26th November

[chenrezig]

1703 Henry Winstanley, the engineer who built the first Eddystone lighthouse, was among those who died when it was destroyed in the Great Storm that claimed 9000 lives and lasted from the 25th to the 27th November.

1805 The offficial opening of Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct that carries the Llangollen Canal over the valley of the River Dee in Wales. It is the longest and highest aqueduct in Britain, a Grade I Listed Building and a World Heritage Site.

1864 Oxford professor Charles Dodgson presented a little girl called Alice Liddell with a story she had inspired him to write. It was called Alice in Wonderland and was written under the pen name of Lewis Carroll. A picture of the Oxford shop that was the inspiration for a whole chapter in the Alice in Wonderland stories.

1867 Mrs. Lily Maxwell of Manchester became the first ever woman to vote in a British election, due to a mistake in the electoral register. She had to be escorted to the polling station by a bodyguard to protect her from those opposed to women’s suffrage.

1908 The birth of Lord Forte (Charles Forte), British business magnate and Chairman of Trusthouse Forte, one of the largest hotel and restaurant groups in the world.

1922 Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon, Carter’s sponsor, became the first men to see inside the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun near Luxor since it was sealed 3,000 years previously. Having escaped detection by tomb robbers, it was complete with gold statues and a gold throne inlaid with gems.

1944 World War II: A German V-2 rocket hit a Woolworth's store on New Cross High Street in Lewisham and killed 168 shoppers.

1953 Peers backed the Government's proposals for commercial television.

1954 Donald Campbell's new Bluebird K7 (a turbo jet engined hydroplane) was handed over to him On This Day. Campbell set seven world water speed records in Bluebird K7 and it was in her that he was killed on Coniston Water on 4th January 1967 whilst attempting another water speed record, his target being 300 mph. He is buried in Coniston graveyard.

1968 The new Race Relations Act made it illegal to refuse housing, employment or public services to people because of their ethnic background.

1983 The Brinks Mat security warehouse at London’s Heathrow Airport was robbed of £25 million worth of gold bars weighing three tons. The gang gained entry to the warehouse from an insider security guard called Anthony Black. The robbers expected to steal £3 million in cash, but when they arrived, they found the gold bullion, most of which was never recovered.

1987 Drawings of English bank notes by US artist James Boggs were declared works of art and not illegal replicas of UK currency by an Old Bailey jury.

1988 Mrs. Rita Lockett of Torquay, Devon, spent £10,000 to repeat her daughter’s wedding two months after the event, because she did not like the video. The couple went through the reception with all 200 wedding guests wearing the same outfits and having to listen to the same speeches, this time with a professional video crew on hand.

1992 It was announced that as from 1993 the Queen would make arrangements to pay income tax, the first British monarch to do so since the 1930s.

[Misspears]

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[Rosalind]

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