, many young black men felt they were being unjustly singled out by officers, causing widespread resentment.

Two months ago the local council published a report about the state of police/community relations in Brixton - it said many black people believed they were targeted by the police purely on racial lines.

12 th April 1961:

Yuri Gagarin:
                     Space Race: The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first crewed orbital flight, Vostok 1

It has been 62 years since a Russian cosmonaut called Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.

He completed a full orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961 on-board the spacecraft Vostok 1.

It was a huge victory for the Soviet Union in the so-called 'space race' against America.

  What was the space race ?

Following World War II, there was big conflict called The Cold War between Russia and western countries, including Britain and America.

It was a war between two ideas and ways of ruling - communism (the east) and capitalism (the west).

The Russians operated a communist state called the Soviet Union (from 1922 to 1991), while western countries like the US were capitalist countries.

Throughout the Cold War, communist and capitalist nations tried to out-do each other, competing to develop the best technologies and weapons.

Both sides saw space exploration as one of the biggest demonstrations of power and went about spending lots of money to try and get there first.

The Russians managed to make it into space first in 1957 when their un-manned aircraft, Sputnik 1, did a full orbit of the Earth.

They then followed that up by sending a dog into space on Sputnik 2.

The dog was called Laika and the success of the mission gave the Russians the confidence that they could successfully send a human into space.

The success of the Russian missions brought about the creation of the American space agency, Nasa.


Yuri Gagarin.
Yuri Gagarin was the son of a carpenter who grew up on a farm and survived the Nazi occupation of Russia.

He joined the Soviet Air Force in 1955 and soon became one of the top pilots in the country.

When the decision was made to send a man up into space Gagarin was chosen ahead of his main rival, Pavel Romanovich Popovich, because he was Russian and Popovich was Ukrainian.

On April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 lifted Yuri Gagarin into space, making him the first human being to travel there.

His orbit lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes in what was a very dangerous mission. During the flight he lost radio contact with Earth for 23 minutes.

He landed successfully onto a farm in Kazakhstan using a parachute, and quickly became one of the biggest celebrities in the Soviet Union.

He toured the world after the flight, visiting over 30 countries including England where he went to London and Manchester.

However, he died just seven years later in 1968 at the age of 34 during a training jet crash, and was buried with former Soviet leaders near the Kremlin Wall.

Legacy

Gagarin is remembered as a national hero in Russia and has several statues across the country including one which is 138 foot tall.
Gagarin's successful trip into space really upset the American president, John F Kennedy, who had only just made it into office.

So much so that he banned Gagarin from visiting the US during his world tour.

He sent a message to his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, asking: "Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man?"

On July 20, 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, accompanied by Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, piloted the Apollo 11 space craft and became the first people to land on the moon.

                       

                                                                  Yuri Gagarin.

13 th April 1970

Apollo 13 :
An oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 Service Module explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the Apollo command and service module (codenamed "Odyssey") while en route to the Moon.



Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the Apollo Space program (1961-1975) and was supposed to be the third lunar landing mission, but the three astronauts aboard never reached the moon. Instead the crew and ground control team scrambled through a hair-raising rescue mission. On April 13, 1970, an oxygen tank on board exploded. Ground control in Houston rushed to develop an emergency plan as millions around the world watched and the lives of three astronauts hung in the balance: commander James A. Lovell Jr., lunar module pilot Fred W. Haise Jr. and command module pilot John L. Swigert.

Apollo 13’s Mission

On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. On board were astronauts James Lovell, John “Jack” Swigert and Fred Haise. Their mission was to reach the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon and explore the Imbrium Basin, conducting geological experiments along the way.



"Houston, we've had a problem..."
At 9:00 p.m. EST on April 13, Apollo 13 was over 200,000 miles from Earth. The crew had just completed a television broadcast and was inspecting Aquarius, the Landing Module (LM). The next day, Apollo 13 was to enter the moon’s orbit. Lovell and Haise were set to become the fifth and sixth men to walk on the moon.

It was not to be. At 9:08 p.m.—about 56 hours into the flight—an explosion rocked the spacecraft. Oxygen tank No. 2 had blown up, disabling the regular supply of oxygen, electricity, light and water. Lovell reported to mission control: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” The Command Module (CM) was leaking oxygen and rapidly losing fuel cells. The moon landing mission was aborted.



How the Crew of Apollo 13 Survived
One hour after the explosion, mission control instructed the crew to move to the LM, which had sufficient oxygen, and use it as a lifeboat. The LM was only designed to transport astronauts from the orbiting CM to the moon’s surface and back again; its power supply was meant to support two people for 45 hours. If the crew of Apollo 13 were to make it back to Earth alive, the LM would have to support three men for at least 90 hours and successfully navigate more than 200,000 miles of space.

Conditions on board the LM were challenging. The crew went on one-fifth water rations and endured cabin temperatures a few degrees above freezing to conserve energy. The square lithium hydroxide canisters from the CM were not compatible with the round openings in the LM environmental system, meaning the removal of carbon dioxide became a problem. Mission control built an impromptu adapter out of materials known to be onboard, and the crew successfully copied their model.

Navigation was also extremely complicated; the LM had a more rudimentary navigational system, and the astronauts and mission control had to work out by hand the changes in propulsion and direction needed to take the spacecraft home.

On April 14, Apollo 13 swung around the moon. Swigert and Haise took pictures and Lovell talked with mission control about the most difficult maneuver, a five-minute engine burn that would give the LM enough speed to return home before its energy ran out. Two hours after rounding the far side of the moon, the crew, using the sun as an alignment point, fired the LM’s small descent engine. The procedure was a success; Apollo 13 was on its way home.

14 th April1912

The Titanic :
The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic and begins to sink.



ON THIS day, 109 years ago, one of the world's most famous catastrophes was about to take place.

On the night of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic, the largest and most impressive ship ever built at the time, crashed into an iceberg as it made its way towards New York City on its maiden voyage.

