Timeline Great Britain (G) 1942-1971
Return to home
1942 Feb 9,
Chiang Kai-shek met with Sir Stafford Cripps, the British viceroy in
India. Detachment 101 harried the Japanese in Burma and provided
close support for regular Allied forces.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1942 Feb 12, In Palestine
British police killed Avraham Stern (34), founder of the
breakaway militant Zionist group named Lehi. British forces had
begun shooting members of “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”
(Lehi) after the group had ambushed British soldiers and solicited
fascist and Nazi support for their campaign.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avraham_Stern)(Econ, 5/3/14, p.75)
1942 Feb 13, Hitler's invasion
of England was cancelled.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1942 Feb 15, British forces in
Singapore surrendered to Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita.
Yamashita prevailed, when British Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur Percival and
130,000 Empire troops surrendered. It was the largest surrender in
British history.
(HN, 2/15/98)(AP, 2/15/98)
1942 Feb 27, British Commandos
raided a German radar station at Bruneval on the French coast. The
warrior spies of the Abwehr, Germany's intelligence agency, were the
Brandenburg commandos.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1942 Mar 3, The RAF raided the
industrial suburbs of Paris.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1942 Mar 21, Convoy QP9
departed Great Britain to Murmansk.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1942 Mar 27, Michael York,
actor (Cabaret, Logan's Run, 3 Musketeers), was born in England.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 27-28, Allies raided
the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.
(HN, 3/27/98)(MC, 3/27/02)
1942 Mar 28, British naval
forces continued the raid on the Nazi-occupied French port of St.
Nazaire. British Bomber Command launched an attack on the German
city of Lubeck with 234 RAF bombers.
(AP, 3/28/97)(HN, 3/28/98)(MC, 3/28/02)
1942 Mar 28, A British ship,
the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was
specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France,
exploded, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship
Tirpitz.
(HN, 3/28/00)
1942 Apr 23, A 4-day allied
bombing of Rostock began.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1942 Apr 23, Luftwaffe bombed
Exeter.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1942 Apr 24, Luftwaffe bombed
Exeter.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1942 Apr 26, Luftwaffe bombed
Bath.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1942 May 3, The Luftwaffe
bombed Exeter.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1942 May 14, The British, in
retreat from Burma, reached India.
(HN, 5/14/98)
1942 May 26, Tank battle at Bir
Hakeim: African corps vs. British army.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1942 Mar 29, British cruiser
Trinidad torpedoed itself in the Barents Sea.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1942 May 30, The Royal
Air Force under RAF Commander Arthur Harris launched the first 1,000
plane raid over Germany. 1,047 RAF bombers bombed Cologne.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Cologne_in_World_War_II)
1942 May 31, Luftwaffe bombed
Canterbury.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1942 Jun 21, President
Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met in Washington, DC.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1942 Jun 22, A Jewish Brigade,
attached by British Army, formed.
(MC, 6/22/02)
1942 Jun 25, Some 1,000 British
Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany, during World War II.
(AP, 6/25/97)
1942 Jul 11, In the longest
bombing raid of World War II, 1,750 British Lancaster bombers
attacked the Polish port of Danzig. The Polish submarine Orzel
escaped from internment and went on to fight the Germans against
long odds.
(HN, 7/11/98)
1942 Jul 22, The Americans
approved Operation Torch, the British alternative to an invasion of
Europe. The design of Operation Torch was to secure all of North
Africa for the Allies.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1942 Jul 26, RAF bombed
Hamburg.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1942 Jul, Dr. Paul Fildes led a
British test of anthrax in a bomb on Gruinard Island in northwest
Scotland. The island became contaminated from tests and Britain
acquired it for £500. Cleanup was undertaken in 1986 and the island
was returned to its original owners in 1990.
(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A23)(Econ, 5/8/04, p.78)
1942 Aug 10, Gen. Bernard Law
Montgomery was named commandant of the British 8th Army campaigning
in N. Africa. He arrived Aug 13.
(www.topedge.com/panels/ww2/na/frame.html)
1942 Aug 11, The German
submarine U-73 attacked a Malta bound British convoy and sank the
HMS Eagle, one of the world's first aircraft carriers.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1942 Aug 12, British premier
Churchill arrived in Moscow to meet Stalin.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1942 Aug 19, About 5,000
Canadian and 2,000 British soldiers launched a disastrous raid
against the Germans at Dieppe, France. Over 3,600 men perished
in this battle. The information gathered from this landing was
considered valuable for planning the successful Allied landings in
Northern Africa, Sicily, and Normandy, France. Brit. Col. Pat
Porteous (d.2000) received a Victoria Cross for his valor in the
attack which was aimed at gaining experience for the later D-Day
invasion.
(AP, 8/19/97)(HN, 8/19/98)(SFC, 10/16/00,
p.A22)(MC, 8/19/02)
1942 Aug 31, The British army
under General Bernard Law Montgomery defeated Field Marshal Erwin
Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Battle of Alam Halfa in Egypt.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1942 Sep 2, Eric Ravilious
(b.1903), English painter, died when the aircraft he was on was lost
off Iceland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Ravilious)(Econ., 4/18/15, p.76)
1942 Sep 5, British & US
bombed Le Havre & Bremen.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1942 Sep 10, RAF dropped
100,000 bombs on Dusseldorf.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1942 Sep 10, British troops
landed on Madagascar.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1942 Sep 17, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill met with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in
Moscow as the German Army rammed into Stalingrad.
(HN, 9/17/98)
1942 Oct 2, The "Queen Mary"
sliced the cruiser "Curacao" in half, killing 338.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1942 Oct 23, During World War
II, Britain launched a major offensive against Axis forces at El
Alamein in Egypt.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1942 Oct 25, In the 3rd day of
battle at El Alamein (Egypt), the British continued an offensive
move.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1942 Oct 28, The 6th day of the
battle at El Alamein. British offensive under Montgomery.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1942 Nov 2, 11th day of battle
at El Alamein, Egypt: British made an assault on Tel el Aqqaqir.
Montgomery defeated Rommel in battle of Alamein Egypt.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1942 Nov 4, The 13th day of
battle at El Alamein: Axis Africa corps retreated from El Alamein in
North Africa in a major victory for British forces commanded by
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
(AP, 11/4/97)(MC, 11/4/01)
1942 Nov 8, Operation Torch
began during World War II as U.S. and British forces landed in
French North Africa.
(AP, 11/8/97)
1942 Nov 10, Winston Churchill
delivered a speech in London in which he said, "I have not become
the King's First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the
British Empire."
(AP, 11/10/02)
1942 Nov 10, US and British
troops occupied Oran, Algeria.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1942 Nov 20, British 8th Army
recaptured Benghazi, Libya.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1942 Nov, Sir William Beveridge
(1879-1963) in his Social Insurance and Allied Services, aka the
Beveridge Report, laid the foundations of Britain’s post-war welfare
state. He committed the government to slaying “five giant evils”
(squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease). In 1953 he
authored “Power and Influence.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beveridge_Report)(Econ, 11/12/05,
p.78)
1942 Nov, A Royal Air Force
bomber and 2 gliders, carrying 34 British commandos, crash landed in
Norway. This was part of Operation Freshman, which planned a raid on
the heavy-water plant at Vemork. The survivors were captured by
German soldiers and executed by the Gestapo.
(ON, 4/07, p.2)
1942 Dec 19, British advanced
40 miles into Burma in a drive to oust the Japanese from the colony.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1942 Nikolaus Pevsner
(1902-1983), German-born British architectural researcher, authored
“An Outline of European Architecture.”
(Econ, 11/5/11,
p.103)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaus_Pevsner)
1942 The film "Mrs. Miniver"
with Greer Garson was directed by William Wyler. It won 5 awards
including an Oscar for best picture of the year. Garson won an Oscar
for her role. The film was based on the life of Joyce Anstruther
(1901-1953), pen name Jan Struther, who wrote for London’s Times
newspaper in the late 1930s. In 2002 Ysenda Maxtone Graham authored
"The Real Mrs. Miniver: Jan Struther’s Story."
(SFEC, 3/23/97, DB p.38)(SFC, 3/14/01, p.E1)(TVM,
1975, p.382)(SSFC, 11/3/02, p.M6)
1942 Thomas Peirson Frank
(d.1951), chief engineer for London County Council, was knighted for
leading work to repair London’s flood defenses hit in German air
raids. Details of his job were kept under wraps. He later became
president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He died in 1951.
(AP, 10/29/14)
1942 Walter Richard Sickert
(b.1860), English Impressionist painter, died. In 2002 Patricia
Cornwell, crime writer, reported that he was Jack the Ripper, the
murderer of 5 London prostitutes in 1888.
(WSJ, 9/27/01, p.A16)(SSFC, 2/24/02, Par p.2)
1943 Jan 8, The British handed
Madagascar over to the Free French.
(HN, 1/8/99)
1943 Jan 11, The United States
and Britain signed treaties relinquishing extraterritorial rights in
China.
(AP, 1/11/98)
1943 Jan 13, General Leclerc's
Free French forces merged with the British under Montgomery in
Libya.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1943 Jan 14, President
Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opened a
wartime conference in Casablanca.
(AP, 1/14/98)
1943 Jan 21, A Nazi daylight
air raid killed 34 in a London school.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1943 Jan 24, President
Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill concluded a wartime
conference in Casablanca, Morocco.
(AP, 1/24/98)
1943 Feb 8, British General
Wingate led a guerrilla force of "Chindits" behind the Japanese
lines in Burma. Detachment 101’s support of Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate’s
Chindits and Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill’s Marauders was crucial to the
Allied success in Burma and to the eventual victory in Southeast
Asia.
(HN, 2/8/98)(www.chindits.info/)
1943 Feb 25, George Harrison
(d. Nov 29, 2001) of the Beatles was born.
(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A1)(SFC, 12/4/01, p.A2)
1943 Feb 28, In Operation
Gunnerside Norwegian commandos flown in from Britain bombed the Nazi
heavy water plant near Rjukan. The raid was later depicted in the
1965 film "The Heroes of Telemark." The 9 commandos included Claus
Helberg (d.2003), Knut Haukelid (d.1994) and Joachim Ronneberg
(1919-2018). In 2016 Neil Bascomb authored "The Winter Fortress: The
Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb."
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.A27)(ON, 4/07, p.4)(SFC,
10/25/18, p.C4)
1943 Mar 1, The British RAF
conducted strategic bombing raids on all European railway lines.
From 1939 to 1945, R.A.F. pilots and air crews waged war on Germany
from inside Hitler's Reich.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1943 Mar 2, The center of
Berlin was bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs were dropped in
a half hour.
(HN, 3/2/99)
1943 Mar 3, A bomb fleeing
crowd fell into London shelter and 173 died.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1943 Mar 5, RAF bombed Essen,
Germany. [see Mar 6]
(MC, 3/5/02)
1943 Mar 5, The Gloster Meteor
first flew. Great Britain emerged from World War II with a decided
head start in jet technology, the only Allied power to have had a
jet fighter operational in squadron strength before the German
surrender on May 8, 1945. On July 21, 1944, the first two production
Meteors arrived at Culmhead and formed the nucleus of No. 616
Squadron, Royal Air Force (RAF). Appropriately, the Meteor’s first
duty was to defend Britain from attacks by German V-1 pulse
jet-powered guided bombs, of which they destroyed 13 by the end of
the war. Meteor IIIs of No. 616 Squadron were committed to
Continental Europe in the last months of the conflict, but they
never got the opportunity to meet the German Me-262A in battle.
(HNQ, 8/21/01)
1943 Mar 6, British RAF fliers
bombed Essen and the Krupp arms works in the Ruhr, Germany.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1943 Mar 21, British 8th army
opened an assault on Mareth line, Tunisia.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1943 Mar 29, Eric Idle,
comedian, actor (Monty Python), was born in England.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1943 Mar 29, John Major,
British PM (1990-97), was born.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)(MC, 3/29/02)
1943 Apr 6, British and
American armies army linked up in Africa.
(HN, 4/6/98)
1943 Apr 22, RAF shot down 14
German transport planes over Mediterranean Sea.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1943 Apr 29, Noel Coward's
"Present Laughter," premiered in London.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1943 Apr 30, The British
submarine HMS Seraph dropped “the man who never was," a dead man
(Welsh laborer Glyndwr Michael) was planted with false invasion
plans, into the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. Operation
Mincemeat was based on a 1939 suggestion by Lt. Commander Ian
Fleming, and was used to cover Britain’s invasion of Sicily. Details
of the operation were kept secret until 1953 when Ewen Montagu
published “The Man Who Never Was.”
(ON, 10/2010, p.4)
1943 Apr 30, Beatrice Potter
Webb (b.1858), British socialist, reformer and writer, died. Her
books included “My Apprenticeship” (1943).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Webb)
1943 May 6, British 1st army
opened an assault on Tunis.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1943 May 15, Halifax bombers
sank U-463.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1943 May 19, In an address to
the U.S. Congress, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pledged
his country's full support in the war against Japan.
(AP, 5/19/97)
1943 May 29, Churchill,
Marshall and Eisenhower met in the Confederacy of Algiers.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1943 Jun 23, RAF discovered and
bombed Werner von Braun's V1/V2-base in Peenemunde.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1943 Jun 24, Royal Air Force
Bombers hammered Muelheim, Germany, in a drive to cripple the Ruhr
industrial base.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1943 Jun 24, Allies began a
10-day fire bombing of Hamburg.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1943 Jul 3, Liberator bombers
sank U-628.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1943 Jul 10, US and British
forces completed their amphibious landing in Sicily in Operation
Husky.
(AP, 7/10/97)(HN, 7/10/01)(MC, 7/10/02)
1943 Jul 18, There was a
British assault on Catania, Sicily.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1943 Jul 24-1943-Aug 2, The RAF
and American planes bombed Hamburg. Firestorms from the bombing left
at least 40,000 dead in the 1st 3 days. American B-17 Fortresses
flew 252 daylight sorties in the two days following the first of 4
RAF night raids. Sir Arthur Harris directed 4 major raids against
Hamburg in the space of ten nights, known as “Operation Gomorrah.”
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhamburg.htm)
1943 Jul 26, Mick [Michael
Phillip] Jagger, musician, member of the Rolling Stones, was born in
Dartford, Kent.
(SFEM,11/9/97, p.9)(HN, 7/26/01)
1943 Aug 2, The 10-day allied
bombing of Hamburg, Germany, ended.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhamburg.htm)
1943 Aug 17, The Allied
conquest of Sicily was completed as U.S. and British forces entered
Messina.
(AP, 8/17/97)(HN, 8/17/98)
1943 Aug 18, The Royal Air
Force Bomber Command completed the first major strike against the
German missile development facility at Peenemunde.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1943 Aug 25, Lord Mountbatten
was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in SE Asia.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1943 Sep 3, The British Eighth
Army invaded Italy, landing at Calabria, during World War II, the
same day Italy signed a secret armistice with the Allies.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)
1943 Sep 19, Liberator bombers
sank U-341.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1943 Sep, Pearl Cornioley
(1916-2008), a British agent, parachuted into France as a secret
agent to help arm and organize the Resistance. In 1995 she wrote an
autobiography and in 2006 Royal Air Force officers presented her
with her parachute wings in a ceremony at her Paris retirement home.
(AP, 3/8/08)
1943 Oct 7, Radclyffe Hall
(b.1880), English author of the lesbian classic "The Well of
Loneliness" (1928), died. The book was the subject of an obscenity
trial in Britain which resulted in all copies being ordered
destroyed.
(AP,
9/29/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radclyffe_Hall)
1943 Oct 17, British Liberators
sank U-540 and U-631.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1943 Oct 19, Delegates from the
U.S.S.R. met with representatives from the Allied nations of Great
Britain, the U.S., and China, in an attempt to hammer out a greater
consensus on war aims, and to improve the rapidly cooling relations
between the Soviet Union and its allies.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1943 Oct, The United Nations
War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) was established with a secretariat in
London.
(Econ, 1/29/11, p.84)
1943 Sep, Jeannie Rousseau,
code name Amniarix, collected enough information on V-2 rockets from
German officers in France to send a detailed report to England.
Reginald Jones, chief of Britain's scientific intelligence, included
her text in his book "The Wizard War."
(SFC, 1/2/99, p.A10)
1943 Oct 1, Allied forces
captured Naples during World War II. British troops in Italy entered
Naples and occupied Foggia airfield.
(HFA, '96, p.38)(AP, 10/1/97)(HN, 10/1/98)
1943 Nov 7, British troops
launched a limited offensive along the coast of Burma.
(HN, 11/7/98)
1943 Nov 18, 444 British
bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1943 Nov 22, RAF began bombing
of Berlin.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1943 Nov 26, The HMT Rohna, a
British transport ship carrying American soldiers, was hit by a
German missile off Algeria; 1,138 men were killed, including 1,015
American troops.
(AP, 11/26/01)
1943 Nov 28, President
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet
leader Josef Stalin met in Tehran, Iran, to map out strategy during
World War II.
(AP, 11/28/97)(DTnet 11/28/97)(HN, 11/28/98)
1943 Dec 1, President
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet
leader Josef Stalin concluded their Tehran conference and agreed to
Operation Overlord (D-Day).
(AP, 12/1/00)
1943 Dec 22, Beatrix Potter
(b.1866), English author, died. She first told the story of Peter
Rabbit in the form of a "picture letter" to Noel Moore, the son of
Potter's former governess in 1893. A 2nd illustrated letter the same
month later became “The Tale of Jeremy Fisher.” The “Tale of Peter
Rabbit” was published in 1901. At her death she bequeathed all her
holdings, 14 farms and 4,000 acres of land, to the National Trust.
