1st February

[chenrezig]

1587 Under pressure from her Council, Queen Elizabeth I of England signed the warrant authorising the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.

1709 Scotsman Alexander Selkirk was rescued from an uninhabited desert island (Mas à Tierra, off the coast of Chile), inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

1884 The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary was published. James Murray was its most famous editor but he had only reached the letter T after working 44 hours per week for 35 years, so hundreds of people sent in their own contributions.

1910 The first 80 Labour Exchanges opened in Britain to try and find jobs for the unemployed.

1915 Sir Stanley Matthews, often regarded as one of the greatest English football players, was born. He is the only player to have been knighted while still playing, as well as being the first winner of both the European Footballer of the Year and the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year awards. He played his final competitive game in 1985, at the age of 70.

1930 The first ever 'Times' crossword was published.

1939 A British White Paper proposing the formation of the Home Guard (which became better known as Dad’s Army because of the average age of the volunteers) was published.

1949 The end of clothes rationing in Britain, four years after the end of World War II.

1952 The first TV detector van was demonstrated. It enabled the BBC to track down users of unlicensed television sets in Britain.

1965 Prescriptions on the NHS became free of charge and remained so until June 1968.

1974 Escaped Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs was arrested by Brazilian police in Rio. He escaped extradition because he was the father of a child by his Brazilian girlfriend.

1979 Trevor Francis, aged 24, became the first £1m footballer in England, signing for Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest.

1984 Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, announced that the halfpenny coin would cease to be legal tender. Its fate was sealed when it became more expensive to make than its face value.

2013 Det. Ch. Insp. April Casburn, aged 53, became the first person to be prosecuted and jailed (15 months) as part of the investigation into payments by News of the World journalists to officials.

[annie]

than999

[wendy]

I am at this moment reading a book about Elizabeth executing Queen Mary, so most interesting indeed.

[Rosalind]

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