Built in Belfast's iconic shipyard by the arms of Irishmen working at Harland and Wolff, the sinking of the Titanic remains, to this day, one of the world's biggest disasters.

More than 2,200 souls on board came from Ireland, the United Kingdom, the US, Canada and more, with many leaving their home countries in search of a better life in America, or returning to their home after spending time abroad, and the catastrophe sent shockwaves across the globe.

People from all walks of life, from upper class citizens to the poor working class, boarded the ship which was fated to sink in the freezing Atlantic ocean on 15 April-- just days after it left Southampton on its maiden voyage.

The interest surrounding the disaster prevailed for years, and exploded following the release of James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, which gave faces and stories to the people who had died almost 100 years before.

On 14 April 1912 at 11.40pm, four days into its maiden voyage and after its final stop in Cobh, County Cork, the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, with the closest landmass being Newfoundland, some 600km away.


While the sinking has been widely investigated over the last century, it is still unclear how exactly the ship came to hit the iceberg.

The ship's Captain, E.J Smith, was sailing the Titanic at a whopping speed through the North Atlantic in the dark, a place known to be heavy with icebergs; according to History.com, some blamed Smith for trying to beat the crossing time of another ship, the White Star, but others say the ship was sailing at such a high speed to help tackle a fire in one of the ship's coal bunkers.

Others blamed the Chief Radio Operator, Jack Phillips, for the disaster-- an hour earlier, a nearby ship, the Californian, had sent a message warning it of ice fields ahead. Phillips did not pass on the message to the captain as he felt it to be non-urgent.

Jack Phillips would later be called "the man who saved us all" as he remained on board sending distress signals to nearby ships until the water began lapping at his feet. He would die from exposure in the early hours of 15 April after the lifeboat he was on capsized.

Accusations of cutting corners to save costs were also thrown at the ship's architects following an investigation in 1985 which found high concentration of 'slag', a residue known to make metal split apart if under pressure-- the Titanic split in two before both parts sank beneath the water.

On the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's fated journey, two studies also suggested that nature could have had something to do with the catastrophe-- one argued that the Earth came close to both the moon and the sun, increasing the gravitational pull on the ocean and causing huge amounts of floating ice on the surface.



British historian Tim Maltin claimed a phenomenon called super refraction could have caused mirages on the dark sea which could have prevented the ship's lookouts from seeing the iceberg until it was too late-- and the lookouts did not have binoculars.



The iceberg believed to be the one which sunk the Titanic (Image: Henry Aldridge and Son, Auctioneers)

Despite all of these fateful mistakes, hundreds of lives could still have been saved was not for the decision by White Star to provide just 20 lifeboats.

There were over 2,200 people on board, but the lifeboats could carry just 1,178 people-- and through the panic, most of the boats left the ship with 400 empty seats.

More than 1,500 died through drowning or exposure to the freeing temperatures in the morning of 15 April, 1912.

The nearby Carpathia ship, having heard Jack Phillips's distress signal, travelled at extreme speed through the icy waters to save as many as they could, despite knowing that icebergs were hiding in the glassy sea.

The actions of the crew from the Carpathia saved the lives of 705 people.

15 th April 1989


Hillsborough :
Hillsborough disaster: A human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday, in the FA Cup Semi-final, resulting in the deaths of 97 Liverpool fans.

The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in the two standing-only central pens in the Leppings Lane stand allocated to Liverpool supporters. Shortly before kick-off, in an attempt to ease overcrowding outside the entrance turnstiles, the police match commander, David Duckenfield, ordered exit gate C to be opened, leading to an influx of supporters entering the pens. This resulted in overcrowding of those pens and the crush. With 97 deaths and 766 injuries, it has the highest death toll in British sporting history. Ninety-four people died on the day; another person died in hospital days later, and another victim died in 1993. In July 2021, a coroner ruled that Andrew Devine, who died 32 years after suffering severe and irreversible brain damage on the day, was the 97th victim. The match was abandoned and restaged at Old Trafford in Manchester on 7 May 1989; Liverpool won and went on to win that season's FA Cup.

In the following days and weeks, South Yorkshire Police (SYP) fed the press false stories suggesting that football hooliganism and drunkenness by Liverpool supporters had caused the disaster. Blaming Liverpool fans persisted even after the Taylor Report of 1990, which found that the main cause was a failure of crowd control by SYP. Following the Taylor Report, the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled there was no evidence to justify prosecution of any individuals or institutions. The disaster led to a number of safety improvements in the largest English football grounds, notably the elimination of fenced standing terraces in favour of all-seater stadiums in the top two tiers of English football.

The first coroner's inquests into the Hillsborough disaster, completed in 1991, concluded with verdicts of “accidental death” in respect of all the deceased. Families disputed the findings, and fought to have the case re-opened. In 1997 Lord Justice Stuart-Smith concluded that there was no justification for a new inquiry. Private prosecutions brought by the Hillsborough Families Support Group against Duckenfield and his deputy Bernard Murray failed in 2000. In 2009 a Hillsborough Independent Panel was formed to review the evidence. Reporting in 2012, it confirmed Taylor's 1990 criticisms and revealed details about the extent of police efforts to shift blame onto fans, the role of other emergency services and the error of the first coroner's inquests. The panel's report resulted in the previous findings of accidental death being quashed, and the creation of new coroner's inquests. It also produced two criminal investigations led by police in 2012: Operation Resolve to look into the causes of the disaster, and by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) to examine actions by police in the aftermath.

The second coroner's inquests were held from 1 April 2014 to 26 April 2016. They ruled that the supporters were unlawfully killed owing to grossly negligent failures by police and ambulance services to fulfil their duty of care. The inquests also found that the design of the stadium contributed to the crush, and that supporters were not to blame for the dangerous conditions. Public anger over the actions of their force during the second inquests led to the suspension of the SYP chief constable, David Crompton, following the verdict. In June 2017, six people were charged with offences including manslaughter by gross negligence, misconduct in public office and perverting the course of justice for their actions during and after the disaster. The Crown Prosecution Service subsequently dropped all charges against one of the defendants.