(Econ, 1/6/07,
p.67)(www.visitcumbria.com/bpotter.htm)
1943 Dec 23, Gen. Montgomery
was appointed British commandant for D-day.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1943 Dec 26, The 32,000-ton
German battleship, Scharnhorst was sunk by British ships in an
Arctic fight.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1943 Dec 31, Ben Kingsley,
actor (Gandhi, Betrayal, Maurice), was born in Scarborough, England.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1943 Gladwyn Jebb (1900-1996),
British diplomat, prepared the early drafts for the proposed UN
Charter.
(SFC, 10/26/96, p.A20)
1943 Anthony E. Pratt (d.1994),
fire warden in Leeds, England, conceived the game of "Clue," based
on a pre-war social game called Murder. It was published by
Waddington’s in 1948.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C14)
1943 British scientists led by
Tommy Flowers developed Colossus, the world’s first large electronic
valve programmable logic calculator, in order to break the German
communication’s code. Colossus is considered by many to be the
world‘s first digital, programmable electronic computer. Its
existence was only made public in 1989!
(Wired, 10/96, p.78)(HNQ, 8/16/00)
1943 Britain’s National Trust
purchased the stone circles of Avebury, Windham Hill and adjoining
lands.
(SSFC, 12/24/00, p.T4)
1943 Arthur Osborne, ceramic
designer, died in England. His business, which made plaster-of-Paris
plaques, continued operations under his daughter until 1965. W. H.
Bossons bought the company in 1971, removed the “AO” mark and
operated until 1997.
(SFC, 10/24/07, p.G2)
1943 British air strikes in
Greece hit the railway station and port of Thessaloniki. Hundreds of
local inhabitants died. One bomb that failed to detonate was
discovered in 2017 and was successfully defused following an
evacuation of tens of thousands.
(AFP, 2/12/17)
1943 In India as many as three
million people died in 1943 after Japan captured neighboring Burma
-- a major source of rice imports -- and British colonial rulers in
India stockpiled food for soldiers and war workers.
(AFP, 4/9/19)
1943-1947 Archibald Wavell (1883-1950), British
Field Marshal, served as the penultimate viceroy of India. In 2009
Adrian Fort authored “Archibald Wavell: The Life and Times of an
Imperial Servant.”
(Econ, 1/17/09,
p.82)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Wavell,_1st_Earl_Wavell)
1944 Jan 2, The first Atlantic
convoy that used the new antisubmarine helicopter patrol capability
sailed from New York to Liverpool, UK, with three HNS-1 helicopters.
(www.gerlecreek.com/coolplaces/pamphlettrial1c.pdf)
1944 Jan 4, The British Fifth
Army attacked Monte Cassino, Italy.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1944 Jan 15, General Eisenhower
arrived in England.
(MC, 1/15/02)
1944 Jan 16, Gen. Dwight D.
Eisenhower assumed supreme command of the Allied Expeditionary Force
in London.
(AP, 1/16/98)(HN, 1/16/99)
1944 Jan 19, In England Helen
Duncan (1896-1956), a Scottish spiritualist in Portsmouth, was
arrested for informing an audience of the sinking of two British
warships long before the news was officially made public. She was
found guilty of witchcraft and jailed for nine months. When
re-elected in 1951, Churchill repealed the 1735 witchcraft act but
Duncan's conviction was never quashed. In 2007 her granddaughter
launched a fresh campaign to gain a posthumous pardon for Britain's
last convicted witch.
(AP, 1/15/07)
1944 Jan 20, RAF dropped 2300
1-ton bombs on Berlin.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1944 Jan 21, Some 649 British
bombers attacked Magdeburg.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1944 Jan 21, Some 447 German
bombers attacked London.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1944 Jan 28, 683 British
bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1944 Feb 2, Andrew Davis,
conductor, was born in Ashbridge, England.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1944 Feb 15, 891 British
bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1944 Feb 22, In England 10
American airmen were killed when their crippled B-17G Flying
Fortress crashed in Sheffield. The pilot avoided a schoolyard brawl
in Endcliffe Park and crashed in nearby woods.
(AP, 2/19/19)
1944 Mar 1, Roger Daltrey
Hammersmith, rocker, actor, producer (The Who-Tommy), was born in
London, England.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1944 Mar 10, The Irish refused
to oust all Axis envoys and denied the accusation of spying on
Allied troops.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1944 Mar 12, Great Britain
barred all travel to neutral Ireland, which was suspected of
collaborating with Nazi Germany.
(HN, 3/12/99)
1944 Mar 22, Over 600 8th Air
Force bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1944 Mar 23, Nicholas Alkemade
fell 5,500 meter without a parachute and lived. [see Mar 25]
(SS, 3/23/02)
1944 Mar 24, 811 British
bombers attacked Berlin.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1944 Mar 24, British Major Orde
Wingate (b.1903) died along with nine others in an air crash in
northeast India. He was flying in the USAAF B-25H-1-NA Mitchell
bomber, 43-4242, of the 1st Air Commando Group. He is known for
creating special military units in Palestine in the 1930s, and in
Abyssinia, Sudan and Burma during World War II.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orde_Wingate)
1944 Mar 25, RAF Sgt. Nickolas
Alkemade survived a jump from his Lancaster bomber from 18,000 feet
without a parachute. [see Mar 23]
(MC, 3/25/02)
1944 Mar 26, 705 British
bombers attacked Essen.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1944 Mar 30, 781 British
bombers attacked Nuremberg.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1944 Apr 3, British dive
bombers attacked the battle cruiser Tirpitz.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1944 Apr 4, British troops
captured Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1944 Apr 5, 140 Lancasters
bombed airplane manufacturer in Toulouse.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1944 Apr 24, British air force
bombers hammered a former Jesuit college housing the Bavarian
Academy of Science. Anton Spitaler (1910-2003), an Arabic scholar at
the academy, later lamented the loss of a unique photo archive of
ancient manuscripts of the Quran. His story however was a lie, and
the collection survived hidden in his hands.
(WSJ, 1/12/08, p.A1)
1944 April 28, Exercise "Tiger"
ended with 749 U.S. soldiers and sailors killed, when their D-Day
landing practice was attacked by German torpedo boats off the south
coast of England. The casualties were not announced until nearly two
months after the Normandy invasion. Full details were not known
until 1974.
(MC, 4/28/02)(AP, 4/27/04)
1944 May 5, John Rhys-Davies,
actor (Sir Edward-Quest, Sliders), was born in Salisbury England.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1944 May 14, 91 German bombers
harassed Bristol.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1944 May 15, Eisenhower,
Montgomery, Churchill and George VI discussed the D-Day plan.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1944 May 25, Frank Oz,
puppeteer (Sesame St, Muppet Show), was born in Heresford, England.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1944 May 29, British troops
occupied Aprilia, Italy.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1944 May, Britain’s government
decided to bulldoze the village of Heath Row to accommodate an
expansion of a nearby aerodrome. Residents at Heathrow were evicted
to make way for a new airport. It opened with two runways in 1946.
(Econ, 7/20/13, p.51)(Econ, 10/15/16, p.51)
1944 Jun 1, The British
Broadcasting Corp. broadcasted a line of poetry by the 19th century
French poet Paul Verlaine. It was a coded message intended to warn
the French resistance that the D-Day invasion was imminent, "The
long sobs of the violins of autumn."
(DTnet 6/1/97)
1944 Jun 6, By the end of D-Day
156,000 Allied soldiers had come ashore on the Normandy beaches with
losses of 2,500 men. By the end of the day, the Allies had
established a tenuous beachhead that would lead to an offensive that
pinned Adolf Hitler's Third Reich between two pincers--the Western
Allies and the already advancing Soviets--accelerating the end of
World War II. A million Allied troops, under the overall command of
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, moved onto five Normandy beachheads in
three weeks. Operations “Neptune” and “Overlord” put forces on the
beaches and supplies aimed at the liberation of Europe and the
conquest of Germany. Operation Overlord landed 400,000 Allied
American, British, and Canadian troops on the beaches of Normandy,
France. In addition, US and British airborne forces landed behind
the German lines and US Army Rangers scaled the cliffs at Pointe de
Hoc. More than 6,000 trucks of the Red Ball Express kept gasoline
and other vital supplies rolling in as American troops and tanks
pushed the Germans back toward their homeland.
(SDUT, 6/6/97, p.B9)(HN, 6/6/98)(HNPD,
6/6/99)(ON, 2/08, p.12)
1944 Jun 6, The code names for
the beaches used by the British for the D-day invasion of Normandy
were Sword and Gold.
(HNQ, 8/13/98)
1944 Jun 13, Only one week
after the Normandy invasion, the first German V-1 buzz bomb, also
called the doodlebug (Fieseler Fi-103), was fired at London. The
first guided missile to be used in force, the V-1 was powered by a
pulse-jet engine and resembled a small aircraft. Only one of the
four missiles London saw that day caused any casualties, but a
steady stream of V-1s causing severe damage and casualties fell on
London in coming months. At times, nearly 100 bombs fell each day.
Many German buzz bombs never reached their targets because of
primitive guidance systems or because they were destroyed in flight
by anti-aircraft fire or intercepting Allied fighters.
(www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/v1.htm)(AP, 6/13/97)(HNQ,
6/13/98)
1944 Jun 25, British assault at
Caen, Normandy.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1944 Jun, Frank Thompson (23),
British soldier and poet, was captured and executed in Bulgaria. In
2012 Peter Conradi authored “A Very English Hero: The Making of
Frank Thompson.”
{Britain, Poet, WWII}
(Economist, 9/8/12, p.82)
1944 Jul 1, Over 2500 were
killed in London and SE England by German flying bombs.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1944 Jul 15, Greenwich
Observatory was damaged by German V1 rocket.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1944 Jul 18, British Mosquitos
attacked Cologne and Berlin.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1944 Jul 20, A heavy storm
hampered a British offensive at Caen.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1944 Aug 4, British 8th army
reached the suburbs of Florence, Italy.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1944 Aug 4, A Halifax JP-276A
took off on its final flight from the Italian city of Brindisi
around 8 p.m., to drop weapons, ammunition and medical supplies for
resistance fighters involved in the Warsaw Uprising against the
Nazis. The plane was shot down by Poland's Nazis occupiers and
crashed near the town of Dabrowa Tarnowska, in southern Poland.
Remnants were recovered in 2006 and the remains of the crew, 5
Canadians and 2 Britons, were formally buried in 2007.
(AP, 10/4/07)
1944 Aug 12, Churchill and Tito
met in Naples.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1944 Sep 12, A US submarine
patrol that included the USS Pampanito, the Growler and the Sealion
II, came upon a Japanese convoy carrying war material. The Japanese
transport Kachidoki Maru, carrying over 900 British soldier, was
sunk by the Pampanito. Much of the convoy was sunk including most of
some 2,000 Allied prisoners of war. The subs after chasing
stragglers of the convoy returned to find 159 British and Australian
survivors clinging to wreckage [see Sep 14]. Some 1000 POWs from
Australia were on the Japanese freighter Enoura Maru sunk by the USS
Sealion. Alistair Urquhart of Scotland, a prisoner on the Kachidoki
Maru, was picked up 5 days later by a Japanese whaling ship and
taken to Japan, where he was forced to work in a coal mine.
Kachidoki Maru had been captured earlier in the war as the President
Harrison home ported in SF. The Pampanito was later berthed as a
visitor attraction in SF. In 2008 Urquhart (89) visited the
Pampanito.
(SFC, 5/27/97, p.A17)(SFC,12/5/97, p.C3)(SFC,
9/17/08, p.B1)
1944 Sep 13, Heath Robinson
(b.1872), English cartoonist, died. He is best known for drawings of
eccentric machines and "Heath Robinson" has entered the language as
a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible
contraption.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Robinson)
1944 Sep 14, The submarine USS
Pampanito picked up 73 allied prisoners left adrift following the
Sep 12 submarine attack on a Japanese convoy that included the
transport ship Rakuyo Maru.
(SFC, 3/18/09, p.B2)
1944 Aug 15, American, British
and French forces landed on the southern coast of France, between
Toulon and Cannes, in Operation Dragoon.
(AP, 8/15/97)(HN, 8/15/98)
1944 Aug 20, United States and
British forces closed the pincers on the German 7th Army in the
Falaise-Argentan pocket in France.
(HN, 8/20/98)(MC, 8/20/02)
1944 Aug 20, The US liberty
ship SS Richard Montgomery was wrecked off the Nore in the Thames
Estuary, with some 1500 tons of explosives. As of 2008 it continued
to be a hazard to the area.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery)
1944 Aug 21, The US, Britain,
the Soviet Union and China opened the Dumbarton Oaks conference in
Washington, D.C. It laid the foundation for the establishment of the
UN.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.T10)(AP, 8/21/07)
1944 Aug 23, A US B-24 crashed
into a school in Freckelton, England, and 76 were killed.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1944 Aug 31, The British Eighth
Army penetrated the German Gothic Line in Italy.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1944 Sep 4, British troops
liberated Antwerp, Belgium.
(HN, 9/4/98)
1944 Sep 6, During World War
II, the British government relaxed blackout restrictions and
suspended compulsory training for the Home Guard.
(AP, 9/6/97)
1944 Sep 8, Germany's V-2
offensive against England began. The 1st V-2 rockets landed in
London & Antwerp.
(HN, 9/8/98)(MC, 9/8/01)
1944 Sep 11, President
Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in Canada
at the second Quebec Conference.
(AP, 9/11/97)
1944 Sep 10, Thomas Allen,
British opera singer, was born.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1944 Sep 10, Lt. Gen. Frederick
Browning spoke against Montgomery: "But, sir, I think we might be
going a bridge too far."
(MC, 9/10/01)
1944 Sep 11, President
Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill met in Canada at the
second Quebec Conference.
(AP, 9/11/97)
1944 Sep 12, The second Quebec
Conference opened with President Roosevelt and British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill in attendance.
(AP, 9/12/06)
1944 Sep 13, Heath Robinson
(b.1872), English cartoonist, died. He is best known for drawings of
eccentric machines and "Heath Robinson" has entered the language as
a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible
contraption.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Robinson)
1944 Sep 15, British bombers
hit the German pocket battleship Tirpitz with Tallboy bombs.
(www.history.navy)
1944 Sep 16, Glen Miller made
his last recording at the Abbey Road studio in London with an Allied
Forces band and Dinah Shore.
(Sky, 9/97, p.55)
1944 Sep 17, Infantry glider
troops of the 82nd Airborne Division entered Holland. British and
American airborne troops parachuted into Holland to capture the
Arnhem bridge as part of Operation Market Garden. The plan called
for the airborne troops to be relieved by British troops, but they
were left stranded and eventually surrendered to the Germans. The
1974 book by Cornelius Ryan, "A Bridge Too Far," was based on this
operation and was made into the 1977 film.
(HN, 9/17/98)(HC, 12/12/01)(AP, 9/17/06)
1944 Sep 18, British submarine
Tradewind torpedoed Junyo Maru: 5,600 killed. Tradewind, a
twin-screw Triton-class boat of the Royal Navy, attacked the
Japanese merchant ship Junyo Maru, killing an estimated 4,320
people--around 1,700 Western POWs, 500 Indonesian prisoners and
thousands of Japanese slave laborers. Tradewind’s captain, Lt. Cmdr.
S.L.C. Maydon, wasn’t aware until many years later that the ship he
had sunk had been carrying human cargo, including thousands of his
own, and Allied, troops.
(MC, 9/18/01)(HNQ, 3/7/02)
1944 Sep 21, The last British
paratroopers at bridge of Arnhem surrendered.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1944 Sep 27, Thousands of
British troops were killed as German forces rebuffed their massive
effort to capture the Arnhem Bridge across the Rhine River in
Holland.
(HN, 9/27/98)
1944 Sep 28, At the Battle of
Arnhem the Germans defeated the British airborne in Netherlands.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1944 Oct 29, A Halifax JP244
plane supplying the British mission in Albania, which was fighting
alongside Albanian partisan forces, crashed in a mountainside in
Biza. The remains of seven British military personnel were found in
2015.
(AP, 10/24/18)
1944 Nov 6, British official
Lord Moyne was assassinated in Cairo, Egypt, by members of the
Zionist Stern gang.
(AP, 11/6/06)
1944 Nov 12, The RAF sank the
German battleship Tirpitz at Troms Fjord, Norway. Great Britain so
feared the Tripitz, that any hint of its use caused escort ships to
flee their convoys.
(HN, 11/12/98)(MC, 11/12/01)
1944 Nov 30, Biggest and last
British Battleship, HMS Vanguard, ran aground.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1944 Dec 3, A British order to
disarm caused a general strike in Greece.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1944 Dec 20, Terence Rattigan’s
"O Mistress Mine" premiered in London.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1944 Dec 25, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill went to Athens to seek an end to the Greek civil
war.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1944 Friedrich August von Hayek
(1899-1992), Austrian-born British economist, published "The
Road to Serfdom," wherein he defended laissez faire economics and
theorized on the problems of a socialist system. He asserted that
central planning and individual freedom could not coexist. It became
an influential and popular exposition of market libertarianism.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A18)(WSJ,
4/19/01, p.A16)(Econ, 12/24/16, p.30)
1944 Sir Michael Tippett,
British composer, composed his oratorio "A Child of Our Time."
(SFC, 1/10/98, p.A19)
1944 The Vegan Society was
founded in England. Vegans generally limit their diets to
vegetables, fruits, nuts, and grains.
(www.ivu.org/history/societies/vegansocuk.html)
1945 Jan 10, Rod Stewart, rock
singer, was born in North London, England.
(SSFC, 10/10/04, Par p.20)
1945 Feb 2, President Roosevelt
and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill departed Malta for the
Yalta summit with Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
(AP, 2/2/97)
1945 Feb 4-1945 Feb 12,
President Roosevelt, British PM Winston Churchill and Soviet leader
Josef Stalin held a wartime conference in the Livadia Palace at
Yalta, in the southern Ukraine. Roosevelt joked to Stalin that the
only concession he might give to Ibn Saud in Saudi Arabia was "the 6
million Jews in the US." In 2012 Michael Dobbs authored “Six Months
in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman – From World War to Cold
War.”
