25th July

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25th July

Postby chenrezig » 25 Jul 2016, 05:25

1554 Queen Mary I married Philip II of Spain at Winchester Cathedral.

1603 James VI of Scotland was crowned as King James I of England, bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union with political union occurring in 1707.

1795 The first stone of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct was laid. The aqueduct carries the Llangollen Canal over the valley of the River Dee in Wrexham in north east Wales. It is a Grade I Listed Building, a World Heritage Site and is the longest and highest aqueduct in Britain.

1797 British naval commander Horatio Nelson's right arm was shattered by grapeshot during an assault on Tenerife in the battle of Santa Cruz. The injured arm was amputated later. This followed the loss of his sight in his right eye some three years earlier. Nelson's flagship, Victory is now preserved at Portsmouth.

1814 The chief engineer at the Killingworth colliery, George Stephenson, unveiled Blücher, his steam powered locomotive that could haul eight carriages loaded with 30 tons of coal at the break-neck speed of 4 mph

1843 The death of Charles Macintosh, Scottish chemist and inventor. He invented waterproof clothing, hence the term macintosh or mac.

1865 The death of Dr. James (Jane) Barry, the first woman doctor (because she masqueraded as a man).

1907 Sir Robert Baden-Powell began setting up his experimental camp on Brownsea Island near Poole to test the feasibility of Scouting.

1909 Frenchman Louis Blériot won the Daily Mail prize for the first successful flight across the English Channel. He made the trip in 37 minutes, landing close to Dover Castle. His success delighted the French but worried the British, who felt that they had suddenly become vulnerable to air attack.

1944 The first jet fighter to engage an enemy in combat was a Messerschmitt 262, over Munich, when it was intercepted by a Mosquito of 544 Squadron.

1959 A hovercraft, the SR.N1, designed by Christopher Cockerell, made its first English Channel crossing from Dover to Calais. The acronym SR.N1 stood for Saunders-Roe Nautical 1.

1962 In London, the Buckingham Palace Art Gallery officially opened to the public.

1978 The first test-tube baby in Britain was born Louise Joy Brown, at Oldham Hospital, Lancashire. It had taken 12 years of research by gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and Dr Robert Edwards to make the birth possible. Louise weighed 5lb 12 oz and was delivered by caesarean section.

2002 The Queen opened the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. Around one million visitors are thought to have gone to Manchester to see the event live and the world television audience was estimated to top one billion.

2009 The last British survivor of the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, died, aged 111. He was honoured at a service at Wells Cathedral, in Somerset and was later buried in a private service at Monkton Coombe church near Bath. There is a memorial to him at Cathedral Green, close to Wells Cathedral. In 2007 he became the UK's oldest author when he collaborated with Richard van Emden to write The Last Fighting Tommy, a detailed account of his life.

2013 The retirement, aged 77, of James Alexander Gordon, voice of the classified football results for 40 years. He pioneered the much-mimicked technique of raising his tone for the winning side's score, and dropping it in sympathy for the losers. He never officially read the scoreline with which he was indelibly associated - 'East Fife 4. Forfar 5.' but in October 2011 fans across the country raised their hopes during a clash which finished, disappointingly, East Fife 4 Forfar 3!
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