16 th April 1746

Culloden :
The Battle of Culloden is fought between the French-supported Jacobites and the British Hanoverian forces commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, in Scotland. After the battle many highland traditions were banned and the Highlands of Scotland were cleared of inhabitants.


Battle of Culloden
Fought near Inverness in Scotland on 16 April 1746, the Battle of Culloden was the climax of the Jacobite Rising (1745-46). The forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, attempting to reclaim the throne for his family, met a British army led by the Duke of Cumberland, son of the Hanoverian King George II. The battle finally settled a contest for the monarchy that had lasted almost 60 years.


The context
In 1688, in an act that was immediately hailed as a ‘Glorious Revolution’, Parliament and an overwhelmingly Protestant political nation deposed the Roman Catholic King James II. His arbitrary actions and fostering of a powerful standing army had appeared to presage the establishment of an absolute Catholic monarchy.

James’s Protestant daughters from his first marriage, Mary and Anne, reigned after him. But when Anne died in 1714 leaving no heir, Parliament replaced the Stuart dynasty with their German cousins, the Hanoverians. The claims of James II’s Catholic son, James Francis Edward, the so-called ‘Old Pretender’, were ignored.


'Young Pretender'
In 1708, 1715 and 1719, the Old Pretender had attempted - with either French or Spanish backing - to raise the banner of revolt in Scotland, the home of his forefathers.

But by 1745, despite its continued unpopularity, the Hanoverian dynasty appeared secure.

So, when news arrived that the Old Pretender’s son - Prince Charles Edward, the ‘Young Pretender’ - had landed in Scotland with a handful of followers and was gathering support amongst the highland clans, there was initially little alarm.

This changed rapidly when Charles Edward’s highland army defeated government troops at Prestonpans in September 1745, occupied Edinburgh, and then in November entered England.


Invasion and retreat
The 5,000-strong highland army marched as far south as Derby, but failed to gather English support. It was confronted by converging armies made up of British troops recalled from fighting in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) on the continent. On 5 December it began to retreat back to Scotland.

After receiving French reinforcements the highlanders defeated the first government army sent against them at Falkirk (17 January 1746). But by the time the highland army came up against the Duke of Cumberland’s forces on Culloden Moor on 16 April, it was dispirited, poorly supplied and suffering heavy desertion.


The armies
Prince Charles Edward (1720-88), born and brought up in Italy, possessed virtually no military experience before arriving in Scotland. However, his army’s early victories convinced him that the ‘highland charge’, with broadsword in hand, was irresistible. In this he was at loggerheads with the best of his subordinate commanders, Lord George Murray, who knew better.

The highland army mustered only 5,000 men at Culloden; some 2,000 were on operations elsewhere. Its mounted arm was very weak and the motley collection of 12 cannon available was of different calibres and poorly served.

The British commander, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721-65), an enthusiastic soldier from a young age and known as the ‘martial boy’, was already Captain General of the British Army. He was considered an incipient military genius largely because of his bold conduct at Fontenoy a year before, a notable but epic defeat at the hands of the French.

A strict disciplinarian, Cumberland restored the confidence of the army defeated at Falkirk, introducing a new bayonet drill to combat Jacobite use of sword and target (a small shield). His 9,000 men constituted a well-balanced force of horse and foot, supported by ten 3-pounder cannon and six mortars.


The battle
The highland army had attempted to launch a surprise attack the night before the battle. But, delayed by men straggling in the search for food, it had not reached Cumberland’s camp by daybreak. It retreated to a field of battle five miles east of Inverness, Culloden Moor.

The battlefield was ill-chosen, as it afforded a clear field of fire to Cumberland’s artillery. The highlanders were cannonaded for nearly half an hour without effective reply. Orders to attack passed slowly down the highland army’s chaotic chain of command, but eventually the highlanders were unleashed. They charged across the 350 yards (320m) of ground separating them from the enemy.

On the left, the MacDonalds never reached the British line. But the large highland regiment on the right, Clan Chattan, smashed into Barrell’s 4th and Munro’s 37th Foot with great force. They were repulsed after fierce hand-to-hand combat, only a few highlanders fighting their way through to make an unavailing attack on Cumberland’s second line.

At this point the cavalry of Cobham’s and Lord Mark Kerr’s regiments of dragoons along with Kingston’s Light Horse began to work their way around the highlanders’ flanks, converting defeat into a rout. The pursuit extended all the way to Inverness. The actual fighting had lasted less than an hour.

17 th April 2021

Duke of Edinburgh's funeral :
The funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, takes place at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

The Duke of Edinburgh's life and legacy were remembered during a poignant funeral service on Saturday.

The ceremony took place at Windsor Castle and was attended by The Queen, Philip's children and his grandchildren. The duke was described as enriching the lives of all those he knew with his “kindness, humour and humanity”.

Here are some of the key moments from the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral.

The movement of the coffin

The slow crunch of gravel could be heard underfoot as eight Grenadier Guards stepped cautiously forward in unison, mastering the unenviable task of moving the Duke’s coffin on to his Land Rover hearse.

The coffin was draped in Philip’s 12ft personal standard – with blue lions and red hearts on a yellow background representing Denmark and the arms of the City of Edinburgh among the four quarters.

It was adorned by a wreath of white, spring flowers selected by the Queen, with a handwritten private message, and the duke’s Admiral of the Fleet naval cap and sword.

Land Rover hearse

Gleaming in the sunshine, the polished green Land Rover TD5 130 ferried the Duke’s coffin slowly to the west steps of St George’s Chapel.


It was modified to the Duke’s own plans in a project that spanned 16 years and which he finally finished in the year he turned 98.