(AP, 2/4/97)(WSJ, 3/8/99, p.A16)(SSFC, 11/25/12,
p.F4)(Econ, 10/5/13, p.58)
1945 Feb 11, President
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet
leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement during World War II
and adjourned.
(HN, 2/11/97)(AP, 2/11/97)
1945 Feb 13, Allied planes
began bombing the German city of Dresden. British bombers in
Operation Thunderclap firebombed the city of Dresden, Germany, and
135,000 people were killed. The Royal Air Force Bomber Command
attacked the city of Dresden at night with raids by 873 heavy
bombers. 796 Lancaster heavy bombers were led by 9 target marking
Mosquito light bombers. A look at aerial maps of the city before and
after the terror attacks clearly shows the large white oil tanks
owned by British-controlled Shell Oil. These tanks remained entirely
untouched by the bombardment. In 2003 Frederick Taylor authored
“Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945.”
(http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/001.html)(WSJ, 10/22/96,
p.A20)(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A10)(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.T6)(SFEC, 1/30/00,
p.T13)
1945 Mar 1, British 43rd
Division under General Essame occupied Xanten.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1945 Mar 3, Churchill visited
Montgomery's headquarters.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1945 Mar 8, "Kiss Me Kate"
opened in Britain.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1945 Mar 23, Premier Winston
Churchill visited Montgomery's headquarter in Straelen.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1945 Mar 23, British 7th Black
Watch crossed the Rhine.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1945 Mar 24, Gens. Eisenhower,
Montgomery and Bradley discussed advance in Germany.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1945 Mar 26, David Lloyd George
(b.1863), former prime minister (1916-1922), died. In 1973 John
Grigg (d.2001 at 77) authored "The Young Lloyd George." 2 more
volumes of the biography were published in 1978 and 1985.
(WUD, 1994 p.839)(SFC, 1/3/02, p.A16)(SS,
3/26/02)
1945 Mar 28, Germany launched
the last of the V-2 rockets (buzz bomb) against England.
(HN, 3/28/99)
1945 Apr 9, German Battleship
Admiral Scheer sank a British aircraft carrier.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1945 Apr 15, British and
Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp at
Bergen-Belsen. It is a village in west Germany about 30 miles north
of Hanover. About 40,000 people were liberated from the camp,
although about 13,000 later died of illness. Overall, about 70,000
people died in Belsen.
(AHD, p.122)(AP, 4/17/05)
1945 Apr 25, Some 318 British
Lancaster bombers dropped 1,232 tons of bombs on Hitler’s alpine
redoubt at Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden.
(SSFC, 8/6/06, p.G5)
1945 Apr 28, British commands
attacked Elbe and occupied Lauenburg.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1945 Apr 30, Lord Haw-Haw
called for a crusade against the Bolsheviks.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1945 May 3, A British air force
squadron bombed two ships, the Cap Arcona and the Thielbeck and sank
them. The pilots knew nothing about the ships' human cargo. SS
guards had marched prisoners from Neuengamme to Lubeck on the Baltic
coast, as British troops approached, and put some 8,000 inmates onto
two ships, the Cap Arcona and the Thielbeck.
(AP,
10/2/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Cap_Arcona_%281927%29)
1945 May 9, Jersey was
liberated from Nazis.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1945 May 12, The Churchill
Barriers were formally opened by the first Lord of the Admiralty.
They were built to protect Scapa Flow from enemy submarines. The 5
causeways linked Orkney’s Mainland to South Ronaldsay and marked a
dividing line between the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
Thousands of Italian prisoners of war carried out the project and
left behind their decorated Italian Chapel.
(SSFC, 11/13/05,
p.F10)(www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/eastmainland/churchill/)
1945 May 19, Peter Townshend,
England, rock guitarist, vocalist, composer (Who-Tommy), was born.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1945 May 23, Winston Churchill,
the head Britain’s coalition government, resigned pending the
upcoming general election. He continued to serve as the head of the
caretaker government which lasted till he lost the election on July
26 and officially resigned as PM.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caretaker_Government_1945)
1945 May 23, British military
police arrested Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler's designated
successor ("Fuhrer for a Weekend").
(MC, 5/23/02)
1945 May 28, Lord Haw Haw (aka
William Joyce), a virulent anti-Semite who broadcast pro-Nazi
propaganda from Germany during the war, was shot in the leg in an
encounter with two British officers near Flensburg on the Danish
border with Germany. He was sentenced to death for treason on 19
September 1945 and hanged on 3 January 1946.
(http://www.shef.ac.uk/library/special/joyce.html)
1945 Jun 4, US, Russia, England
& France agreed to split occupied Germany.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1945 Jun 7, The opera "Peter
Grimes" by Benjamin Britten," premiered in London.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Grimes)
1945 Jun 18, William Joyce,
known as "Lord Haw-Haw," was charged in London with high treason for
his English-language wartime broadcasts on German radio. He was
hanged the following January.
(AP, 6/18/00)
1945 Jul 5, Clement Atlee’s
Labour Party won the British parliamentary election.
(http://tinyurl.com/yk38nh)(Econ, 4/13/13, p.26)
1945 Jul 26, The US, Britain
and China issued the Potsdam Declaration to Japan that she surrender
unconditionally. Two days later Japanese Premier Kantaro Suzuki
announced to the Japanese press that the Potsdam declaration is to
be ignored. In 1961 Herbert Feis authored “Japan Subdued.”
(WSJ, 5/5/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1945 Aug 2, President Truman,
Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee
concluded the Potsdam conference.
(AP, 8/2/97)
1945 Aug, George Orwell
published "Animal Farm" in England.
(SFEC, 10/1/00, BR p.5)
1945 Aug, A British Royal Air
Force B24 Liberator bomber crashed in Malaysia. Later research
showed that it was carrying supplies for Force 136, a British
Special Operations unit.
(AP, 2/6/12)
1945 Sep 16, Japan surrendered
Hong Kong to Britain.
(HN, 9/16/98)
1945 Sep 19, Nazi propagandist
William Joyce, known as "Lord Haw-Haw," was sentenced to death by a
British court.
(AP, 9/19/97)
1945 Oct 14, British Chief
Justice Geoffrey Lawrence was elected president of the Int’l.
Military Tribunal for the trial of war criminals at Nuremberg.
Drexel A. Sprecher (d.2006), a prosecutor during the trial, later
edited the official 15-volume work on the 4-year trial.
(http://tinyurl.com/pnk7h)(SFC, 4/11/06, p.B5)
1945 Dec 6, U.S. extended a $3
billion loan to Britain to help compensate for the termination of
Lend-Lease.
(HN, 12/6/98)
1945 Dec 13, France and Britain
agreed to quit Syria and Lebanon.
(HN, 12/13/98)
1945 Dec 23, Frederick Ashton's
"Cinderella" premiered in London.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1945 Dec 27, Foreign ministers
from the former Allied nations of the United States, the Soviet
Union, and Great Britain agreed to divide Korea into two separate
occupation zones and to govern the nation for five years.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1945 Dec 28, Max Hastings,
British editor-in-chief (Daily Telegraph), historian, was born.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1945 Dec, Eric Brown
(1919-2016), British test pilot, made the first-ever jet aircraft
landing on the carrier Ocean.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Brown_%28pilot%29)(Econ, 3/5/15,
p.86)
1945 Rev. W. Awdry wrote "The
Three Railway Engines." This was his first book and was followed in
1946 by his children’s series of tales that featured "Thomas the
Tank Engine."
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A21)
1945 British author Arthur C.
Clarke was the first to put forward the idea of a communications
satellite in a magazine article in 1945. The American satellite
Telstar, launched in 1962, ushered in the age of satellite
communications.
(HNQ, 4/21/99)
1945 Former members of
Britain’s Special Operations Executive founded the Special Forces
Club in London.
(Econ, 2/16/13, p.69)
1945 In Britain Clement Atlee
became the prime minister after WW II. The Labor party toppled
Winston Churchill with a 146-seat majority win.
(WSJ, 2/21/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 5/2/97, p.A1)
1945 Britain’s M15 opened a
dossier on Harold Wilson (29) and kept it through Wilson's two terms
as prime minister in the '60s and '70s. It was opened out of concern
for Wilson's contacts with Eastern European businessmen and a belief
amongst British civil servants that Wilson may have been sympathetic
to Communist ideologies. The file was kept not to undermine Wilson
but to keep tabs on contacts deemed suspicious, according to "The
Defense of the Realm," the first authorized account of MI5's history
serialized in The Times on Oct 3, 2009.
(AP, 10/3/09)
1945 Maria Dickin decorated
Rip, a dog, for finding more than 100 people trapped by German bomb
damage in World War II. Dickin was the creator of the Dickin Medal
program, Britain's highest honor for animals. Rip died in 1948 and
is buried in a pet charity cemetery in east London. In 2009 the
medal sold at auction in London on Friday for 24,250 pounds
($35,700).
(AP, 4/24/09)
1945 Some 732 teenage
concentration camp survivors were settled in Britain. They formed
the Primrose Club of London in 1947 to maintain contact. Their story
was told in the 1997 book "The Boys: The Story 0f 732 Young
Concentration Camp Survivors" by Martin Gilbert.
(SFC, 7/8/97, p.B4)
1945 Russia’s Operation
Tarantella, designed to reach emigres who fled after the Communist
takeover, turned Viktor Bogomolets back to Moscow. He became a
double agent passing British secrets to top-tier Soviet operatives.
This was made public in 2007.
(Reuters, 4/2/07)
1945 By the end of World War II
Britain owed India £1.3 billion, an eight of British GDP.
(Econ, 5/7/15, p.78)
1945 British currency forged in
Germany, measured by face value, accounted for 12% of all pound
sterling bills. Early this year SS leaders switched their attention
to forging US dollars. Forging operations, using Jewish and other
war prisoners, had begun at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
under SS officer Bernhard Kruger a few years earlier. Nearly 133
million pounds was forged during Operation Bernhard.
(WSJ, 1/22/07, p.A1,13)
1945 Barbara Hutton
(1912-1979), heir to the Woolworth fortune, gifted Winfield House,
her London mansion, to the United States government and moved to
California. In 2008 Maria Tuttle and Marcus Binney authored
“Winfield House.”
(Econ, 11/1/08,
p.96)(www.spiritus-temporis.com/barbara-hutton/)
1945-1946 In India the British government
organized elections for a constituent assembly.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)
1946 Jan 3, William Joyce,
(Lord Haw Haw), was hanged in Britain for treason. He had broadcast
for the Nazis to British and American fighting troops. In 2005 Nigel
Farndale authored “Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret
Joyce.”
(www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/William-Joyce)(Econ, 7/30/05,
p.77)
1946 Jan 10, The first General
Assembly of the United Nations convened in London.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1946 Mar 1, British Government
took control of Bank of England, after 252 years.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1946 Mar 15, British premier
Attlee agreed with India's right to independence.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1946 Mar 22, The British
mandate in Transjordan came to an end. Britain signed a treaty
granting independence to Jordan.
(AP, 3/22/97)(HN, 3/22/97)
1943 Apr 6, British and
American armies linked up in Africa.
(HN, 4/6/98)
1946 Apr 19, Tim Curry, actor
(Rocky Horror Show), was born in Cheshire, England.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1946 Apr 21, John M. Keynes
(62), English economist, died. He had recently negotiated a
loan from the US to keep Britain afloat. One condition of the $5
billion loan was that Britain make sterling fully convertible into
dollars. In 2000 Robert Skidelsky authored “John Maynard Keynes:
Fighting for Britain: 1937-1946.” In 2009 Peter Clarke authored
“Keynes: The Twentieth Century’s Most Influential Economist.” Robert
Skidelsky authored “Keynes: The Return of the Master.” In 2015
Richard Davenport-Hines authored “Universal Man: The Lives of John
Maynard Keynes.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes)(WSJ, 6/20/08,
p.A11)(Econ, 10/3/09, p.103)(Econ, 10/31/09, p.84)(Econ, 9/25/10,
p.85)(Econ, 5/9/15, p.80)
1946 Apr, The British Labour
government authorized a mission to visit suitable sites in its
Tanganyika colony to cultivate groundnuts. The British Labour
government of Clement Attlee had come up with a plan to cultivate
tracts of what later became Tanzania with peanuts in a plan that
came to be called the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme. It was abandoned
at considerable cost to the taxpayers when it did not become
profitable.
(AP,
6/1/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_groundnut_scheme)
1946 Aug 13, Britain
transferred illegal immigrants bound for Palestine to Cyprus.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1946 Aug 13, H.G. Wells
(b.1866), sci-fi author (Time Machine), died in London.
(AP, 8/13/00)
1946 Sep 6, Terence Rattigan's
"Winslow Boy," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1946 Sep 19, Winston Churchill
made a speech in Zurich where he said: If Europe were once united in
the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the
happiness, prosperity, and glory of which its 300 or 400 million
people would enjoy."
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A22)
1946 Sep 20, Churchill argued
for a "US of Europe." [see Sep 19]
(MC, 9/20/01)
1946 Sep, Britain, France and
the United States set up the Tripartite Gold Commission to oversee
the return of some $4 billion in gold plundered by the Nazis from
European treasuries. The commission closed in 1998.
(SFC, 9/10/98, p.C2)
1946 Oct 22, Two British ships
sank near Albania. British destroyers hit mines off Albania's coast.
The United Nations and the International Court of Justice condemned
Albania.
(www, Albania, 1998)(MC, 10/22/01)
1946 Oct 25, Karl Popper spoke
at Cambridge before the weekly meeting of the Moral Science Club on
the subject: "Are There Philosophical Problems?" Ludwig Wittgenstein
took issue with the presentation and a heated exchange followed. In
2001 David Edmonds and John Eidinow authored "Wittgenstein’s Poker:
The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers."
(SSFC, 12/30/01, p.M3)
1946 Dec 2, The U.S. and
Britain merged the German occupation zones.
(HN, 12/2/98)
1946 Dec 19, Noel Coward's
musical "Pacific 1860," premiered in London.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1946 The Gormenghast series of
three novels by English writer Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) began with
“Titus Groan,” which was followed by Gormenghast (1950) and Titus
Alone (1959). They featured Castle Gormenghast, and Titus Groan, the
title character of the first book.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_%28series%29)
1946 George Mikes (1912-1987),
a Hungarian living in England, published “How to Be An Alien.” It
was about a foreigner’s view of England.
(Econ, 12/19/09, p.110)
1946 V.S. Pritchett became the
director of the weekly New Statesman. He had begun contributing to
the left-wing weekly in 1926.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A21)
1946 Alistair Cooke began
writing his "Letter from America." It was initially supposed to be a
13-week BBC radio series which described American life to Britons.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, Z1 p.7)
1946 The British M16
intelligence agency absorbed the Special Operations Executive.
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.34)
1946 Allan Nunn May (d.2003 at
91), British atomic scientist, was unmasked as a Soviet spy. In 1942
he joined a team of Cambridge scientists for the Manhattan Project
and was recruited by the Soviets in Montreal in 1943. may was
sentenced to 10 years of hard labor and served 6.
(SFC, 1/25/03, p.A17)
1946 In England Lancelot Ware
(d.2000 at 85), Oxford postgraduate student, and barrister Roland
Berrill (d.1961) founded the High IQ Club, later known as Mensa.
(SFC, 8/19/00, p.A19)(www.mensa.org/)
1946 Heathrow Airport, an air
base near London for fighter planes during WWII, was converted to
civilian use. A modified Avro Lancastrian bomber made the first
scheduled flight.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.91)(Econ, 3/30/13, p.55)
1946-1961 The Tanganyika Territory was a British
trusteeship.
(WUD, 1994, p.1452)
1947 Jan 5, Great Britain
nationalized its coal mines.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1947 Jan 13, British troops
replaced striking truck drivers.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1947 Jan 27, Britain agreed to
give Burma independence following negotiations with nationalist
leader Aung San.
(www.myanmar.gov.mm/Perspective/persp2001/2-2001/uni.htm)(SFC,
5/7/02, p.A9)
1947 Feb 5, The Soviet Union
and Great Britain rejected terms for an American trusteeship over
Japanese Pacific Isles.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1947 Feb 20, The British
pledged to leave India by June 1948.
(HN, 2/20/98)
1947 Feb 20, Lord Louis
Mountbatten was appointed the last viceroy of India.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1947 Feb 28, Britain and France
signed a 50-year pact to curb Germany.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1947 Mar 4, France and Britain
signed an alliance treaty.
(HN, 3/4/98)
1947 Mar 6, Winston Churchill
opposed the withdrawal of troops from India.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1947 Mar 25, Elton John,
[Reginald Kenneth Dwight], English singer (Rocketman), was born.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1947 Jun 3, In Britain an
announcement was made in the House of Commons that India was to be
partitioned and that independence would follow. In 2007 Yasmin Khan
authored “The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan.” In
2015 Nisid Hajari authored “Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of
India’s Partition.”
(Econ, 7/21/07, p.81)(Econ, 7/4/15, p.70)
1947 Jun 5, David Hare, British
playwright and director (A Map of the World, Slag), was born.
(HN, 6/5/01)
1947 Jun 15, The All-Indian
Congress accepted a British plan for the partition of India. Britain
partitioned the subcontinent and Pakistan was founded as an
independent country.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(HN, 6/15/98)
1947 Jul 9, The engagement of
Britain's Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten was
announced.
(AP, 7/9/97)
1947 Jul 10, Camilla Parker
Bowles, lover of Prince Charles, was born.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1947 Jul 15, Convertibility of
British sterling into US dollars, negotiated as part of a $5 billion
US loan to Britain in 1946, came into effect. It caused an immediate
run on the pound and was abandoned on August 20.
