Category: Events

John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew the modified Vickers Vimy, powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle 360 hp engines. Their altitude varied between sea level and 12,000 ft (3,700 m) and upon take-off they carried 865 imperial gallons (3,900 L)...

The first race took place on 10th June 1829 at Henley on Thames, which Oxford won easily. The race came about as a challenge between two former HarrowSchool pupils, Charles Wordsworth who was at...

When first introduced on 1 June 1946, the licence covering the monochrome-only single-channel BBC television service cost £2. On 1 January 1968, a ‘colour supplement’ of £5 was added to the existing £5 monochrome...

Mathias Rust (born 1 June 1968) is a German aviator known for his illegal landing of a single engine Cessna aircraft near Red Square in Moscow on May 28, 1987. An amateur pilot, with about 50 hours flying time, he flew from Finland to...

After 14 years and 27 deaths while being constructed, the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River was opened, connecting  New York and Brooklyn for the first time in history. Thousands of residents of Brooklyn and ManhattanIsland turned...

On 23 May 1940, Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, who by then was  focused on advocating a negotiated peace, was interned under Defence Regulation 18B along with most active fascists in Britain. His wife...

Following a party at the house of Dr. Richard Arnot and his wife Penny, the bodies of Helen (23) and Johannes Otten (35), a Dutch tugboat captain, were found in the street 70 feet below the Arnot’s sixth...

The Pope was shot four times as he blessed the crowds in St Peter’s Square in Rome, which resulted in a five hour operation to save his lfe. The Pope was being driven in...

In 1835 Rowland Hill published a pamphlet entitled ‘Post Office Reform’ which led to various reforms and the introduction of the first postage stamp. On 10 January 1840, the Uniform Penny Post was established throughout the UK, promising...

In January 1961, Alan Shepard was chosen for the first American manned mission into space. Although the flight was originally scheduled for October 1960, delays meant that this was postponed several times, initially to...

On April 30, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon appeared on national television to announce the invasion of Cambodia by the United States and the need to draft 150,000 more soldiers for an expansion of...

King George VI inaugurated the Festival of Britain and opened the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. The festival was organised to mark the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was...

The Belgrano was launched in 1938 as an American light cruiser – then named the USS Phoenix. The Phoenix was based at PearlHarbour when the naval base was attacked by the Japanese in December 1941. The Phoenix...

The Acts of Union, passed by the English and Scottish Parliaments in 1707, led to the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain on 1 May of that year. The UK Parliament met...

On April 29, 1945, the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberated Dachau Concentration Camp which was the first camp established by the Nazi regime. A major Dachau subcamp was liberated the same day...

Guernica is probably best known to those outside Spain as the scene of the bombing by Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe. It inspired the painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso.

The first decimal coins appeared throughout Britain, in preparation for replacing the current system of pounds, shillings and pence by 1971. The five new pence and ten new pence coins operated alongside the shilling and...

The SS Sirius was a  wooden-hulled steamship built in 1837 for the London-Cork route operated by the St George Steam Packet Company. The next year, she opened transatlantic steam passenger service when she was chartered for two...

On 12 April 1961, aboard Vostok 1, Gagarin became both the first human to travel into space and the first to orbit the earth. His call sign was Kedr (Cedar) In his post-flight report, Gagarin recalled...