It served as a testament to his love of design, engineering and all things practical.

The story behind the Land Rover hearse the Duke of Edinburgh designed to carry his coffin to his funeral
The procession

Beethoven’s dramatic funeral marches, peppered with booming gun salutes and the tolling of the Curfew Tower Bell, formed the soundtrack to the coffin procession, as military chiefs, royals and five members of the Duke’s loyal household marched forward to the solemn beat of the drums.

In step behind were Philip’s children – the Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal, the Duke of York and Earl of Wessex.

They were followed by the Duke's grandsons - the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Cambridge and Peter Phillips - the Princess Royal’s husband Vice Admiral Tim Laurence and the Queen’s nephew the Earl of Snowdon.

Philip always walked two steps behind his wife on official engagements. On Saturday however, the Monarch followed her husband for perhaps the first and only time as she joined the rear of the procession by car for part of the way.

The empty carriage seat

Philip’s cap, gloves and whip were poignantly placed on the empty seat of his favourite driving carriage, which was pulled into place by his two black Fell ponies.

Also, there was the red sugar lump pot he would take with him to feed the ponies sweet treats after each driving session.

The military

Exactly 730 members of the armed forces, from air, land and sea, took part, standing in proud precision in tribute under clear skies and April sunshine, heads bowed in respect.


The Queen alone

In moving scenes, the Queen was pictured entirely alone in the chapel, ready to say her final farewell to her beloved husband.

Coronavirus restrictions meant the guests, limited to just 30, were forced to sit socially distanced, and those due to sit two seats apart or more from the Monarch on her side of the chapel were walking in the procession.

The face masks

All members of the congregation wore face masks, as Covid restrictions still remain in place.

The minute’s silence

People across the UK observed a national minute’s silence for the duke in unison with mourners at his funeral.

As members of the Royal Family fell silent at 3pm, people across the country - including Prime Minister Boris Johnson - did the same.

The emotion

The Countess of Wessex appeared tearful, using her handkerchief during the service, while the Duchess of Cambridge was also seen blowing her nose as she made her way from the chapel.

Zara Tindall held her husband Mike Tindall’s hand as they watched the procession from the Galilee porch.

Charles’ face was etched with grief as he followed his father’s coffin.

The deserted nave

Strikingly, the vast nave of the chapel was empty except for the four choristers, their musical director and the coffin procession.

In non-coronavirus times, the chapel would have been filled with 800 guests, but the floor was free from chairs, with members of the procession casting shadows on the pale stone as they walked through.

The family issues

Beneath the surface, this was a complex family gathering, precariously balancing grief with rifts, slights and scandals.

Two dukes – of Sussex and of York – both re-entered the public stage for their first appearances at a royal event since stepping down from royal duties amid bombshell broadcasts and controversial claims.

The lack of uniforms

Despite it being a ceremonial royal funeral for a distinguished military figure, not a single member of the royal family was in uniform.

The Windsors, with Charles and William both future heads of the armed forces, were in plain morning coats or day dress. Uniforms were abandoned to spare difficulties for Harry, who was stripped of his honorary titles, and Andrew, whose future military role still remains ambiguous.

But the Royal Family wore the many medals awarded to them over the years for their military duty or for their service to the Queen.

The brothers

William and Harry, whose rift has been well documented, were initially separated by Peter Phillips, their older peace-maker cousin, as they walked behind their grandfather’s coffin. The grieving royals were freshly wounded by the Sussexes’ primetime tell-all and the ramifications of "Megxit".


But there were signs of reconciliation.

At one point, Peter Phillips fell back slightly, allowing the two to appear closer to each other.

The brothers, who sat directly opposite one another on different sides of the Quire, were seen chatting as they made their way out of the chapel after the service. Harry appeared to smile briefly in the direction of sister-in-law Kate.

The carriage-driving companion

In a tribute to Countess Mountbatten of Burma’s long-standing friendship Philip, she was invited by the Queen to attend the funeral.

Penny was the duke’s carriage-driving partner and had a close bond with both Philip and the monarch.

18 th April 1930

                 The day of "no news":
                                                The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announced that "there is no news" in their evening report.

         

On April 18, 1930, at 8:45 p.m., people all over Britain settled in to catch the BBC News evening bulletin. But when they flipped on their radios, they heard a soothing announcement instead: “Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news.” For the rest of the 15-minute time slot, the station played only piano music.


According to Atlas Obscura, the BBC decided what was worth reporting on, and according to them, it was better to stay silent than to fail to clear this bar. Radio announcers got their stories from Reuters, the Press Association, the Central News, and the Exchange Telegraph Company, “whose ‘tape’ machines disgorge their varied treasure into the News Room all day,” as the outlet’s 1931 Review of the Year explains. They’d then pick and choose from this disgorgement. As the 1930 Review put it, “A very definite standard of quality was aimed at, and … when there was not sufficient news judged worthy of being broadcast, no attempt was made to fill the gap.”


BBC News Director Helen Bowden says it could never happen today: “You’ve got to remember that it was an age of deference… there was an accepted mode of that the public should hear about and on that day that accepted mode and convention meant that there was nothing suitable for the public to hear.”


This was how most people got their news in 1930 - listening to wireless radio (TV broadcasts started six years later)

19 th April 2021

     Helicopter on Mars :
                           The Ingenuity helicopter becomes the first aircraft to achieve flight on another planet.




The American space agency has successfully flown a small helicopter on Mars.

The drone, called Ingenuity, was airborne for less than a minute, but Nasa is celebrating what represents the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world.

Confirmation came via a satellite at Mars which relayed the chopper's data back to Earth.

The space agency is promising more adventurous flights in the days ahead.

Ingenuity will be commanded to fly higher and further as engineers seek to test the limits of the technology.

The rotorcraft was carried to Mars in the belly of Nasa's Perseverance Rover, which touched down in Jezero Crater on the Red Planet in February.