(WSJ, 6/20/08, p.A11)
1947 Jul 18, King George VI
signed the Indian Independence Bill. In 2008 Peter Clarke authored
“The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire.
(http://indiainteracts.com/columnist/2007/08/15/The-60-days-to-Aug-15-1947India-at-60/)(WSJ,
6/20/08, p.A11)
1947 Jul 18, British seized the
"Exodus 1947" ship of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. The British
Royal Navy intercepted the ship President Warfield, which had been
renamed Exodus by its passengers, forcing the 4,000 Jewish would-be
immigrants aboard back to Displaced Person camps in Germany. Britain
was still the ruling power in Palestine, which was being wracked by
conflict resulting from Jewish national aspirations. The return of
the Jewish immigrants, many of them survivors of Nazi persecution,
heightened anti-British sentiment among Jews in Palestine and
elsewhere. Yossi Harel, commander of the Exodus, died in 2008 at age
90.
(MC, 7/18/02)(HNQ, 12/4/98)(AP, 4/26/08)
1947 Jul 21, Cat Stevens, rock
vocalist (Peace Train, Father & Son), was born as Steven
Demetre Georgiou. The British singer-songwriter,
multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist, converted to Islam
in Dec 1977. In 1978 he adopted the name of Yusuf Islam.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens)
1947 Jul 31, The Jewish
underground Irgun Zvai Leumi said it hanged 2 British sergeants in
Palestine.
(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A2)
1947 Jul, A prisoner camp in
Bad Nenndorf, a spa town in northwest Germany occupied by the
British after the war, was closed. In 2005 a Guardian report cited
documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act
that described the suffering of some of 372 men and 44 women
detained at the camp.
(AP, 12/17/05)
1947 Aug 15, India gained
independence after some 200 years of British rule. Britain
partitioned the subcontinent. Prior to independence, 565 princes
ruled a third of India. After independence the government let the
royals retain their titles and assets in return for incorporating
their principalities into the new nation. The 664 princely states of
India were given the choice of which country they wanted to join.
Although most of the people of Kashmir were Muslim, the maharaja was
Hindu and he appealed to India for help. Independence in Pakistan
and India led to bloody conflicts and thousands died. In 1999 Fareed
Zakaria published "Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India."
In 2006 David Gilmour authored “The Ruling Caste,” an account of
Britain’s Indian Civil Service (ICS).
(WSJ, 1/9/95, A-8)(WSJ, 12/21/95, p.A-12)(WSJ,
5/16/96, p.A-10)(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)(AP, 8/15/97)(SFC, 6/4/98,
p.C2)(WSJ, 1/29/99, p.W7)(WSJ, 2/23/06, p.D8)
1947 Sep 8, British government
sailed the "Exodus" with fugitives from Nazis.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1947 Nov 12, Emmuska Orczy
(82), British author (Scarlet Pimpernel), died.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1947 Nov 20, Princess Elizabeth
(future Queen Elizabeth II) married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of
Edinburgh, in a ceremony broadcast worldwide from Westminster Abbey.
(HN, 11/20/98)(SFEM, 1/26/97, p.44)(AP, 11/20/97)
1947 Dec 1, Samuel Courtauld
(b.1876), English industrialist and art collector, died. In 1932 He
founded the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Courtauld_%28art_collector%29)(Econ,
2/16/13, p.84)
1947 Dec 1, Aleister Edward S.
Crowley (b.1875), British occultist, died. In 2000 Lawrence Sutin
authored "Do What Thou Wilt, A Life of Aleister Crowley."
(SSFC, 1/14/01, BR
p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley)
1947 Dec 1, Godfrey Harold
Hardy (b.1877), English mathematician, died. Non-mathematicians
usually know G.H. Hardy for “A Mathematician's Apology,” his essay
from 1940 on the aesthetics of mathematics.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy)
1947 Penelope Dimont (later
Penelope Mortimer), published her first novel, "Johanna."
(SFC, 10/23/99, p.A21)
1947 C.S. Forester wrote "Mr.
Midshipman Hornblower," in which he introduced his character Horatio
Hornblower as a 17-year-old midshipman in the English Navy.
Hornblower was loosely based on the life of Adm. Lord Nelson.
Forester wrote 11 Hornblower books and also wrote "The African
Queen." Hornblower was made into a 4-part A&E TV miniseries in
1999.
(WSJ, 7/10/98, p.W10)(WSJ, 4/5/99, p.A20)
1947 A.A. Milne, author of
"Winnie the Pooh," gave publisher E.P. Dutton the original stuffed
animals of the stories he began writing in 1926 for his son,
Christopher Robbin. The animals were turned over to the New York
Public Library in 1987. In 1998 the British requested that they be
returned to England.
(SFC, 2/5/98, p.A12)
1947 Britain’s Labor government
introduced the Town and Country Planning Act, which regulated
private house building.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.47)
1947 Britain amid post-war
rationing and food shortages introduced the snoek, a relative of the
barracuda, to a hungry nation.
(Econ, 11/1/08, p.66)
1947 England was hit by
calamitous floods. About 27,000 houses were reported flooded. About
a million Londoners lost their water supply.
(Econ, 2/15/14, p.50)
1947 Bangladesh as part of
Pakistan gained independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1948 Jan 4, Britain granted
independence to Burma (later renamed to Myanmar). Aung San had
arranged for national independence on this day but was assassinated
before the event by political rivals. The new rulers tried to limit
citizenship to those whose roots predated 1823 and British rule.
(SFEC, 1/19/97, Par p.4)(AP, 1/4/98)(Econ,
11/3/12, p.44)
1948 Feb 4, Colonial rule ended
and the island nation of Ceylon -- now Sri Lanka -- became an
independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.
(SFE, 9/16/96, p.A9)(SFC, 6/20/96, p.A8)(AP,
2/4/97)
1948 Mar 18, France, Great
Britain and Benelux signed the Treaty of Brussels.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1948 May 15, A 28 year old
British Mandate over Palestine ended.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1948 Jun 21, Lord Mountbatten
resigned as Viceroy of India.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1948 Jun 26, The Berlin
Airlift began in earnest as the United States, Britain and France
started ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin,
after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes. The Soviets
had been harassing the French, British and American authorities in
Berlin for weeks, trying to force them from the city. Finally, when
all surface routes to the city were blockaded, it became clear that
an airlift through the Allied sectors was the only way to re-supply
the 2 million West Berliners. In spite of the enormous human and
financial cost, “Operation Vittles” supplied food, fuel and hope to
beleaguered citizens until the Soviet barricades were finally lifted
on May 12, 1949. In 2010 Richard Reeves authored “Daring Young Men:
The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948-May 1949.”
(AP, 6/26/98)(HN,
6/26/99)(http://tinyurl.com/gqhi)(Econ, 1/2/10, p.63)
1948 Jul 5, Britain's National
Health Service Act went into effect, providing government-financed
medical and dental care. Aneurin Bevan, Welsh Labour minister of
health, was its political founder. The first NHS patient was treated
at Trafford hospital near Manchester.
(AP, 7/5/98)(Econ, 5/7/11, p.62)
1948 Jul 29, Britain's King
George VI opened the first Olympics since 1936 in London. Germany
and Japan were not invited and the Soviet Union chose not to attend.
Alice Coachman of the US was the first black woman to win a gold
medal when she triumphed in the high jump. Audrey "Mickey"
Patterson-Tyler (1927-1996) was the first black woman to win an
Olympic medal. She won a bronze medal in the 200-meter dash.
(TMC, 1994, p.1948)(WSJ, 6/7/96, p.A1)(SFEC,
8/25/96, p.B5)(AP, 7/29/97)(WSJ, 4/12/08, p.R2)
1948 Aug 6, Victoria Manalo
Draves (1924-2010) became the 1st woman to win 2 diving gold medals,
and the 1st Asian American woman to win an Olympic medal.
(http://tinyurl.com/3ytlucx)(SFC, 6/3/05,
p.F1)(SFC, 4/28/10, p.C4)
1948 Aug 6, Bob Mathias, later
a US state representative, won the decathlon at the London Olympics.
His unofficial title became "the world's greatest athlete." He won
gold again in 1952.
(AP, 8/6/98)(SFC, 11/10/99, p.E7)(WSJ, 7/23/96,
p.A6)
1948 Aug 14, The summer Olympic
games in London ended.
(AP, 8/14/08)
1948 Sep 19, Jeremy Irons,
England, actor (French Lieutenant's Woman), was born.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1948 Nov 14, Charles, Prince of
Wales and heir to the throne of England, was born.
(HN, 11/14/98)
1948 Nov 17, Britain's House of
Commons voted to nationalize steel industry.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1948 Dec 12, British soldiers
surrounded the Sungai Rimoh rubber estate in Batang Kali, shot 24
rubber plantation workers and set the village on fire. In 1970
Britain’s incoming Conservative administration dropped a police
investigation, claiming a lack of evidence. In 2012 relatives of
killed workers lost their High Court battle for a full inquiry by
the British government.
(AFP, 9/4/12)
1948 The British noir film “The
Fallen Idol” was directed by Carol Reed.
(SFC, 6/2/16, p.F8)
1948 Lewis Fry Richardson,
British physicist, authored a paper on the mathematics of war. He
showed that the probability of wars having a particular number of
casualties followed a mathematical relationship known as a power
law. This was probably the first rigorous analysis of the statistics
of war.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.74)(Econ, 4/2/11, p.76)
1948 Composer Benjamin Britten
(1913-1976) co-founded the Aldeburgh Festival with Sir Peter Pears
and writer Eric Crozier. In 1967 Britten and Pears created a
permanent home at Snape, 5 miles from Aldeburgh, by converting a
Victorian maltings into an 832-seat venue. By 1972 the Britten-Pears
young artist program welcomed young players from around the world.
(www.aldeburgh.co.uk/about_us/history)(WSJ,
7/26/99, p.A21)(Econ, 6/6/09, p.84)
1948 Sir John Woolf and his
brother James founded Romulus Films and its distribution arm, Remus.
(SFC, 7/1/99, p.C4)
1948 The Commonwealth
Development Corporation was founded by the British government with
an aim to demonstrate "the power of enterprise and private capital
to reduce poverty in the poorest places of the world.”
(Reuters, 2/1/12)
1948 Britain nationalized the
London Underground.
(Econ, 1/22/05, p.81)
1948 British carmaker Rover
developed the Jeep-like Land Rover.
(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1948 Trevor Wilkinson
incorporated TVR Engineering, a small British carmaker. He left the
company in 1962 and in 1965 it was sold to Martin Lilly.
(SFC, 6/16/08, p.B3)
1948 The British Jaguar XK120
was introduced as the world’s fastest standard production car. It
was the brainchild of Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons.
(SSFC, 8/21/11, p.H1)
1948 Marie Provaznikova, Czech
athlete, became the first to defect from a Communist country during
the Olympics in London.
(WSJ, 4/12/08,
p.R2)(www.sokolnewyork.org/history002.htm)
1948 The London-based Mondo
company began producing rubber balls for a local fistball game. It
grew to become a major maker of prefabricated running track.
(SFC, 3/17/11, p.72)
1948 Robert Ford (1923-2013),
British radio operator, was hired by the Tibetans to create a modern
communications network. In 1950 he was imprisoned by Chinese
authorities and spent five years in jail.
(Econ, 10/5/13, p.98)
1948 Ann Curtis (1926-2012) of
San Francisco won two gold medals and one silver in swimming at the
London Olympics.
(SFC, 9/25/96, p.E10)(SFC, 1/31/15, p.C2)
1948 The Nizam of Hyderabad,
India’s biggest and richest princely state, sent envoys to London
with a purse or £1 million to give to Pakistan, which had been
shipping him arms. By the time the money was deposited an Indian
invasion forced him to switch sides and the money has languished in
London ever since.
(Econ, 8/19/17, p.33)
1949 Mar 15, Almost four years
after the end of World War II, clothes rationing in Great Britain
ends.
(HN, 3/15/99)
1949 Apr 4, The (NATO) North
Atlantic Treaty Organization pact was signed by the US, Great
Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy,
Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada. It provided for
mutual defense against aggression and for close military
cooperation.
(www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm)(TOH, 1982,
p.1949)
1949 Apr 17, At midnight 26
counties officially left the British Commonwealth. A 21-gun salute
on O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, ushered in the Republic of Ireland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_in_Ireland)
1949 Apr 19, The Amethyst
Affair began when the British frigate Amethyst came under fire from
Communist Chinese artillery and ran aground in the Yangtze River. A
tense, 103-day standoff followed until the frigate made a daring
escape on July 30. The Amethyst lost 22 men killed and 31 wounded in
the ordeal. Rescue attempts by the Royal Navy resulted in another 23
British sailors killed.
(HNQ, 2/5/99)
1949 May 4, Graham Swift,
British novelist (The Sweet Shop Owner, Out of this World), was
born.
(HN, 5/4/01)
1949 May 13, The 1st
British-produced jet bomber, Canberra, made its 1st test flight.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1949 May 17, The British House
of Commons adopted the Ireland Bill that recognized the independence
of the Republic of Ireland, but affirmed the position of Northern
Ireland within the United Kingdom.
(EWH, 1968, p.1166)
1949 May 29, Gary Brooker, rock
keyboardist (Procol Harum), was born in Essex, England.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1949 May 29, Francis Rossi,
guitarist, vocalist (Status Quo-Down Down, Picture of a Matchstick
Man), was born in London, England.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1949 Jul 27, The British
36-seat jet-propelled De Havilland Comet 1 flew for the first time.
This was the world’s first passenger jet.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)(Econ,
11/22/14, p.51)
1949 Jul 30, British warship
HMS Amethyst escaped down Yangtze River after having been refused a
safe passage by Chinese Communists after 3-month standoff.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1949 Sep 30, The Berlin airlift
ended its operation after 277,264 flights. Through accidents 31
Americans lost their lives in support of the airlift. The Berlin
Airlift, which began on June 26, 1948, and lasted 321 days,
consisted of 272,264 flights by British and American airmen. They
transported some 2.3 million tons of food to supply the 2.1 million
residents of the blockaded portion of the city. The operation ended
after 278,288 flights and delivery of 2,326,406 tons of supplies. In
2010 Richard Reeves authored “Daring Young Men: The Heroism and
Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948-May 1949.”
(EWH, 1968, p.1180)(AP, 9/30/97)(SFC, 5/12/98,
p.A14)(HNQ, 7/9/98)(SSFC, 3/28/10, p.f3)
1949 Nov 24, The Iron and Steel
Act nationalized the steel industry in Britain.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1949 Nov 26, India adopted a
constitution as a republic within the British Commonwealth. Pandit
Nehru became Prime Minister. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), a Dalit, was
the chief architect of the constitution.
(HN, 11/26/98)(AP,
11/26/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._R._Ambedkar)
1949 T.S. Eliot wrote his play
"The Cocktail Party" for Rudolph Bing’s Edinburgh Festival.
(WSJ, 9/5/97, p.A10)
1949 Doris Lessing (30),
author, left her girlhood home in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) for England.
The 2nd volume of her autobiography was "Walking in the Shade
(1949-1962)."
(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.M3)
1949 George Orwell’s
(1903-1950) novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was published. He was
inspired by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin, who wrote an
antiutopian novel warning against intoxication with technology.
Orwell asserted that technology is an instrument of tyranny. In his
novel Orwell described a machine called a versificator that
generated music for the masses. “Who controls the past controls the
future. Who controls the present, controls the past.”
(WSJ, 11/4/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(Econ,
6/10/06, Survey p.6)(Econ, 9/15/07, p.70)
1949 John Calder
(1927-2018), Scottish Canadian writer and publisher, founded Calder
Publications.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calder)(AP,
8/15/18)
1949 Britain’s University
College of North Staffordshire was set up by Oxford don A.D.
Lindsay. In 1962 it was renamed Keele University.
(Econ, 6/25/16, p.53)
1949 Britain devalued the pound
from $4.03 to $2.80. Most European nations followed.
(TOH, 1982, p.1949)
1949 Britain passed the
National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, which established
and extensive network of public rights of way and encouraged
landowners to voluntarily grant access to their land.
(SFC, 6/21/99, p.A10)
1949 A British sex survey,
originally meant for national newspapers, was conducted but never
published due to its content. The survey was public in 2006 and
showed that one in five men had homosexual experiences and a quarter
admitted to having sex with prostitutes. One in five women confessed
to extra-marital affairs.
(Reuters, 9/26/06)
1949 Leslie Ratner opened his
first jewelry shop in Richmond, just outside of London. The
operation grew to become Signet Corp. In 1987 Signet entered the US
market with the purchase of the 117-store Sterling Corp. In 1990 it
acquired Kay Jewelers.
(WSJ, 6/26/06, p.A1)
1950 Jan 21, George Orwell
(46), author, died in London of tuberculosis. His books included
Down and Out in Paris and London" (1933) and "1984." William
Abrahams (d.1998), editor and novelist, co-authored the 2-volume
biography of Orwell: "Life, Death and Art in the Second World War,"
and "Journey to the Frontier" with Peter Stansky. In 2000 Jeffrey
Meyers authored the biography "Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a
Generation." Orwell married Sonia Brownell (1918-1980) on his
deathbed. In 2003 Hilary Spurling authored "The Gril from the
Fiction Department," a biography of Sonia Orwell. In 2003 D.J.
Taylor authored "Orwell : The Life."
(AP, 1/21/98)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.D7)(SFC, 6/25/98,
p.B12)(SFEC, 10/1/00, BR p.5)(WSJ, 5/16/03, p.W10)(SSFC, 9/28/03,
p.M2)
1950 Feb 2, Nuclear physicist
Klaus Fuchs was arrested on spy charges. The Klaus Fuchs (d.1988)
confession revealed that the Soviet Union obtained the atomic bomb
from sources within the Manhattan Project. It was later revealed
that Theodore Alvin Hall, a scientist on the project, passed
information to the Soviets. The story is told in the 1997 book:
"Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Spy Conspiracy" by Joseph
Albright and Marcia Kunstel. Fuchs served 9 ½ years in a British
prison. Ruth Werner (d.2000) served as a contact for Fuchs in
Britain.
