Category: Events
20 February 1962 John Glenn orbits the earth
John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962, on the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, circling the globe three times during a flight lasting
19 February 1942 Japanese bomb Australian city of Darwin
The bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942 was the first and the largest single attack mounted by a foreign power on Australia. 242 Japanese aircraft attacked ships in Darwin’s harbour and the town’s two airfields in an attempt to prevent the Allies from...
18 February 1930 The planet Pluto is discovered
On February 18, 1930, after nearly a year of searching, Clyde Tombaugh discovered a possible moving object on photographic plates taken on January 23 and January 29 of that year. A lesser-quality photograph taken...
14 February 1929 St Valentine’s Day Massacre
The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre is the name given to the 1929 murder of seven mob associates as part of a conflict between two criminal gangs in Chicago. They were the South Side Italian gang led by Al Capone and the North Side Irish...
13 February 1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn expelled from USSR
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer, activist and dissident was deported today from the USSR to Frankfurt in West Germany and stripped of his
12 February 1898 Britain’s first fatal car crash
Henry Lindfield of Brighton became the very first motorist to die from the injuries he received in Britain’s first fatal car crash. Accompanied by his 18 year old son, Henry’s car smashed into a...
22 January It Happened Today…….
1561 Birth of English writer and statesman, Francis Bacon. 1775 Birth of Andre Ampere the French physicist. 1901 Death of Queen Victoria. 1924 Ramsey MacDonald becomes first Labour Prime Minister of Great Britain....
21 January It Happened Today…….
1793 Louis XVI is guillotined. 1846 The first edition of the Daily News, edited by Charles Dickens is published. 1879 Battle of Isandlwana. 1911 The first Monte Carlo car rally takes place. 1924 Death of...
20 January It happened today…….
1779 Death of the stage actor, David Garrick. 1878 Cleopatra’s Needle arrives in London from Alexandria. 1937 Franklin D Roosevelt inaugurated as US President for second time. 1971 RAF Red Arrows display team...