Graphic showing Nasa's Mars helicopter Ingenuity
"We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet," said a delighted MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

"We've been talking for so long about our 'Wright Brothers moment' on Mars, and here it is."

This is a reference to Wilbur and Orville Wright who conducted the first powered, controlled aircraft flight here on Earth in 1903.

Ingenuity even carries a small swatch of fabric from one of the wings of Flyer 1, the aircraft that made that historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, more than 117 years ago.


There were cheers in the JPL control centre as the first photos of the flight arrived back on Earth. In the background, MiMi Aung could be heard saying: "It's real!"

To claps from her colleagues, she tore up the contingency speech to have been used in the event of failure.

The demonstration saw the Mars-copter rise to just over 3m, hover, swivel 96 degrees, hover some more, and then set down. In all, it managed almost 40 seconds of flight, from take-off to landing.

Getting airborne on the Red Planet is not easy. The atmosphere is very thin, just 1% of the density here at Earth. This gives the blades on a rotorcraft very little to bite into to gain lift.

There's help from the lower gravity at Mars, but still - it takes a lot of work to get up off the ground.



Ingenuity was therefore made extremely light and given the power (a peak power of 350 watts) to turn those blades extremely fast - at over 2,500 revolutions per minute for this particular flight.

Control was autonomous. The distance to Mars - currently just under 300 million km - means radio signals take minutes to traverse the intervening space. Flying by joystick is simply out of the question.

Asked whether she was surprised the flight had worked, MiMi Aung said: "No, I'm not. We really had nailed the equations, the models and the verification here on Earth in our laboratory tests. So, it then became a question of: have we chosen the right materials to build Ingenuity, to survive the space environment, to survive the Mars environment?

"We've gone from 'theory says you can' to really now having done it. It's a major first for the human race," she told BBC News.

Ingenuity has two cameras onboard. A black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, which is used for navigation, and a high-resolution colour camera that looks out to the horizon.

Sample navigation images sent back to Earth revealed the helicopter's shadow on the floor of the crater as it came back in to land.

The Perseverance rover was watching and snapping away from a distance of 65m.

Nasa has announced that the "airstrip" in Jezero where Perseverance dropped off Ingenuity for its demonstration will henceforth be known as the "Wright Brothers Field".

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) - the United Nations' civil aviation agency - has also presented Nasa and the US Federal Aviation Administration with an official ICAO designator: IGY.

"India Golf Yankee, with the call sign 'Ingenuity', and those details will be officially included in the next edition of ICAO's designators for aircraft, operating agencies, aeronautical authorities and services," explained Håvard Grip, the Mars helicopter's chief pilot at JPL.

Monday's successful maiden outing means that a further four flights will be attempted over the coming days, with the first of these occurring as early as Thursday. Each succeeding flight will build on what has gone before.

"What we're talking about here is going higher, going further, going faster, stretching the capabilities of the helicopter in those ways," Dr Grip explained.

"We're putting the pedal down and going for it," added Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of science at Nasa.

The hope is this initial demonstration could eventually transform how we explore some distant worlds.

Drones might be used to scout ahead for future rovers, and even astronauts once they eventually get to Mars.

Michael Watkins, JPL director, said: "What the Ingenuity team has done is given us the third dimension; they've freed us from the surface now forever in planetary exploration, so that we can now make a combination of driving on the surface and sampling the surface, doing reconnaissance, and even scientific experimentation on inaccessible places for a rover. This is exactly the way we build the future."

Bob Balaram, Ingenuity's chief engineer, said ideas for larger helicopters were already being discussed.

"We are thinking of things in the 25-30kg class of vehicles, and those vehicles would carry maybe about 4kg of science instruments," he told reporters.

Nasa has already approved a helicopter mission to Titan, the big moon of Saturn. Dragonfly, as the mission is known, should arrive at Titan in the mid-2030s. It will be easier to fly on this moon given its very thick atmosphere.

20 th April 1968

Enoch Powell :
English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech.



“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.” So said Tory MP Enoch Powell, quoting Virgil in a speech given to the Conservative Association in Birmingham on 20 April 1968.

Britain was in a state of flux. What was left of the empire was fast evaporating – Mauritius went it alone just the previous month. But it wasn't just the empire; many feared that Britain was disappearing too. And the blame for that was laid squarely at the door of immigration.

Following the Second World War, thousands of West Indians had answered Britain's call for workers. But more often than not, they were greeted with prejudice, while many white Britons complained they were becoming, as Powell put it, “strangers in their own country”. Racial tensions were mounting.

For Powell, America offered an example of what Britain could expect. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated at the start of the month, and violent race riots erupted in many cities across the States.

Britain was “busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre”, and Powell blamed the press for encouraging the government to pass anti-discrimination laws – the Race Relations Bill was already in its third reading.

The answer, said Powell, was in “stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and promoting the maximum outflow”. That, to be blunt, meant sending migrants back.

To say the speech was divisive is putting it lightly. The Times, in particular, called it “disgraceful”, and applauded Conservative leader Ted Heath for dismissing Powell as shadow defence secretary. Others, however, including within the party and trade unions, were more supportive.

In the years that followed, the slogan “Enoch was right” became a familiar political refrain for those who argued that multiculturalism in Britain had failed – a topic that is as contentious today as it ever was.

21 st April 1934


    Nessie :
                The "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1994, it is revealed to be a hoax)


The Surgeon's Photograph, 1934

In 1933, George Spicer went for a drive with his wife through the Scottish highlands.  The couple saw a large, unfamiliar creature pass in front of their car and disappear into nearby Loch Ness. They later described the creature as having a huge body with no limbs and long neck. A few weeks later, a motorcyclist made similar claims, describing a prehistoric marine creature with four large fins and a long neck. These reported sightings sparked excitement among the general public and drew many more visitors to the lake, hoping to catch a sight of what would soon be dubbed the “Loch Ness Monster.” But was it real? Claiming to see a monster is one thing, but proving its existence is another matter entirely.