(http://tinyurl.com/kjpk5)(WSJ, 10/20/97,
p.A19)(SFEC, 12/21/97, BR p.7)(SFC, 7/11/00, p.A23)
1950 Mar 1, Klaus Fuchs was
sentenced in London to 14 years for atomic espionage.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1950 Mar 9, Timothy John Evans
(b.1924), a Welshman, was hanged in the United Kingdom for the
murder of his infant daughter at 10 Rillington Place in London. In
1961 Ludovic Kennedy, Scotland-born writer, authored “10 Rillington
Place,” the story of Timothy Evans, who was hanged for a murder he
did not commit.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Evans)
1950 Apr 8, Ballet dancer
Vaslav Nijinsky died in London.
(AP, 4/8/98)
1950 May 22, Richard Strauss'
"4 Last Songs" (4 letzte Lieder) were performed in London.
(www.richard-strauss.com/biography.html)
1950 Jul 18, Richard Branson,
British music entrepreneur (Virgin Atlantic), was born.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1950 Aug 8, Florence Chadwick
(1918-1995) swam the English Channel from France to Dover in 13
hours and 23 minutes. A year later she swam the reverse in 16:22.
(http://www.ishof.org/70fchadwick.html)
1950 Sep 11, Jan C. Smuts,
co-founder of British RAF and S. African PM (1919-48), died at 80.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1950 Sep 23, US Mustangs
accidentally bombed British troops on Hill 282 Korea, 17 killed.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1950 Sep 26, Because of forest
fire in British Columbia a blue moon appeared in England.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1950 Nov 2, George Bernard Shaw
(b.1856), Irish-born, English dramatist (Pygmalion), critic and
social reformer, died. Michael Holroyd later authored a 3-volume
biography of Shaw.
(V.D.-H.K.p.237)(HN, 7/26/98)(SFEC, 3/5/00, DB
p.4)
1950 Nov 16, Egyptian king
Farouk demanded the departure of all British troops.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1950 Dec 25, Scottish
nationalists stole the Stone of Scone from the British coronation
throne in Westminster Abbey. The 485 pound stone was recovered in
April 1951.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1950 The William Morris Gallery
opened on the site of the artist’s teenaged home in Walthamstow,
Essex, England. The Victorian designer (1834-1896) was associated
with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts
Movement.
(Economist, 9/22/12,
p.98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris)
1950 Catherine Cookson (d.1998
at 91), English writer, published her first book, an
autobiographical novel titled "Kate Hannigan." She went on write
over 90 novels and was made a Dame in 1993.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A21)
1950 Elizabeth David
(1913-1992), nee Gwynne, published "A Book of Mediterranean Food,"
which changed British cuisine. In 2001 Artemis Cooper authored
"Writing At the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth
David."
(SSFC, 3/18/01, BR p.7)
1950 Alan Sainsbury (1902-1998)
pioneered Britain’s first self-service grocery.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.B6)
1950 In England Dr. Richard
Doll (1913-2005) and statistician Austin Bradford Hill published a
report that linked lung cancer to cigarette smoking.
(SFC, 7/26/05, p.B5)
1950 In London Maurice Wilkins
and Rosalind Franklin (d.1958) produced pictures of X-ray
diffraction in aligned fibers of DNA. The lab for X-ray
crystallography was set up by physicist John Randall. Data from
these pictures led Watson and Crick to understand the structure of
DNA. In 1975 Anne Sayre (d.1998) published "Rosalind Franklin and
DNA."
(Wired, 2/98, p.135)(SFC, 3/19/98, p.C4)
1950-1959 In 2006 Peter Hennessey authored “Having
It So Good: Britain in the Fifties.”
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.86)
1950-1960s In Britain the Butskellite consensus of
the 1950s was based on strong bipartisan support for Keynesian
economic management and the welfare state. It was named for
Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Butler and Labor's
shadow Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell. it entailed an agreement by
Tories not to attack the new Welfare State; in exchange, Labor
helped to maintain industrial peace. This enabled a quiet time of
economic stagnation in 1950s, which continued into the 1960s.
(http://faculty.smu.edu/jhollifi/Britain.htm)
1951 Jan 1, A British radio
soap opera called “The Archers” began airing following pilot shows
in 1950. The show was about a British farming community and was
still popular as it continued in 2011.
(SFC, 1/5/11,
p.E2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Archers)
1951 Apr 3, Christopher Fry's
"Sleep of Prisoners," premiered in Oxford.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1951 May 3, The Festival of
Britain, a national exhibition, officially opened.
(SFEC, 4/23/00,
p.T4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Britain)
1951 May 23, Peter Ustinov's
"Love of Four Colonels," premiered in London.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1951 Jun 23, British diplomats
and Soviet spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean fled to the USSR.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1951 Jul 10, In London,
England, Randolph Turpin (1928-1966), a black British boxer,
defeated world champion Sugar Ray Robinson. Turpin lost a rematch 64
days later in NY.
(SSFC, 10/28/07, p.M3)(http://tinyurl.com/2sxhce)
1951 Sep 11, Florence Chadwick
(1918-1995), American endurance swimmer, swam English Channel from
England to France in 16 hours & 22 minutes [see Aug 6, 1926].
This made her the first woman to swim the English Channel in both
directions, and set a record for the England-France journey. All
told, she swam the English Channel four times and the Catalina
Channel three times.
(www.answers.com/topic/florence-chadwick)
1951 Oct 17, The Egyptian army
fired on British troops.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1951 Oct 25, In a general
election, England's Labour Party under Clement Atlee lost to
Conservatives. Winston Churchill became prime minister, and Anthony
Eden became foreign secretary. The Conservatives and Labour together
scooped 97% of the vote.
(Econ., 2/21/15, p.12)(Econ, 5/9/15, p.52)
1951 Oct 26, Winston Churchill
was re-elected British PM. [see Oct 25]
(MC, 10/26/01)
1951 Nov 17, Britain reported
the development of world’s first nuclear-powered heating system.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1951 Nov 18, British troops
occupied Ismailiya, Egypt.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1951 Nov 29, Winston Churchill
was re-elected British premier. [see Oct 25,26]
(MC, 11/29/01)
1951 Dec 1, Benjamin Britten's
opera "Billy Budd," premiered in London.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1951 Anthony Powell, author,
published "A Question of Upbringing," the first of his 12-volume "A
Dance to the Music of Time," a chronicle of English upper-middle
class morals from the 1920s to the 1970s.
(SFC, 3/30/00, p.C5)
1951 T.H. White (1906-1964),
English writer, authored “The Goshawk,” and account of his self
struggles and the bird he called Gos.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._H._White)
1951 The British musical film
"Alice in Wonderland" was directed by Dallas Bower (d.1999 at 92).
(SFC, 10/21/99, p.A25)
1951 The 3 1/2* British film
"The Man in the White Suit" was directed by Alexander Mackendrick
and starred Alec Guiness and Joan Greenwood.
(TVM, 1975, p.360)(SFC, 1/30/98, p.E17)
1951 Wallis Simpson
(1896-1986), the Duchess of Windsor, for whom King Edward VIII gave
up the British throne, engaged in an affair with playboy Jimmy
Donahue. In 2000 Christopher Wilson authored "Dancing with the
Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue."
(AP, 4/24/97)(SFC, 2/28/98, p.A5)(SFC, 1/4/01,
p.D10)
1951 In Britain J. Lyons &
Co. used the world's first business computer to calculate payrolls
and optimum mixes for tea blending.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1951 The Harwell Dekatron, also
known as the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation
(WITCH), was built at Harwell, the UK's atomic energy research
establishment. In 2012 the supercomputer was restored after a period
of three years by experts at England's National Museum of Computing
in Bletchley Park.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harwell_computer)
1951 The video game NIM was
created for the Festival of Britain. It was played on Nimrod, a
computer developed by the Ferranti electronics firm.
(Econ, 12/10/11, SR p.12)
1951-1955 Winston Churchill served as Prime
Minister a 2nd time.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)
1952 Jan 2, In Korea British
pilot Desmond Fredrick William Hinton (b.1922) was shot down while
on a bombing run targeting railway infrastructure. In 2011 North
Korea handed his re-mains over to British officials.
(AP,
5/4/11)(www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/KH14Dg01.html)
1952 Jan 5, Churchill arrived
in Washington to confer with Truman.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1952 Jan 20, British troops
occupied Ismalia, Egypt.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1952 Feb 6, Britain's
King George VI died of lung cancer. His daughter, Elizabeth II,
succeeded him.
(AP, 2/6/97)(WSJ, 8/10/00, p.A16)(SSFC, 3/31/02,
p.A3)
1952 Feb 8, Elizabeth was
formally proclaimed Queen of England following the Feb 6 death of
her father, King George VI. Elizabeth was crowned Jun 2, 1953.
(HN, 2/8/98)(WSJ, 2/13/02, p.A21)
1952 Feb 26, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed its own
atomic bomb.
(AP, 2/26/98)
1952 Mar 1, Helgoland, in North
Sea, was returned to West Germany by Britain.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1952 Mar 5, Terence Rattigan's
"Deep Blue Sea," premiered in London.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1952 Mar 25, The U.S., Britain,
and France rejected the Soviet proposal for an armed, reunified,
neutral Germany.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1952 Apr 21, BOAC began 1st
passenger service with jets from London to Rome.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1952 May 2, The British
Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC), the national British carrier,
introduced the world’s 1st commercial jet airliner service. Initial
flights took passengers from London to Johannesburg in South Africa,
with stops. The British De Havilland Comet, the first commercial
jetliner, was grounded later this year after a series of fatal
crashes. Its flaws were fixed and the plane went on to deliver years
of reliable service.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)(Econ,
1/19/13, p.65)
1952 May 29, Louise Cooper,
sci-fi author (Nemesis, Inferno, Infanta, Nocturne), was born in UK.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1952 Sep 6, An engine on a de
Havilland 110 plane falls into a crowd at Farnborough Air Show in
England. Thirty people on the ground and the pilot are killed.
(AP, 7/27/02)
1952 Sep 12, Noel Coward's
"Quadrille," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1952 Oct 3, The British
detonated their 1st atomic bomb, a 25-kiloton device, in the Monte
Bello Islands off Australia. In 1998 a visit to the islands was
limited to one hour due to lingering radiation.
(SFC, 1/2/99, p.A14)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A26)(AP,
10/3/08)
1952 Oct 6, The play
"Mousetrap" by Agatha Christie (1890-1976) premiered in Nottingham.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mousetrap)
1952 Nov 2,
Derek Bentley (19) and Christopher Craig (16) tried to break into a
warehouse in South London. Craig shot and killed Police Constable
Sidney Miles. Bentley, who had the mental age of 11, was hanged in
Jan., 1953, for his role in the murder of the police officer and
Craig went to prison for 10 years. The 1991 film "Let Him Have It"
was based on the story of Bentley as was the Elvis Costello song
"Let Him Dangle." Bentley’s conviction was overturned in 1998.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A16,18)
1952 Dec 5-1952 Dec 8, A 4-day
London smog killed 4,703 people. Oxides of sulfur and other
irritants from coal smoke were blamed. The air pollution contributed
to some 12,000 deaths.
(PCh, 1992,
p.937)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog)(Econ, 11/26/16,
p.74)
1952 Margaret Mee (1909-1988),
botanical artist, left Britain for Brazil and for 3 decades
documented Amazonian rain forest plant life in large watercolors.
(WSJ, 1/26/99, p.A16)(http://tinyurl.com/yafb9m)
1952 Eduardo Paolozzi
(1924-2005), sculptor and printmaker, helped form an association of
British artists called The Independent Group. They included Richard
Hamilton, William Turnbull and Peter Blake. Paolozzi, born in
Scotland of Italian parents, became known as a key contributor to
British pop art.
(SSFC, 5/1/05, p.A23)
1952 Samuel Beckett published
his play "Waiting for Godot." It was 1st produced in Paris in 1953.
(SFEM, 9/10/00, p.7)
1952 Frederick Knott, English
writer, wrote his thriller "Dial ‘M’ for Murder. It was made into a
film with Grace Kelly by Alfred Hitchcock.
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1952 British writer Mary Norton
wrote "The Borrowers." It was made into a movie in 1998.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.C3)
1952 British PM Winston
Churchill declared a state of emergency in Kenya and sent British
and African soldiers to help colonial administrators capture May May
fighters and send them to detention camps.
(AP, 5/6/13)
1952 The British government
abolished ID cards.
(Econ, 5/1/04, p.15)
1952 England’s Morgan Motor
Company stopped making its 3-wheeled cars. In 2010 the company
unveiled a new 3-wheel model, the M3W, and planned expanded sales in
China.
(SSFC, 12/25/11,
p.D3)(www.morgandc.com/History/HistoryPage.htm)
1952 British engineer Charles
Spencer King (1925-2010) set a land speed record of 152 mph for gas
turbine cars in Jet1, which he helped design.
(SSFC, 7/4/10, p.C9)
1952-1960 Some 32 white settlers were killed by
Mau Mau rebels in Kenya. More than 10,000 people were killed during
the Mau Mau uprising, with some figures going much higher. In 2011
four may Mau colleagues won court approval in Britain to sue the
British government over brutality they claim they suffered in the
struggle.
(Econ, 1/1/05, p.66)(AFP, 7/21/11)
1953 Jan 31-1953 Feb 1, A
powerful storm breached sea dikes in the south of the Netherlands,
killing more than 1,800 people and cementing a deep resolve among
the Dutch that their ancient enemy, water, would never kill again.
307 people died in eastern England.
(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)(SSFC,
3/25/01, p.C3)
1953 Feb 28, Francis Crick
(d.2004) and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA-molecule.
Watson and Crick managed to describe the structure of DNA as a
double helix consisting of two long strings coiled around one
another. About 100,000 genes, short sections of DNA, tell the cells
how to build proteins, the building blocks of life. Rosalind
Franklin made the 1st x-ray image that revealed the double helix
structure of DNA. In 2002 Brenda Maddox authored "Rosalind Franklin:
The Dark Lady of DNA." In 2003 Watson co-authored "DNA: The Secret
of Life." [see Sep 20, Apr 25, 1953]
(V.D.-H.K.p.330)(TL, 1988, p.114)(Wired, 1/97,
p.161)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.M2)(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.W8) (AP, 2/28/04)
1953 Mar 24, Mary (85), queen
of Great Britain and North Ireland, died.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1953 Apr 24, British statesman
Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham
Palace.
(AP, 4/24/97)(HN, 4/24/98)
1953 May 11, Winston Churchill
criticized the domino theory of John Foster Dulles.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1953 Jun 2, Queen Elizabeth II
of Britain was crowned in Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the
death of her father, King George VI.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP,
6/2/97)
1953 Aug 19, Gen'l. Zahedi
ousted PM Mossadegh and became the Premier of Iran in a bloody coup
that left 300 dead. Britain and the US CIA under Allen Dulles
planned a secret mission to overthrow the government. PM Mossadeq
had sought to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. The US
government made a formal apology for the coup in 2000. A 1954 CIA
description of the coup was made public in 2000. In 1979 Kermit
Roosevelt (d.2000) published “Countercoup: The Struggle for the
Control of Iran,” an account of his role in the coup.
(SFC, 11/20/53, p.A1)(SFC, 11/15/99, p.E6)(SFC,
5/29/97, p.A4)(WSJ, 3/20/00, p.A1)(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)(SFEC,
6/11/00, p.D6)(WSJ, 4/2/07, p.A6)
1953 Oct 3, Arnold Edward
Trevor Bax, British composer (Coronation March), died at 69.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1953 Oct 9, British troops in
Guyana deposed Dr. Jagan and charged that he and his party "were
under the complete control of a communist clique." Dr. Jagan
responded with a civil disobedience campaign and was quickly jailed
for 6 months. In 2011 declassified documents revealed that the UK
under PM Winston Churchill overthrew the elected government of
British Guiana, later Guyana, because he feared its left-wing
leader, Cheddi Jagan, and his American wife, Janet Jagan, were
leading the British colony into the arms of the Soviet Union.
(SFC, 3/7/96, p.A24)(AP, 8/25/11)
1953 Oct 29, A British airliner
with 11 passengers and 8 crew crashed into Kings Mountain, 10 miles
west of Redwood City, Ca., and all aboard were killed. William
Kapell (b.1922), genius pianist, died in the crash. He was returning
from a tour in Australia when his airplane crashed into a mountain
outside San Francisco. A set of his 1944-1953 recordings was
released in 1998 by RCA. In 1999 BMG released "The William Kapell
Edition," a nine-disk set.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.E10)(SFEC, 11/29/98, DB
p.44)(WSJ, 2/1/99, p.A19)(WSJ, 5/24/08, p.W12)
1953 Nov 9, Welsh author-poet
Dylan Thomas died in New York at age 39 during his poetry-reading
blitz of the US.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T5)(AP, 11/9/97)
1953 Nov 21, The "Piltdown
Man," discovered in 1912, was proved to be a hoax.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1953 British writer Ian Fleming
published his first James Bond book, "Casino Royale."
(WSJ, 4/24/98, p.W1)
1953 Iris Murdoch published
"Sartre: Romantic Rationalist."
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)
1953 The British comedy film
“Trouble in Store” starred comedian Norman Wisdom (d.2010 at 95) and
was directed by John Paddy Carstairs.
(Econ, 10/16/10,
p.105)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0046464/)
1953 The first issue of the US
CIA sponsored British magazine "Encounter" was published under
Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender. It became the West's most
important vehicle for highbrow anti-Marxist commentary. The funding
source did not become known until 1966/7.
