16th February

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16th February

Postby chenrezig » 16 Feb 2016, 06:45

1646 The Battle of Torrington, in Devon. It was the last major battle of the first English Civil War and marked the end of the Royalist resistance in the west country.

1659 The first British cheque (for £10) was written by Nicholas Vanacker and is now in the archives of the National Westminster Bank.

1801 Pitt (the Younger) resigned as British Prime Minister when George III rejected his plans for the emancipation of Irish Catholics.

1923 Howard Carter, having discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun 12 months previously, lifted the lid off the sarcophagus to reveal a golden effigy of the young king.

1927 The birth of actress June Muriel Brown, MBE. She is best known for her role as the busy-body, chain-smoking gossip Dot Cotton in the long-running British soap opera EastEnders.

1940 World War II: In a daring night raid, known as the Altmark incident, a boarding party from HMS Cossack successfully rescued 299 British prisoners of war from the Altmark, a 12,000 ton German tanker, in Norwegian waters. The Altmark was returning to Germany with the merchant sailors who had been picked up from ships sunk by the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee.

1946 The birth of actor Ian Lavender. His best remembered role was as Private Frank Pike, the youngest member and 'stupid boy' of the platoon in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army.

1950 The birth of Peter Hain Labour Party politician. He served in the Cabinets of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, firstly as Leader of the House of Commons under Blair and as both Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales under Brown.

1957 Death of the politician Leslie Hore-Belisha, minister of Transport who introduced the driving test, the Highway Code and the Belisha beacon used at zebra crossings.

1965 A 2nd report from British Railways' Board chairman Dr. Richard Beeching outlined transport needs for the following 25 years. The report followed his 1st controversial review of the state of the railways, published in 1963 in which he said the system was uneconomic and under-used, and recommended that a quarter of the railway system should be shut down.

1972 Many homes and businesses were without electricity for up to nine hours a day from this day. Miners, into the sixth week of their strike over pay, picketed power stations and all other sources of fuel supply in an attempt to step up pressure on the Government.

1985 Ministry of Defence assistant secretary Clive Ponting resigned from his post. He was charged with leaking two documents about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano in the 1982 Falklands War.

1989 Dr. Raymond Crockett, a Harley Street nephrologist, resigned as the director of the National Kidney Centre after revelations that kidneys had been purchased from impoverished Turks to be used in transplants for wealthy patients.

1990 Wives of Royal Navy seamen protested over a decision to allow WRENs (women sailors) to go to sea.

2005 The Kyoto Protocol that aimed to slow down global warming took effect, but the US and Australia refused to support it.
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Re: 16th February

Postby annie » 16 Feb 2016, 09:15

than999
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