In November that same year, Hugh Gray captured the first photograph that was thought to depict the Loch Ness Monster, now affectionately known as “Nessie.” Gray claimed to see a large creature rise above the surface of the water and snapped several photographs, but only one contained any information. The picture revealed a shape appearing to have a long neck and thick body. At this time in photo history, many people believed a photograph to be indisputable proof of evidence. Although manipulation techniques were common, the general public was not as familiar with them as they are today. Even so, many critics believed Gray’s photograph to be a dog swimming with a stick in its mouth, instead of the elusive monster.


On April 21, 1934, the Daily Mail published what is arguably the most famous picture of the monster. Known as the “Surgeon’s Photograph,” the photograph was reportedly made by a doctor named Robert Kenneth Wilson. The photograph depicts the trademark long neck of “Nessie” emerging from rippling water. For decades, believers and critics debated the authenticity of the photograph with myriad theories about its subject.


Since the publication of the “Surgeon’s Photograph” inspired hundreds of people to flock to Loch Ness in 1934, we have come to mistrust photographs more frequently than we view them as evidence. In 2016, our default response to a photograph claiming proof is to casually suggest that it has been photoshopped. In his 1984 article in the British Journal of Photography, Stewart Campbell analyzed the famed photo. The original version of the Surgeon’s Photograph shows a dark band along the top of the image and provides a sense of scale between the monster and the Loch. In the version published by the Daily Mail, the image is substantially cropped in, blurring the subject’s shape, and skewing its scale to suggest that is substantially larger. After comparing the two versions, Campbell concluded that the object in the water could only have been a few feet long at most. He speculated that it might be a seabird or otter.

                     



The Surgeon's Photograph un-cropped original (right) Daily mail enhaced version (left)

Is the Surgeon’s Photograph a hoax? Unfortunately, yes. In 1994, 60 years after it graced the pages of the Daily Mail, Christopher Spurling verified the photograph as a hoax by admitting his involvement in its production. Spurling was the stepson of Maramaduke Wetherell, a famed big-game hunter who had been hired in 1933 by the Daily Mail to find the Loch Ness Monster. He returned from his expedition with evidence of enormous footprints leading from the lake’s shore into the water. However, Natural History Museum researchers concluded the tracks had been made with a dried hippo’s foot, which were popular umbrella stands at the time. Humiliated, Wetherell retreated from public view. After Spurling revealed the photograph as a hoax, he explained that Wetherell had enlisted his help to create a model of the monster’s neck and place it on a toy submarine. Robert Kenneth Wilson was chosen to give the photograph to the media because of his trusted reputation as a doctor.

While it may not be proof the Loch Ness monster’s existence, the Surgeon’s Photograph had a tremendous impact on the thoughts, ideas, and beliefs of many people around the world. It remains an important part of photo history and serves as a reminder of photography’s fickle relationship with truth.

22 nd April 1993


Stephen lawrence murder :
Eighteen-year-old Stephen Lawrence is murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Well Hall, Eltham.


Stephen Lawrence (13 September 1974 – 22 April 1993) was a black British teenager from Plumstead, southeast London, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Well Hall Road, Eltham on the evening of 22 April 1993, when he was 18 years old. The case became a cause célèbre: its fallout included changes of attitudes on racism and the police, and to the law and police practice. It also led to the partial revocation of the rule against double jeopardy. Two of the perpetrators were convicted of murder on 3 January 2012.

After the initial investigation, six suspects were arrested but not charged; a private prosecution subsequently initiated by Lawrence's family failed to secure convictions for any of the accused. It was suggested during the investigation that Lawrence was killed because he was black, and that the handling of the case by the police and Crown Prosecution Service was affected by issues of race. A 1998 public inquiry, headed by Sir William Macpherson, examined the original Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) investigation and concluded that the investigation was incompetent and that the force was institutionally racist. It also recommended that the double jeopardy rule should be repealed in murder cases to allow a retrial upon new and compelling evidence: this was effected in 2005 upon enactment of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The publication in 1999 of the resulting Macpherson Report has been called "one of the most important moments in the modern history of criminal justice in Britain". Jack Straw said that ordering the inquiry was the most important decision he made during his tenure as home secretary from 1997 to 2001. In 2010, the case was said to be "one of the highest-profile unsolved racially motivated murders".

On 18 May 2011, after a further review, it was announced that two of the original suspects, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were to stand trial for the murder in the light of new evidence. At the same time it was disclosed that Dobson's original acquittal had been quashed by the Court of Appeal, allowing a retrial to take place. Such an appeal had only become possible following the 2005 change in the law, although Dobson was not the first person to be retried for murder as a result. On 3 January 2012, Dobson and Norris were found guilty of Lawrence's murder; the pair were juveniles at the time of the crime and were sentenced to detention at Her Majesty's pleasure, equivalent to a life sentence for an adult, with minimum terms of 15 years 2 months and 14 years 3 months respectively for what the judge described as a "terrible and evil crime".

In the years after Dobson and Norris were sentenced, the case regained prominence when concerns of corrupt police conduct during the original case handling surfaced in the media. Such claims had surfaced before, and been investigated in 2007, but were reignited in 2013 when a former undercover police officer stated in an interview that, at the time, he had been pressured to find ways to "smear" and discredit the victim's family, in order to mute and deter public campaigning for better police responses to the case. Although further inquiries in 2012 by both Scotland Yard and the Independent Police Complaints Commission had ruled that there was no basis for further investigation, Home Secretary Theresa May ordered an independent inquiry by a prominent QC into undercover policing and corruption, which was described as "devastating" when published in 2014. An inquiry into whether members of the police force shielded the alleged killers was set up in October 2009.