(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A46)(Econ, 6/19/04, p.81)
1953 The 412-foot Royal Yacht
Britannia was put into service. The yacht was retired in 1997.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.B6)
1953 Britain signed the
European convention, which set out a range of individual rights.
(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A13)
1953 Pres. Eisenhower gave the
CIA the ok to overthrow the elected government of PM Mohammad
Mossadegh. Mossadegh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
after Britain refused to compromise and split profits 50-50. In 2003
Stephen Kinzer authored "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and
the Roots of the Middle East Terror."
(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.M6)
1953 Poppit beads, small
plastic ball-and-socket units, were first created in England. They
were later sold under the names Poppit, Snapit or Lockit and sold as
beads for necklaces.
(SFC, 4/16/08, p.G3)
1953 Greece was among 22
countries that agreed to halve Germany's foreign debt at a
conference in London.
(AP, 3/22/15)
1953-1956 Sir Roger Makins (1904-1996) served as
the British ambassador to the US. His wife, Alice Davis, was the
daughter of Dwight Davis, for whom the tennis Davis Cup was named.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.A26)
1954 Jan 1, Duff Cooper
(b.1890), British cabinet minister and envoy, died. In 1953 he
authored his autobiography “Old Men Forget.” In 2005 John Julius
Norwich edited “The Duff Cooper Diaries.”
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWduff.htm)(Econ,
10/1/05, p.80)
1954 Feb 22, U.S. was to
install 60 Thor nuclear missiles in Britain.
(HN, 2/22/99)
1954 Feb 26, William R. Inge
(93), English theologist, philosopher, died.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1954 Mar 22, The London gold
market reopened for the first time since 1939.
(HN, 3/22/97)
1954 Mar 24, Britain opened
trade talks with Hungary.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1954 May 6, Medical student
Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in
Oxford, England, finishing in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
(TMC, 1994, p.1954)(AP, 5/6/97)
1954 May 7, US, Great Britain
and France rejected Russian membership in NATO.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1954 May 13, Labour Party won
British municipal elections.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1954 Jun 7, Alan Turing
(b.1912), English mathematician, died of suicide. Turing, a
homosexual, was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency and forced to
take estrogen injections. In 2006 David Leavitt authored ”The Man
Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer. In
2009 British PM Gordon Brown apologized for the "inhumane" treatment
of Alan Turing.
(www.turing.org.uk/turing/)Econ, 7/8/06,
p.79)(AP, 9/11/09)
1954 Jul 3, Food rationing
ended in Great Britain almost nine years after the end of World War
II.
(HN, 7/3/98)
1954 Jul 25, Lynn Frederick,
actress (Schizophrenia), was born in Middlesex, England.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1954 Sep 8, SEATO (Southeast
Asia Treaty Organization), a sister organization to NATO, was
created under the Manila Pact by the Southeast Asia Collective
Defense Treaty, to stop communist spread in Southeast Asia (Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos). The United States, Australia, France, Great
Britain, New Zealand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Thailand signed
the mutual defense treaty. SEATO dissolved in 1977.
(HNQ, 4/2/01)(http://tinyurl.com/hpawj)
1954 Sep 20, Roger Bannister
awarded Britain’s Silver Pears Trophy for cracking the 4-minute
mile.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1954 Oct 19, Egypt and Britain
concluded a pact on the Suez Canal, ending 72 years of British
military occupation. Britain agreed to withdraw its 80,000-man force
within 20 months, and Egypt agreed to maintain freedom of canal
navigation.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1954 Dec 3, William Walton's
opera "Troilus & Cressida," premiered in London.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1954 Dec 20, James Hilton (54),
English author (Lost Horizon), died.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1954 British actress Eleanor
Drew (1922-2014), born as Nellie Darlison, began a 5-year run in the
West End in the musical “Salad Days.”
(Econ, 4/19/14, p.86)
1954 Chris Chataway (1932-2014)
was named the first-ever BBC Sports Personality of the Year. He
broke the 5,000 meters world record and was one of the pacemakers
for Roger Bannister's landmark four-minute mile.
(AFP, 1/19/14)
1954 M.E. Clifton James
authored “I Was Monty’s Double,” an account of how he served as an
impersonator of British Gen. Bernard Montgomery during WWII. A movie
of the same title was released in 1958.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Was_Monty%27s_Double)
1954 Iris Murdoch published her
first novel "Under the Net."
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)
1954 British composer Benjamin
Britten (1913-1976 created his chamber opera “The Turn of the Screw”
based on the 1898 novella by Henry James.
(SFC, 7/22/13, p.E1)
1954 Gen. Franco closed the
Spanish consulate on Gibraltar in a fit of rage over a visit by
Queen Elizabeth II.
(AP, 9/19/06)
c1954 Anti-witchcraft laws were
repealed in Britain.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, p.A6)
1954 In Kenya British forces
allegedly used pliers to castrate Paulo Nzili, a Mau Mau rebel. He
survived the severe beatings which killed many other Mau Mau and in
2009 launched a bid with 4 others to win compensation from Britain
over claims they were tortured and unlawfully imprisoned during
Britain’s colonial rule.
(AFP, 6/23/09)
1955 Jan 19, Sir Simon Rattle,
orchestra conductor (Berlin Philharmonic), was born in England.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1955 Feb 17, Britain announced
its ability to make hydrogen bombs.
(HN, 2/17/98)
1955 Mar 11, Alexander Fleming
(73), English bacteriologist (penicillin), died.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1955 Apr 1, EOKA-bomb attacks
took place against British government buildings in Cyprus.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1955 Apr 5, Winston Churchill
resigned as British prime minister. He was replaced by Anthony Eden
who served to 1957. Eden's biography by Sir Robert Rhodes James
(d.1999 at 66) was published in 1987.
(HN, 5/5/97)(SFC, 5/25/99, p.Be)
1955 May 31, Great Britain
proclaimed emergency crisis due to railroad strike.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1955 Jul 9, Scientists in
London issued a manifesto declaring that researchers must take
responsibility for their creations, such as the atomic bomb.
Bertrand Russel, British pacifist philosopher, drafted the
manifesto, which served as the philosophical origin for the 1957
Pugwash Conference (Nova Scotia) against nuclear arms. It was signed
by ten other scientists that included as Joseph Rotblat (1995 Nobel
Peace Prize), Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling and Frederic
Joliot-Curie.
(WSJ, 10/16/95, p.
A-15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rotblat)
1955 Jul 13, Ruth Ellis, last
English woman (murderess), was executed by hanging. Ten days before
she had shot her husband, Ellis suffered a miscarriage after
Blakely, the baby's father, punched her in the stomach
(MC, 7/13/02)(AP, 9/16/03)
1955 Sep 22, Commercial TV
began in England. ITV began broadcasting at 7:15 pm in the London
region only. Associated Rediffusion was awarded the London weekday
license by the ITA, with ITN established as a separate company to
supply news. ATV London began broadcasting on weekends 2 days later.
(http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1057710,00.html)
1955
Oct 31, Britain's Princess Margaret ended weeks of speculation by
announcing she would not marry Royal Air Force Captain Peter
Townsend because he had been divorced.
(AP, 10/31/97)
1955 Dec 12, 1st prototype of
hovercraft patented by British engineer Christopher Cockerell.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1955 J.L. Austin (1911-1960),
British philosopher of language, authored “How To Do Things with
Words.”
(Econ, 11/12/16, p.77)
1955 Philip Larkin (1922-1985),
British poet, authored his collection “The Less Deceived.” It
included the poem “Church Going.” The poem is about an agnostic who
enters a church and has been described as one of the greatest poems
of the 20th century.
(WSJ, 6/24/06, p.P18)
1955 Geoffrey Gorer
(1905-1985), English anthropologist and writer, authored “Exploring
English Character.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Gorer)(Econ, 12/11/10, p.70)
1955 Sir Lawrence van der Post
(1906-1996) wrote "The Dark Eye in Africa."
(SFC, 12/17/96, p.B4)
1955 Norris (1925-2004) and
Ross McWhirter (1925-1975) co-created the Guinness Book of Records
as a book for settling bar bets on a commission from the Irish
Guinness brewery.
(WSJ, 4/21/04, p.A1)
1955 William Waugh (1903-1966),
English novelist born as Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh, authored
“Officers and Gentlemen.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh)
1955 Sir Michael Tippett,
British composer, premiered his 1st opera "The Midsummer Marriage"
at Covent Garden.
(SFC, 1/10/98, p.A19)
1955 In England Heathrow
Airport’s Terminal 2 was completed.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.91)
1955 Lew Grade (e.1998 at 91)
founded Associated Television, the first commercially funded channel
in Britain. Born as Louis Winogradsky in the Ukraine, he came to
London at age 6.
(SFC, 12/14/98, p.C4)
1955 Antony Fisher founded
Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Fisher sought advice
from Friedrich von Hayek, an Austrian-born economist, who urged him
to emulate the Fabian Society, the 1st socialist think-tank. The
institute promoted deregulation, privatization, tax cuts, trade
union reform and a free market. In 1957 Ralph Harris (1925-2006)
became general director.
(Econ, 10/22/05, p.90)(Econ, 11/4/06, p.96)
1955 The Research Laboratory
for Archeology and the History of Art at Oxford was founded and
directed by Prof. E.T. Hall (d.2001 at 77).
(SFC, 8/22/01, p.D2)
1955 Britain began tracking its
gross domestic product (GDP) on a quarterly basis.
(Econ, 4/25/09, p.31)
1955 The first accurate atomic
clock, a cesium standard based on a certain transition of the
cesium-133 atom, was built by Louis Essen and Jack Parry at the
National Physical Laboratory in the UK.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock)
1955 Sydney Wignall
(1922-2012), a Welsh explorer, launched the first Welsh Himalayan
Expedition. The 3-man team was captured by the Chinese and held for
two months under interrogation for spying. 25 years later it was
revealed that Wignall had been recruited by Gen. Thimayya of the
Indian army to find out what the Chinese were up to in Tibet. In
1997 his book: "Spy on the Roof of the World" was published.
(SFEC,12/14/97, BR p.4)(Econ, 5/5/12, p.94)
1955 Iraq joined with Britain,
Turkey, Iran and Pakistan in the Baghdad Pact, a loose alliance
intended to check soviet influence in the region. The Baghdad Pact
was formed at the prompting of the U.S. in an effort to block Soviet
pressures on the northern tier of Middle Eastern states. The U.S.
provided military and economic aid to the pact members.
(HNQ, 7/28/98)(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A10)
1956 Jan 1, Sudan became
independent from Britain.
(TL, 1988, p.115)(EWH, 1968, p.1230)(WSJ,
8/25/98, p.A14)
1956 Jan 23, Alexander Korda
(62), English movie producer (Henry VIII), died.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1956 Jan 31, British author
A.A. Milne (74), creator of "Winnie-the-Pooh," died. He left the
rights to the honey-loving bear to five beneficiaries that included
the Garrick Club, Westminster School, The Royal Literary Fund, his
own family and illustrator E.H. Shepard.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A20)(AP, 1/31/06)
1956 Feb 16, Britain abolished
the death penalty.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1956 Feb 17, ATV Midlands
launched a weekday service and ABC began transmission at weekends in
the same region the following day. A north of England service,
covering Lancashire and Yorkshire, began in May, with ABC
broadcasting at weekends and Granada during the week.
(http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1057710,00.html)
1956 Mar 9, British authorities
arrested and deported Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus to the
Seychelles. He was accused of supporting terrorists.
(EWH, 1968, p.1250)(HN, 3/9/98)
1956 Mar 23, Pakistan became an
independent republic within the British Commonwealth, officially the
Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistan became the first Islamic
republic.
(HFA, '96, p.26)(AHD, p.943)(AP, 3/23/97)(Econ
7/22/17, SR p.6)
1956 Apr 2, Peter Ustinov's
"Romanoff and Juliet," premiered in Manchester.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1956 Apr 4, Enid Bagnold's
"Chalk Garden," premiered in London.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1956 Apr 19, In southern
England Cdr. Lionel "Buster" Crabb, a decorated Royal Navy veteran,
disappeared while diving near Portsmouth. Secret documents released
in 2006 showed that British authorities lied to cover up the fate of
a Crabb, who died during a scuba diving spy mission near a warship
used by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.78)(AP, 10/27/06)
1956 May 8, John Osborne’s
"Look Back in Anger," premiered in London at the Royal Court
Theater. It was about a love triangle involving an intelligent but
disaffected young man (Jimmy Porter), his upper-middle-class,
impassive wife (Alison), and her haughty best friend (Helena
Charles). It took English theater on a radical turn. In 1958 it was
made into a movie. In 2006 John Heilpern authored “John Osborne: A
Patriot for Us.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Back_in_Anger)(SFEC, 4/11/99, DB
p.39)(Econ, 5/20/06, p.86)
1956 Jun 13, The 74-year
British occupation of the Suez Canal ended. The last British troops
left the Canal base.
(EWH, 1968, p.1241)(PC, 1992 ed, p.953)
1956 Jun 29, Marilyn Monroe
married playwright Arthur Miller in a London ceremony.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1956 Jul 20, Great Britain
refused to lend Egypt money to build Aswan Dam.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1956 Jul 24, Brendan Behan's
"Quare Fellow," premiered in London.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1956 Jul 26, Andy Goldsworthy,
British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist, was born. He
produced site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural
and urban settings. He lives and works in Scotland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Goldsworthy)
1956 Aug 7, British government
sent 3 aircraft carriers to Egypt.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1956 Aug 21, Kim Cattrall,
actress (Mannequin, Star Trek VI), was born in Liverpool, England.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1956 Oct 14, British and French
officials met as Israel was about to attack Egypt. Anthony Nutting
(d.1999 at 79), a deputy foreign secretary, learned that Prime
Minister Anthony Eden had agreed with the French that once fighting
began, they would send in paratroopers under the guise to separate
the fighting factions, but would actually support Israel, seize the
canal and undermine Nasser. Nutting resigned when British planes
took to the air Oct 31.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A25)
1956 Oct 17, The nuclear power
station Calder Hall was opened in Britain. Calder Hall was the first
nuclear station to feed an appreciable amount of power into a
civilian network. In 2007 engineers began the planned
decommissioning of the plant.
(HN, 10/17/98)(AP, 9/29/07)
1956 Oct 23, Britain’s PM
Anthony Eden admitted to the cabinet that secret conversations had
been held in Paris with representatives of the Israeli government.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.86)
1956 Oct 30, Britain and France
issued an ultimatum to Cairo and Tel Aviv to end fighting and
withdraw from a 10-mile strip along the canal.
(EWH, 1968, p.1242)
1956 Oct 31, Great Britain and
France attempted to take over the Suez Canal. They bombed Egyptian
airfields.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(TOH, 1982, p.1956)
1956 Nov 2, The UN passed an
American resolution, 64 to 5, for a ceasefire at the Suez Canal in
Egypt. The General Assembly took up a Canadian suggestion for an
emergency force to monitor the ceasefire. The UN Emergency Force
(UNEF) became the first “blue hat” UN peacekeepers.
(Econ, 7/29/06,
p.24)(www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/unefi.htm)
1956 Nov 5, Britain and France
started landing troops in Egypt during fighting between Egyptian and
Israeli forces around the Suez Canal. A cease-fire was declared two
days later.
(AP, 11/5/97)
1956 Nov 6, Pressure from the
US and USSR effected a cease-fire in the Middle-East. The UN created
an emergency force (UNEF) to supervise a cease fire. Britain’s PM
Anthony Eden called French PM Guy Mollet to tell him that Britain
was aborting operations in Egypt. German chancellor Konrad Adenauer,
meeting with Mollet, remarked that Europe must unite to counter the
influence of the United States.
(TOH, 1982, p.1956)(EWH, 1968, p. 1242)(Econ,
7/29/06, p.24)
1956 Nov 7, Britain’s PM
Anthony Eden surrendered to American demands and stopped British
operations in Egypt’s Canal Zone.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.29)
1956 Dec 3, England &
France pulled troops out of Egypt.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1956 Dec 22, The evacuation of
the Suez Canal was completed by Britain and France.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(MC, 12/22/01)
1956 Anthony Crosland
(1918-1977), British Labour Party politician, authored “The Future
of Socialism.” His ideas helped move Britain’s Labour Party beyond
nationalism.
(Econ, 8/7/10,
p.58)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Crosland)
1956 Joan Littlewood directed
the play "The Quare Fella" by Irish writer Brendan Behan. Her work
became labeled "kitchen-sink" drama. This was seen as part of the
working-class revolution in British theater.
(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A25)
1956 The British comedy
film “Up in the World” starred comedian Norman Wisdom and was
directed by John Paddy Carstairs.
(Econ, 10/16/10,
p.105)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0049906/)
1956 The Sadler’s Wells Ballet
of Dame Ninette de Valois was renamed the Royal Ballet.
(SFC, 3/9/01, p.D5)
1956 John Lennon formed a band
called the Quarrymen.
(SFC, 12/1/01, p.D1)
1956 Britain pass a Clean Air
Act. The Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed in
response to London's Great Smog of 1952. It was in effect until
1964.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956)(Econ, 12/5/15,
p.54)
1956 French PM Guy Mollet
discussed the possibility of a union with Britain’s PM Sir Anthony
Eden. Eden rejected the idea of a union but was more favorable
toward a French proposal to join the Commonwealth.
(SFC, 1/16/07, p.A2)
1956 The British administrator
of the Gilbert Islands put a levy on the export of phosphates (bird
manure) used in fertilizer. By 2007 the money set aside had
developed into the Kiribati Revenue Equalization Reserve Fund, a
$250 million investment portfolio that had grown to 9 times the
atoll’s GDP. State-owned investments later developed around the
world and became recognized as sovereign wealth funds.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.79)
1956-1967 Jo Grimand (d.1993) led Britain’s
Liberals. In 2005 Peter Barbaris authored “Liberal Lion: Jo
Grimond—A Political Life.”