Attack
Lawrence had spent the day of Thursday 22 April 1993 at Blackheath Bluecoat School. After school, he visited shops in Lewisham, then travelled by bus to an uncle's house in Grove Park. He was joined there by Duwayne Brooks, and they played video games until leaving at around 10:00 pm. After realising that the 286 bus on which they were travelling would get them home late, they decided to change for either bus route 161 or bus route 122 on Well Hall Road.

Lawrence and Brooks arrived at the bus stop on Well Hall Road at 10:25 pm. Lawrence walked along Well Hall Road to the junction of Dickson Road to see if he could see a bus coming. Brooks was still on Well Hall Road, between Dickson Road and the roundabout with Rochester Way and Westhorne Avenue.

Brooks saw a group of six white youths crossing Rochester Way on the opposite side of the street near the area of the zebra crossing and moving towards them. At or just after 10:38 pm, he called out to ask whether Lawrence saw the bus coming. Brooks claimed that he heard one of Lawrence's assailants saying racial slurs as they all quickly crossed the road and "engulfed" Lawrence.

The six aggressors forced Lawrence down to the ground, then stabbed him to a depth of about 5 inches (13 cm) on both sides of the front of his body, in the right collarbone and left shoulder. Both wounds severed axillary arteries before penetrating a lung. Lawrence lost all feeling in his right arm and his breathing was constricted, while he was losing blood from four major blood vessels. Brooks began running, and shouted for Lawrence to run to escape with him. While the attackers disappeared down Dickson Road, Brooks and Lawrence ran in the direction of Shooters Hill. Lawrence collapsed after running 130 yards (120 m); he bled to death soon afterwards.[ The pathologist recorded that Lawrence managing to run this distance with a partially collapsed lung was "a testimony to his physical fitness".

Brooks ran to call an ambulance while an off-duty police officer stopped his car and covered Lawrence with a blanket. Lawrence was taken to Brook General Hospital by 11:05 pm, but he was already dead

23 rd April 1942

The Baedeker raids :
World War II: Baedeker Blitz: German bombers hit Exeter, Bath and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lübeck.

'We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide.' - Baron Gustav Braun von Sturm, 24 April 1942
Air Marshal Arthur Harris was appointed Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Bomber Command on 22 February 1942. Harris believed in bombing as a means of fighting and even winning the war; his preferred focus was to attack enemy 'morale' by targeting cities rather than specific industrial objectives.

On the night of 28 March, a 234 bomber raid against the Baltic port of Lübeck dropped high explosives and incendiaries on Lübeck's Old Town, largely composed of wooden buildings. The bombing and the subsequent fires caused 1,000 deaths and massive destruction.

Hitler, incensed, ordered reprisal raids against historic British towns. The first, against Exeter, took place on 23 April 1942, with 25 bombers causing widespread damage and 70 deaths.

The next day, Nazi propagandist Baron Gustav Braun von Sturm claimed that the Luftwaffe would work its way through the Baedeker tourist guide. That night Exeter was hit again; there were raids on Bath, York and Norwich over the next five nights, and a third raid on Exeter on 3 May.

Thousands of buildings were destroyed, including York's Guildhall and the Bath Assembly Rooms. The Baedeker tactic was briefly resumed after Bomber Command's devastating attack on Cologne on 30 May; three successive raids on Canterbury caused extensive damage to its medieval centre, but missed the Cathedral.

While the Baedeker Raids caused much damage and loss of life, they also served to demonstrate the relative weakness of the Luftwaffe as a bombing force.

The fact files in this timeline were commissioned by the BBC in June 2003 and September 2005. Find out more about the authors who wrote them.

24 th April 1994

   Bishopgate bombing :
                                 An IRA bomb devastates the Bishopsgate area of London.


It is 30 years ago today since the devastation inflicted on Bishopgate, a thoroughfare in London’s financial district.  The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a truck bomb after giving coded warnings.  As a result of the warnings, only one person was killed – a news photographer, Ed Henry of the News of the World, who had remained in the area – but 44 people were injured.  Casualties would have been far greater but for the warnings and the fact that it was on a  Saturday so the area was less populated with people working in the finance industries in the area.  Nevertheless, the blast caused massive damage estimated at £1 billion (about £2 billion today).  The nearby St Ethelburga’s church was half destroyed.  The church was one of the few medieval churches in London to survive the Great Fire of 1666 so it’s loss was even more greatly felt.  It was decided to demolish the damaged church but following an outcry it was rebuilt afterwards to the original plan, although the interior changed a great deal.  The 1993 blast also heavily damaged the Liverpool Street train station and the NatWest Tower.  The bombing was the costliest terror attack in financial terms up to that date and remained so until the September 11 attacks eight-and-a-half years later.



The bombing came just over a year after the bombing of the nearby Baltic Exchange and the two attacks prompted the development of the so-called “ring of steel” to protect the City of London.  Many of the financial business in London implemented “disaster recovery plans” in case of further attacks.  By 1994 the police investigating the Bishopgate bombing believed they knew who was responsible but had insufficient evidence to arrest anyone.


The bomb was a 1-tonne ANFO bomb made by the IRA’s South Armagh Brigade and had been smuggled into England.  In March 1993 it was placed in a stolen Iveco tipper truck , which had been stolen from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne .  The bomb was hidden under a layer of tarmac.  On the morning of 24 April two IRA volunteers drove it to Bishopgate and parked the truck outside 99 Bishopgate, which was then the HQ of Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and promptly left the scene in a car driven by another IRA accomplice.  Using a phonebox in Forkhill, Couny Armagh, Northern Ireland, a series of warnings were sent, using recognised codewords and stating: “[there’s] a massive bomb […] clear a wide area.” The first warnings were sent just an hour before the bomb detonated, with the explosive power of 1,200 kg of TNT.  It seems that when the first warning came, police in London were already suspicious of the truck and were making inquiries into it.  This perhaps aided the evacuation of the area.