(Econ, 3/12/05, p.81)
1957 Jan 9, British PM Anthony
Eden resigned in the wake of the Suez crises.
(AP, 1/9/99)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.23)
1957 Jan 10, Harold Macmillan
became prime minister of Britain, following the resignation of
Anthony Eden.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1957 Mar 5, Britain adopted a
plan to triple nuclear energy production by 1965.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1957 Mar 21, US President
Eisenhower and British PM Harold Macmillan began a four-day
conference in Bermuda.
(AP, 3/21/07)
1957 Mar 29, Joyce A.L. Cary
(68), English writer (Horse's Mouth), died.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1957 Apr 3, Samuel Beckett's
"Endgame," premiered in London.
(V.D.-H.K.p.369)(MC, 4/3/02)
1957 Apr 10, John Osborne’s
play “The Entertainer,” starring Laurence Olivier, opened in London.
(AP, 4/10/07)
1957 May 10, Sid Vicious, [John
Simon Ritchie], bassist (Sex Pistols), was born in England.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1957 May 15, The 1st British
hydrogen bomb was detonated on Christmas Island in South Pacific.
The 200 - 300 kilotons yield was less than expected.
(www.atomicarchive.com/Timeline/Time1950.shtml)
1957 May, Two US fighter planes
were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying
object (UFO) over the English countryside. This was only made public
on Oct 20, 2008, when Britain made public secret files on UFOs.
(Reuters, 10/20/08)
1957 Jun 10, Harold MacMillan
became British PM.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1957 Jul 6, Althea Gibson
(1927-2003) became the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon
singles title, defeating fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.
(AP, 7/6/97)(SFC, 9/29/03, p.A1)
1957 Aug 31, The Federation of
Malaya (Malaysia) gained independence from Britain (National Day).
Malaysia established itself as a constitutional monarchy. Article 11
in the constitution gave every person “the right to profess and
practice his religion.” Pro-bumiputra (sons of the soil)
discrimination was laid down in the constitution to ease Malays’
fears of being marginalized by Chinese and Indian migrants. A 1988
amendment denied the regular courts all jurisdiction over matters
dealt with by the Muslim sharia courts.
(YN, 8/31/99)(SFC, 11/22/01, p.A29)(AP,
8/31/07)(Econ, 9/1/07, p.11)
1957 Oct 7, A fire in the
Windscale plutonium production reactor (later called Sellafield)
north of Liverpool, England, spread radioactive iodine and polonium
through the countryside and into the Irish Sea. Livestock in the
immediate area were destroyed, along with 500,000 gallons of milk.
At least 30, and possibly as many as 1,000, cancer deaths were
subsequently linked to the accident. PM Harold Macmillan ordered the
disaster hushed up.
(HN, 10/7/00)(Econ, 9/11/04, p.76)(Econ,
10/13/07, p.63)
1957 Oct 16, Britain's Queen
Elizabeth II and Prince Philip began a visit to the United States
with a stopover at the site of the Jamestown settlement in Virginia.
(AP, 10/16/07)
1957 Oct 17, Britain's Queen
Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited the White House.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1957 Francis Bacon painted his
"Study for Portrait of Van Gogh, V."
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB p.29)
1957 Ian Fleming (1908-1964),
English author best known for his James Bond novels, authored “From
Russia With Love.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming)
1957 Richard Hoggart (b.1918),
British academic, authored “The Uses of Literacy,” a pioneering work
of cultural criticism and look at the English working class after
WWII.
(WSJ, 9/20/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hoggart)
1957 Ted Hughes (1930-1998),
British poet, re-defined the shape of post-war English poetry with
the publication of "The Hawk in the Rain."
(SFC, 10/30/98, p.A17)(Econ, 11/8/03, p.83)
1957 Reg Smythe (d.1998 at 81),
began the Andy Capp comic strip in the northern editions of the
Daily Mirror.
(SFC, 6/16/98, p.A22)
1957 John Lennon met Paul
McCartney and invited him to join the Quarrymen. McCartney soon
introduced Lennon to George Harrison.
(SFC, 12/1/01, p.D1)
1957 The film "Curse of
Frankenstein" starred Christopher Lee and featured Hazel Court. It
was a British Hammer Film production with a score by James Bernard.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, DB p.66)(SFC, 7/18/01,
p.C16)(SFC, 4/19/08, p.B5)(Econ, 6/20/15, p.90)
1957 Dorothy Sayers (b.1893),
British detective novelist, died. Her main hero was Lord Peter
Wimsey.
(NW, 8/20/01, p.56)
1957 Britain launched its 1st
sub-orbital Skylark rocket. The last Skylark, #441, was launched
near Kiruna, Sweden, in 2005.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.74)
1958 Jan 3, The British
created the West Indies Federation with Lord Hailes as governor
general. The federation lasted to 1962. It included Barbados,
Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago and the Windward and Leeward Islands.
(HN, 1/3/99)(WUD, 1994, p.1623)
1958 Feb 6, A British European
Airways plane crashed in Munich. Among the 21 dead were 7 players of
the Manchester United football team.
(Econ, 5/11/13, p.62)(http://tinyurl.com/buj8scd)
1958 Mar 2, A multinational
expedition led by British geologist and explorer Vivian Fuchs
(d.1999 at 91) completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica
by way of the South Pole in 99 days.
(SFC, 11/13/99, p.A22)(AP, 3/2/08)
1958 Apr 4, The 1st march
against nuclear weapons began in London with a 4-day to the Atomic
Weapons Research Establishment close to Aldermaston, England.
(Econ, 8/16/08,
p.56)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldermaston_Marches)
1958 Apr 7, Anti-nuclear peace
protesters arrived at the Atomic Weapons Establishment near
Aldermaston, England, after marching for several days from London.
(AP, 4/7/08)
1958 Apr 16, Rosalind Franklin
(b.1920), English chemist and one of the four scientists who
discovered the structure of DNA, died in London of ovarian cancer.
She made the 1st x-ray image that revealed the double helix
structure of DNA (1953). In 2002 Brenda Maddox authored "Rosalind
Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin)(SSFC, 11/10/02,
p.M2)
1958 Apr 29, Daniel Day-Lewis,
actor (Last of the Mohicans, My Left Foot), was born in England.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1958 Apr 30, Britain's Life
Peerages Act 1958 allowed women to become members of the House of
Lords.
(AP, 4/30/08)
1958 Jun 28, Alfred Noyes (77),
British poet, essayist (Robin Hood, The Highwayman), died.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1958 Jul 23, Queen Elizabeth
named four women to peerages, the 1st women to it in Britain's House
of Lords.
(AP, 7/23/97)
1958 Jul 26, Britain's Prince
Charles (9), was made the Prince of Wales by his mother, Queen
Elizabeth II, although his investiture did not take place until the
following year.
(AP, 7/26/08)
1958 Aug 26, Ralph Vaughan
Williams (85), English composer (Fantasia on Themes of Thomas
Tallis), died.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1958 Oct 1, Britain transferred
Christmas Island (south of Java) to Australia.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1958 Oct 4, The first
trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British
Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) with flights between London and
New York.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1958 Oct 14, Brendan Behan's
"Hostage," premiered in London.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1958 Oct 26, Pan American
Airways flew its first Boeing 707 passenger service jetliner from
New York’s Idlewild Airport (later JFK) to Paris; the trip took
eight hours and 41 minutes. 111 passengers flew aboard the Clipper
America and a ticket cost $489.60. The plane was christened a week
earlier by Mamie Eisenhower. The first New York - London
transatlantic jet passenger service was inaugurated by BOAC. [see
Oct 4]
(AP, 10/26/97)(WSJ, 10/23/98, p.W6)(HN, 10/26/98)
1958 Oct 28, The Samuel Beckett
play "Krapp's Last Tape" premiered in London.
(AP, 10/28/08)(SFEC, 10/15/00, DB p.50)
1958 The Paddington Bear first
appeared in "A Bear Called Paddington"— a stowaway from "Darkest
Peru" who arrived at London's Paddington train station wearing a
sign saying "Please look after this bear. Thank you." Author Michael
Bond (1926-2017) based his story on a stuffed animal purchased as a
last-minute Christmas gift for his wife.
(AP, 6/28/17)
1958 T.H. White (1906-1964),
English writer, authored the Arthurian novel “The Once and Future
King.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._H._White)
1958 Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010),
English writer, authored his novel “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning.”
(Econ, 5/1/10,
p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sillitoe)
1958 Michael Young (1915-2002),
British sociologist, authored “The Rise of Meritocracy.” It was Lord
Young's ideas that inspired the shake up of secondary education in
the 1960s, leading to the rise of comprehensive schools, where
children of all abilities and backgrounds are brought together under
one roof.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4035181.stm)
1958 Sir Lawrence van der Post
(1906-1996) wrote "The Lost World of the Kalahari."
(SFC, 12/17/96, p.B4)
1958 The British government
sent out a pamphlet to farmers titled “Home Defence and the Farmer.”
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.48)
1958 Sir John Woolf (d.1999 at
86), British film producer, established Anglia Television.
(SFC, 7/1/99, p.C4)
1958 William Phillips of the
London School of Economics showed that for much of the previous 100
years, unemployment was low in Britain when wage inflation was high,
and high when inflation was low. This came to be called the
“Phillips curve.”
(Econ, 10/14/06, p.79)
1958 Britain’s Notting Hill
Riots were a series of violent demonstrations against non-white West
Indians in the ethnically diverse northwest London neighborhood of
Notting Hill. This event first drew public attention to the growing
problem of racial tension in Britain.
(HNQ, 9/30/00)(Econ, 6/30/12, SR p.5)
1958 S.G. Warburg initiated the
first hostile takeover bid for British Aluminum on behalf of the
American group Reynolds and Tube Investments.
(SFC, 6/16/99, p.B4)
1958 John Gurdon of Oxford
Univ. cloned frogs by nuclear transfer, but his creations never
developed beyond the tadpole stage.
(Econ, 2/18/17, p.17)
1959 Jan 9, The American group
Reynolds and Tube Investments took over British Aluminium. In the
the first hostile takeover of a large British company.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.87)(http://tinyurl.com/28c8c7h)
1959 Feb 19, An agreement was
signed by Britain, Turkey and Greece granting Cyprus its
independence.
(AP, 2/19/98)
1959 Mar 3, British government
arrested Hastings Banda of Nyasaland (later Malawi), and ended an
emergency crisis.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1959 Mar 7, Arthur Cecil Pigou
(b.1877), English economist, died. His major work, “Wealth and
Welfare” (1912, 1920), brought welfare economics into the scope of
economic analysis. He was known for his work in many fields
and particularly in welfare economics. Pigou advocated taxation as a
way to combat the side effects associated with certain activities.
Pigovian taxes, taxes used to correct negative externalities, are
named in his honor.
(Econ, 11/11/06,
p.85)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Cecil_Pigou)
1959 Apr 15, Emma Thompson,
actress (Henry V, Howard's End, Oscar-1992), was born in England.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1959 Apr 20, British ballerina
Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991)) was arrested and briefly detained in a
Panama prison. She and her diplomat husband, Roberto Arias, had
sought Fidel Castro's help in a revolution that failed because of a
last-minute blunder. Fonteyn, born Peggy Hookham, went on to reach
even greater creative heights through her acclaimed partnership with
Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev. She returned to Panama with her
husband years later and died there.
(AP, 5/27/10)
1959 May 6, Iceland gunboats
shot at British fishing ships.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1959 May 25, Cathryn Harrison,
actress (Old Woman in Black Moon), was born in London,
England.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1959 May 29, Rupert Everett,
actor (My Best Friend's Wedding, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Next
Best Thing), was born in Norfolk, England.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1959 Jun 23, Klaus Fuchs was
released after nine years in British prison. Fuchs was a German-born
Los Alamos scientist whose espionage had helped the USSR build their
first atomic and hydrogen bombs.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1959 Jun, Britain shipped 20
tons of heavy water to Israel. The information, made public in 2005,
revealed that the water was vital for the production of plutonium at
Israel's secret Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert. The
documents revealed that heavy water was transported from a British
port in Israeli ships in two shipments, half in June 1959 and half a
year later.
(AP, 8/4/05)(AP, 12/10/05)
1959 Aug, In Britain the first
Mini Cooper automobile was built in response to the gas shortage. It
was called the Austin Mini Seven or the Morris Mini Minor. In 2002
an updated version was introduced.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A17)(SSFC, 7/7/02, p.A21)
1959 Oct 8, In Britain Harold
MacMillan (b.1894) won re-election as prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1959)
1959 Nov 2, Britain opened the
first section of the M1 motorway. The Watford Gap motorway service
station opened the same day.
(Econ, 1/5/13,
p.43)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_motorway)
1959 Nov 20, Seven European
nations (Austria, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden,
Switzerland) signed the Stockholm Convention to form the European
Free Trade Association (EFTA). The organization becoming operative
on May 3, 1960. After the accession of Denmark, Ireland, and the UK
to the EEC in January 1973, the EFTA began to falter. Portugal
(1985), followed in 1995 by Austria, Finland and Sweden, left to
join the EU. In 2017 Four members remained: Switzerland, Norway,
Liechtenstein and Iceland.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Association)
1959 Dec 30, Tracey Ullman,
singer and actress (Tracey Ullman Show), was born in Slough,
England.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1959 Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010),
English writer, authored his novel “The Loneliness of a
Long-distance Runner.”
(Econ, 5/1/10,
p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sillitoe)
1959 Ronnie Scott (1927-1996)
opened the Ronnie Scott jazz club in Soho, London.
(SFC, 12/25/96, p.A22)
1959 In Britain John Connell
founded the Noise Abatement Society. In 2012 His granddaughter,
Poppy Elliott, launched Quiet Mark, a not-for-profit company
encouraging manufacturers to make quieter products.
(Econ, 9/7/13, TQ p.9)
1959 The British Parliament
revoked a 300-year-old law that made it a crime, punishable by
burning at the stake, to forecast the weather.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, Z1 p.2)
1959 The first civilian
hovercraft, prototype SR-N2 with 68 seats, crossed the English
Channel in 20 minutes. The craft was invented by Christopher
Cockerell (d.1999 at 88), who was knighted in 1969.
(SFC, 6/4/99, p.D4)
1959 Sir Stanley Spencer,
British painter (b.1891), died. His life was later depicted in the
musical play by Pam Gem, "Stanley."
(SFC, 2/17/97, p.D6)(WSJ, 2/21/97, p.A12)
1960 Feb 19, Prince Andrew of
Britain, Albert Christian Edward, Duke of York was born.
(HN, 2/19/98)(MC, 2/19/02)
1960 Feb 20, English
archeologist Charles Leonard Woolley (b.1880), best known for his
excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia, died. He was knighted by King
George V in 1935.
(ON, 8/20/11, p.9)
1960 May 3, Austria became a
founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), along
with Britain, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland. The
agreement took effect in 1994.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Association)(Econ,
11/24/07, SR p.7)
1960 May 6 Britain's Princess
Margaret married Anthony Armstrong-Jones, a commoner, at Westminster
Abbey. They divorced in 1978.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1960 May 29, Adrian Paul, actor
(Dance to Win, Highlander), was born in London, England.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1960 Jun 26, British Somaliland
became independent and five days later was united with Italian
Somaliland as the Somali Republic.
(SFC, 4/10/96, A-5)
1960 Jul 1, Italian Somaliland
joined the British Somaliland Protectorate to form the Republic of
Somalia. The French Somali Coast (Côte française des Somalis)
continued as a French colony until 1967 when it became an overseas
territory of France as ‘Territoire Francais des Afars et des Issas’,
achieving independence in 1977 as Djibouti.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Somaliland)(Econ, 3/22/08,
p.55)
1960 Jul 6, Aneurin Bevan
(b.1897), British Labour politician, died. He was a key figure on
the left of the party in the mid-20th century, and prominently
served as the Minister of Health during the creation of the National
Health Service, in which he played a vital part. In 1962 and 1974
Michael Foot authored a 2-volume biography of Bevan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan)
1960 Aug 16, Britain granted
independence to the crown colony of Cyprus. Archbishop Makarios
began serving as the 1st post independence president. He chose
Spyros Kyprianou (28) as foreign minister. Under the provisions of
the independence settlement, Turkey, along with Greece and Britain,
maintained a right to military intervention if the island’s
constitutional order is threatened.
(AP, 8/16/97)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A26)(Econ, 1/28/17,
p.47)
1960 Sep 1, Robert Bolt's "A
Man For All Seasons," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1960 Sep 27, Sylvia Pankhurst,
feminist, died. She with her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, had
established the militant Women's Social and Political Union in 1903.
These British suffragettes employed controversial, even violent
methods to win the right to vote. In 1918, women over thirty were
granted the vote, and in 1928, the voting age was lowered to 21, the
voting age of men.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1960 Oct 1, Nigeria gained
independence from Britain (National Day). Abubakar Tafawa Balewa
(1912-1966) became the first prime minister and continued to 1966.
At this time Nigeria was composed of just three regions.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abubakar_Tafawa_Balewa)(WSJ,
10/14/95, p.A-1)(Econ, 1/9/16, p.42)
1960 Oct 21, The 1st
British nuclear submarine, Dreadnought, was launched at
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. Dreadnought was the first British
submarine to surface at the North Pole in 1971. In the 1970s she was
fitted to fire Tigerfish torpedoes. She developed reactor problems
in late 1980 and was decommissioned in 1982. She is laid up at
Rosyth awaiting disposal.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/aj.cashmore/britain/submarines/dreadnought/index.html)
1960 Nov 2, A British jury
determined that Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence is not
obscene. It had been published by Penguin Books.