The blast at 10.27 am created a mushroom cloud that could be seen across much of London and left a 15-foot wide crater in the street.  Buildings up to 500m away were damaged and it estimated that 1,500,000 sq. ft. of office space was affected and 500 tonnes of glass windows were broken.  The NatWest Tower was one of those buildings to suffer heavy damage.  It was the tallest building in London at the time.  The Daily Mail reported: “black gaps punched its fifty-two floors like a mouth full of bad teeth.”  As for St Ethelburga’s Church, it was just seven metres from the blast



The reaction from the City was to call for more measures to protect the financial heart of the country, with one leading figure calling for “a medieval-style walled enclave to prevent terrorist attacks.” The Lord Mayor of London at the time, Francis McWilliams, called the prime minister of the day John Major and reminded him that “the City of London earned £17 billion last year for the nation as a whole. Its operating environment and future must be preserved.”  John Major was determined to ensure that business continued as normal in the City and that his Government would continue to push for a peaceful settlement to the troubles in Northern Ireland, which then had been going on for about 25 years.  He later said:

“Frankly, we thought it was likely to bring the whole process to an end. And we told them repeatedly that that was the case. They assumed that if they bombed and put pressure on the British at Bishopsgate or with some other outrage or other, it would affect our negotiating position to their advantage. In that judgment they were wholly wrong. Every time they did that, they made it harder not easier for any movement to be made towards a settlement. They hardened our attitude, whereas they believed that their actions would soften it. That is a fundamental mistake the IRA have made with successive British governments throughout the last quarter of a century.”

The political leaders in Northern Ireland, John Hume and Gerry Adams, issued a joint statement (their first major one) stating: “We accept that the Irish people as a whole have a right to national self-determination. This is  a view shared by the majority of the people of the island, though not by all its people. […] The exercise of self-determination is a matter for agreement between the people of Ireland.”  The IRA also issued a statement, in which they said: “the British establishment to seize the opportunity and to take the steps needed for ending its futile and costly war in Ireland. We again emphasise that they should pursue the path of peace or resign themselves to the path of war.” They also pressured the British government by sending a statement to non-US foreign-owned businesses in the City warning that “no-one should be misled into underestimating the IRA’s intention to mount future planned attacks into the political and financial heart of the British state […] In the context of present political realities, further attacks on the City of London and elsewhere are inevitable.  This we feel we are bound to  to convey to you directly, to allow you to make fully informed decisions.”


By May 1993 the City of London Police (which is a separate force to the Metropolitan Police) confirmed they were planning a security cordon for the City, conceived by its Commissioner Owen Kelly.  The “ring of steel” was introduced at the beginning of July 1993.  This involved most routes in the City being closed or made exit-only with the remaining eight routes having checkpoints placed on them manned by armed police.  CCTV cameras were also extensively used to monitor each entry point, with cameras reading vehicle registration plates and also monitoring drivers and passengers.  “Camera Watch” was launched in September 1993 to organise cooperation between police-owned cameras and those belonging to private companies and the Corporation of London.  Within 9 months of the attack some 12.5% of buildings had cameras and by 1996 over 1,000 cameras in 376 systems were operational in the City alone.



The disaster recovery plans introduced following the Bishopgate and Baltic Exchange bombings were to prove crucial in coming years.  The lack of such plans was clearly evident following the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing which saw 40% of affected businesses go bankrupt within two years.  Although this affect was not yet clear in April 1993, the reaction to the bombings in London created plans for what financial businesses would do after a bombing.  As a result they were well prepared to cope with the aftermath of the 1996 bombing and from the international fallout of the September 11 attacks.  The 1993 bombing did, however, create a crisis in the insurance industry in the City who faced massive payouts which led to the near-collapse of the Lloyd’s of London market.  This led directly to the Government introducing a scheme known as Pool Re, which essentially made the Government the insurer of last resort for losses over £75 million.



The campaign by the IRA to bomb the UK’s financial district was described as one of the most important of its long campaign but the Bishopgate bomb proved to be the last major bombing in England.  The IRA carried out a number of smaller bomb and mortar attacks in England again in 1993 and early 1994 but on 31 August 1994 declared a “complete cessation of military operations.”  The ceasefire was broken in February 1996 when the IRA bombed London’s Docklands, killing two people.  The Docklands attack was targeting London’s secondary financial district known as Canary Wharf.



Despite the renewed bombings, peace talks continued.  In December 1993 the Irish and British governments signed the Downing Street Declaration.  This stated that the right of the people of Ireland to self-determination would be guaranteed and that Northern Ireland would only be transferred to the Republic of Ireland if a majority of its population was in favour of such a move – which it isn’t.  The Declaration also stated that the people of the island of Ireland had the sole right to solve issues between the North and South by mutual agreement.  This was known as the principle of consent.



The Declaration led to more talks which, although never truly inclusive of all political parties, reached an Agreement on Good Friday 1998, which became known as the Good Friday Agreement.  This created a number of institutions between the North and the Republic as well as between the Republic and the UK.  It also led to the current devolved system of government in Northern Ireland. The Agreement was approved by voters in the Republic in May 1998, allowing the government in Dublin to sign the Agreement and make the necessary constitutional changes.  Voters in Northern Ireland were asked in a referendum if they supported the multi-party agreement section of the Good Friday Agreement, which related to the planned cooperation between parties in the North.  

The Good Friday Agreement came into force on 2 December 1999. The parties that did sign the Agreement, along with the British and Irish governments, were the Ulster Unionist Party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party, the Progressive Unionist Party, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, the Ulster Democratic Party and Labour, which was a coalition of left-wing and labour groups including Militant Tendency (forerunners of the Irish Socialist Party), the Newtownabbey Labour Party and the British and Irish Communist Organisation. The coalition was formed to stand in the 1996 Northern Ireland Forum elections. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was the only major political party in the North to oppose the Agreement.  It is the DUP who, today, are propping up the Conservative government of Theresa May after her inability to win a sufficient enough majority in 2017’s General Election to rule without the support of other parties.