(HN, 11/2/00)(MC, 11/2/01)
1960 Dec 7, The first episode
of "Coronation Street", the longest running TV soap opera in the
world, was broadcast by Granada.
(http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1057710,00.html)
1960 The musical "Oliver" based
on the Dickens novel "Oliver Twist" premiered in London. It was
written and composed by Lionel Bart (d.1999 at 68).
(SFEC, 4/4/99, p.B12)
1960 The new American Embassy
in London, designed by Eero Saarinen, was completed. His
designed for the building, officially titled the U.S. Chancellery,
was completed in 1955.
(WSJ, 10/8/08, p.D9)
1960 Britain ended its 2-year
national service program. Conscription in the United Kingdom existed
for two periods in modern times. The first was from 1916 to 1919,
the second was from 1939 to 1960. During World War I and World War
II it was known as War Service or Military Service. From 1948 it was
known as National Service.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_Kingdom)(Econ,
9/10/11, p.67)
1960 The British farthing went
out of circulation.
(Econ, 5/12/12, p.78)
1960 Britain had 16 banks. Then
years later the number dropped to six.
(Econ, 5/19/12, p.83)
1960 Cameroon gained
independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1960 Eddie Cochran (21),
American guitarist, died following a car crash in a hired car in
England. His hit songs included "Summertime Blues" and "C’mon
Everybody." His girlfriend, songwriter Sharon Sheeley and rocker
Gene Vincent, survived.
(SFC, 5/25/02, p.A27)
1961 Feb 5, Anthony G. de
Rothschild (73), British philanthropist, died.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1961 Feb 22, British Foreign
Sec. Douglas-Home said in a "Top Secret" letter to Defense Minister
Harold Watkinson that, "It must be fully obvious to the Americans
that Hong Kong is indefensible by conventional means and that in the
event of a Chinese attack, nuclear strikes against China would be
the only alternative to complete abandonment of the colony." The
document was made public in 2006.
(AP, 6/30/06)
1961 Mar 6, 1st London minicabs
were introduced.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1961 Mar 8, Thomas Beecham
(81), English conductor (Last Night of the Prom), died.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1961 Mar 15, South Africa
withdrew from British Commonwealth.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1961 Mar 26, John F. Kennedy
met with British Premier Macmillan, in Washington to discuss
increased Communist involvement in Laos.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1961 Apr 18, Pamella Bordes,
British parliament prostitute, was born in New Delhi, India.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1961 Apr 27, United Kingdom
granted Sierra Leone independence.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(SFC, 3/11/98, p.A10)(HN,
4/27/98)
1961 May 3, A British Colonial
Office telegram stated the general guidance for keeping papers out
of the hands of newly elected independent governments. Items should
be disposed of if they "might embarrass members of the police,
military forces, public servants or others eg police informers;
might compromise sources of intelligence" -- or might be used
"unethically" by incoming ministers. Under "Operation Legacy",
officials in Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia, Tanzania, Jamaica and other
former colonial territories were briefed on how to dispose of
documents that "might embarrass Her Majesty's government." This was
only made public in 2013.
(AFP, 11/29/13)
1961 May 10, "Beyond the
Fringe," premiered in London.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1961 May 28, Amnesty
International, a human rights organization, was founded. It won a
Nobel Prize in 1977. Amnesty Int’l. was spawned when British lawyer
Peter Benenson learned that two students in Portugal had been
imprisoned for seven years for drinking a toast to liberty despite
being under a dictatorship.
(HN, 5/28/98)(AP, 11/20/12)
1961 Jul 1, Diana Frances
Spencer, the princess of Wales, was born near Sandringham, England.
She died August, 1997, in a car crash in Paris at age 36.
(AP, 7/1/98)
1961 Jul 1, British troops
landed in Kuwait to aid against Iraqi threats.
(HN, 7/1/98)
1961 Jul 8, John Profumo,
Britain’s Secretary of State for War, met Christine Keeler, at a
party at Cliveden. Profumo kept in contact with Keeler and they
eventually began an affair.
(http://spartacus-educational.com/PRprofumo.htm)
1961 Aug 3, Britain’s
Parliament adopted the Suicide Act of 1961, which decriminalized
suicide in the UK, but made assisting one punishable by up to 14
years in jail.
(Econ, 6/6/09,
p.55)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Act_1961)
1961 Aug 9, The United Kingdom
applied for membership in the European Community.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1961/index_en.htm)
1961 Oct 26, Britain introduced
a time-limited parliamentary session for Prime Minister's Questions.
It was initially two sessions of 15 minutes each on Tuesday and
Thursday. PM Tony Blair later changed it to a single 30-minute joust
on Wednesdays.
(AP, 10/26/11)
1961 Nov 16, Great Britain
limited immigration from Commonwealth countries.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1961 Dec 9, The British Trust
Territory of Tanganyika became independent. The first president was
socialist Julius Nyerere (1922-1999). He resigned in 1985.
Tanganyika became the mainland part of Tanzania in 1964.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika)(SFC,
8/8/98, p.A12)(SFC, 10/15/99, p.D7)
1961 Dec 13, Beatles signed a
formal agreement to be managed by Brian Epstein.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1961 Dec 18, Britain's EMI
Records originally rejected the Beatles.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1961 Dec 21, JFK & British
PM MacMillan met in Bermuda.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1961 James Blades (1901-1999),
English percussionist, authored "Orchestral Percussion Technique."
(SFC, 5/25/99,
p.B2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Blades)
1961 Ludovic Kennedy
(1919-2009), Scotland-born writer, authored “10 Rillington Place,”
the story of Timothy Evans, who was hanged on 1950 for a murder he
did not commit. The book was later said to have played a role in
ending capital punishment in Britain.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYkennedyL.htm)(Econ, 10/24/09,
p.99)
1961 The Beatles recorded their
1st commercial record, "My Bonnie." Brian Epstein, a Liverpool
record store manager, became the Beatles’ manager.
(SFC, 12/1/01, p.D1)
1961 The British television
show “The Avengers” began and continued to 1969. The theme music was
composed by British jazz artist John Dankworth.
(SFC, 2/8/10,
p.C3)(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060708/)
1961 In London the Post Office
Tower was completed. It was designed by Eric Bedford (d.2001) and
was later renamed the British Telecom Tower.
(SFC, 8/17/01, p.D5)
1961 Britain’s Shrewsbury
School mates Christopher Booker, Richard Ingrams and Willie Rushton
founded “Private Eye” magazine. Paul Foot (1938-2004) joined the
trio in 1967.
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.74)
1961 In Britain a group of
spies were arrested and microfilm was found of documents from the
Admiralty.
(SFC, 12/6/96, p.B8)
1961 The Archigram group,
formed by 6 friends in London, was named after their architectural
broadsheet telegrams. The group included Ron Herron, Peter Cook,
David Greene, Dennis Crompton, Michael Webb and Warren Chalk. Their
work was delivered in a comic book style and based on the message
that architecture was not eternal, but temporary and disposable.
(WSJ, 4/23/98, p.A16)
1961 Britain’s Jaguar Cars Ltd.
Launched the Jaguar E-Type, designed by Malcolm Sayers.
(Econ, 5/18/13, IL
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_E-Type)
1961 Guy Mountfort (d.2003) and
3 other Britons: zoologist Sir Julian Huxley, broadcaster Peter
Scott and wildlife advocate Max Nicholson, founded the Swiss-based
World Wildlife Fund (Worldwide Fund for Nature).
(AP, 5/1/03)(Econ, 9/14/13, SR p.8)
1961 Polish defector Michael
Goleniewski exposed British agent George Blake (b.1922) as a spy for
Russia. He was convicted on spying charges in Britain and sentenced
to 42 years in prison. In October 1966, he made a dashing escape
with help from several people he met while in custody and settled in
Russia. He said he volunteered to work for the Soviet Union after
witnessing relentless US bombing of North Korea.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Blake)(AP,
11/10/17)
1962 Jan 16, R.H. Tawney
(b.1880), English economic historian, died. His books include
“Equality” (1931). It was here that he wrote “Freedom for the pike
is death to the minnows.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._H._Tawney)
1962 Jan 23, British spy Kim
Philby defected to USSR.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1962 Mar 1, US-British nuclear
test experiment took place in Nevada.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1962 Mar 1, Uganda became a
self-governing country. [see Oct 9]
(SC, 3/1/02)
1962 Mar 3, British Antarctic
Territory was formed.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1962 Apr 18, The British
Parliament passed its Commonwealth Immigrants Act. This
tightened migration permitting only those with government-issued
employment vouchers, limited in number, to settle in the United
Kingdom.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Immigrants_Act_1962)
1962 May 8, London trolley
buses went out of service.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1962 Jun 2, Vita Sackville-West
(b.1892), English poet, novelist and gardener, died. She helped
create her own gardens in Sissinghurst, Kent. She was famous for her
exuberant aristocratic life, her strong marriage, and her passionate
affairs with women like novelist Virginia Woolf. Her son Nigel gave
her estate to the National Trust, a conservation charity. In 2008
Adam Nicolson authored “Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History.”
(Econ, 10/04/08,
p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vita_Sackville-West)
1962 Jul 12, Mick Jagger (18),
Keith Richards (18) and Brian Jones (20) played The Marquee Club
with three others, the first time they performed under the Rolling
Stones band name which later became synonymous worldwide with excess
and musical flair.
(AFP, 7/7/12)
1962 Jul 21, George Macaulay
Trevelyan (b.1876), British historian, died in Cambridge. Many of
his writings promoted the Whig Party, an important aspect of British
politics from the 17th century to the mid-19th century, and its
successor, the Liberal Party.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._M._Trevelyan)
1962 Aug 6, Jamaica became an
independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(AP, 8/6/97)
1962 Aug 16, The Beatles
dropped Pete Best as their drummer. They took on Ringo Starr on Aug
17. Best later authored the autobiography "Beatle! The Pete Best
Story."
(SFC, 7/5/02, p.G5)(MC, 8/16/02)
1962 Aug 17, Beatles replaced
Pete Best with Ringo Starr.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1962 Sep 11, The Beatles
recorded their first single for EMI, "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love
You," at EMI studios in London. The recording contract was offered
by producer George Martin. Drummer Ringo Starr joined John, Paul and
George for his first recording session as a Beatles, replacing Pete
Best. "Love Me Do" was the result and it took 17 takes to complete.
(AP, 9/11/97)(SFC, 11/11/98, p.E3)(MC, 9/11/01)
1962 Oct 5, The Beatles' first
hit, "Love Me Do," was first released in the United Kingdom.
(AP, 10/5/97)
1962 Oct 9, Uganda became an
independent state within the Britain Commonwealth. [see Mar 1]
(PCh, 1992, p.984)(HFA, '96, p.40)(SFC, 5/4/96,
P.A-10)
1962 Oct 18, Dr. James D.
Watson of the United States and Dr. Francis Crick and Dr. Maurice
Wilkins (d.2004) of Britain, were named winners of the Nobel Prize
for Medicine and Physiology for their work in determining the
double-helix molecular structure of DNA.
(AP, 10/18/02)(SFC, 3/19/98, p.C4)
1962 Oct, Max Perutz
(1914-2002), Austrian-born molecular biologist, won the Nobel Prize
in chemistry for his work in England on the structure of hemoglobin.
(Econ, 8/25/07,
p.77)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Perutz)
1962 Nov 24, The BBC TV series
"That Was the Week That Was" began and ran through 36 episodes to
1963. Willie Rushton impersonated PM Harold McMillan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Was_The_Week_That_Was)(SFC,
12/12/96, p.C8)
1962 Nov 26, The Beatles made
their 1st recording session under the "Beatles" name.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1962 Nov 29, Great Britain and
France agreed on a joint venture to build the super sonic Concorde
jet.
(WSJ, 7/26/00, p.A26)(MC, 11/29/01)
1962 Dec 7, Great Britain
performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1962 Dec 10, "Lawrence of
Arabia," David Lean's epic film starring Peter O'Toole as British
officer T.E. Lawrence, had its royal gala premiere in London.
(AP, 12/10/02)
1962 "The War Requiem" by
Benjamin Britten premiered at the reconsecration of the bombed-out
Coventry Cathedral. It juxtaposed sections from the Mass for the
Dead with verse by WW I poet Wilfred Owen.
(SFEM, 5/17/98, p.6)
1962 Sir Michael Tippett,
British composer, premiered his 2nd opera "King Priam."
(SFC, 1/10/98, p.A19)
1962 In Britain the Federation
of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) was formed.
(Econ, 1/9/10, p.61)
1962 In Britain John Vassal
(1925-1996), an Admiralty clerk, was arrested for spying. He had
been blackmailed into spying as an attaché in Moscow in 1955 with
sex photographs with 2-3 men. The scandal helped to end the
career of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
(SFC, 12/6/96, p.B8)
1962 Denys Fisher, an English
inventor, made a tool to help draw waves for scientific use, but it
was not adopted. His family thought it would a good toy for children
and in 1965 it was made into a kit and showed at an int’l. toy show.
Kenner bought the toy and sold it as the Spirograph.
(SFC, 10/17/07, p.G2)
1963 Jan 14, President of
France Charles de Gaulle announced the French veto on Britain's
application to join the European Common Market, the forerunner of
the European Union. De Gaulle said the British government lacked
'commitment' to European integration.
(www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/timeline/present_timeline_noflash.shtml)
1963 Jan, British investigative
reporter Peter Earle (d.1997 at 71) uncovered the call-girl ring run
by osteopath Stephen Ward. The investigation snowballed into the
Profumo scandal that revealed Minister of War, John Profumo,
involved in an affair with Christine Keeler, who was conducting a
simultaneous affair with a Soviet military attaché. The scandal
brought down the government of PM Harold Macmillan. The events were
dramatized in the film "Scandal."
(http://spartacus-educational.com/PRprofumo.htm)(SFEC, 4/27/97,
p.B8)
1963 Feb 11, Sylvia Plath (30),
American writer, committed suicide by gas in London after Ted Hughes
left her for another woman. Her autobiographical novel "The Bell
Jar" was published this year. She had been married to English poet
Ted Hughes (d.1998), who in 1998 published a 198 page book of verse
"Birthday Letters" based on their relationship. The woman for whom
Hughes left Plath committed suicide 5 years later. Plath’s 1981
"Collected Poems" won a Pulitzer Prize. The Plath book of poems
"Ariel" was published after her death. In 2000 her uncensored
diaries: "The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath," were edited by
Karen V. Kukil. In 2013 Carl Rollyson authored “American Isis: The
Life and Art of Sylvia Plath.”
(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.C5)(SFEC,
3/26/00, p.A25)(SFEC, 11/12/00, BR p.1)(SSFC, 2/17/13, p.F5)
1963 Mar 12, US House granted
former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill honorary U.S.
citizenship.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1963 Mar 16, William Beveridge
(b.1879), British economist and social reformer, died. He is perhaps
best known for his 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services
(known as the Beveridge Report) which served as the basis for the
post-World War II Welfare State put in place by the Labour
government.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beveridge)
1963 Mar 22, British Minister
of War John Profumo denied having sex with Christine Keeler. The
Profumo call girl scandal almost toppled the government. Profumo, a
leading British Conservative and minister for war, was discovered to
have been involved with Keeler, a call girl who was also dealing
with a Soviet attaché. Valerie Hobson (d.1998 at 81), his actress
wife, stood by him after the scandal. A 1995 Masterpiece Theater TV
play was based on these events.
(TMC, 1994, p.1963)(WSJ, 12/28/95, p. A-5)(SFEC,
11/15/98, p.D5)(MC, 3/22/02)
1963 Apr 8, Julian Lennon, John
Lennon’s son, singer (Too Late for Goodbyes), was born.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1963 Jun 5, John Profumo
(1915-2006), British Minister of War, resigned due his relations
with Christine Keeler. [see Mar 22]
(AP, 3/10/06)
1963 Jun 9, JFK named Winston
Churchill a US honorary citizen.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1963 Jun 17, British House of
Commons debated the John Profumo-Christine Keeler affair, which
involved the defense minister and the call-girl he shared with a
Russian agent.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1963 Jun 17, John Cowper Powys
(b.1872), English author, died. In 2007 Morine Krissdottir authored
“Descent of Memory: The Life of John Cowper Powys.” His 10 novels
included “Wolf Solent,” the story of a young man’s rebellion against
the modern world.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cowper_Powys)(WSJ, 9/8/07, p.P9)
1963 Jun 24, 1st demonstration
of home video recorder was at the BBC Studios in London.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1963 Jul 25, The United States,
the Soviet Union and Britain initialed a treaty in Moscow
prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in
space or underwater.
(AP, 7/25/97)
1963 Jul 30, British spy Kim
Philby was discovered in Moscow. Philby, writer for The Economist,
who spent six years filing dispatches from the Middle East, was
discovered to be a spy and defected to the Soviet Union.
(WSJ, 6/6/95, p.A-14)(MC, 7/30/02)
1963 Jul, Serial killers
Myra Hindley (d.2002) and her boyfriend, Ian Brady (the Moors
Murderers), began abducting, molesting and killing children. The
pair were caught in Oct, 1965. Between 1963 and 1965 they lured five
children and teenagers to their deaths, burying four of them on
remote moorland near Manchester.
(AP, 11/16/02)(AFP, 8/17/12)
1963 Aug 3, Beatles made a
final performance the Cavern Club in Liverpool.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1963 Aug 5, The United States,
Britain and the Soviet Union signed a treaty in Moscow banning
nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space and underwater.
(AP, 8/5/97)
1963 Aug 8, Britain's "Great
Train Robbery" took place as thieves made off with 120 mailbags with
2.62 million pounds in banknotes. 15 men under Bruce Reynolds
(d.2013) held up the Glasgow to London Royal Mail (Glasgow-Euston
train) and took off with $7.2 mil in sterling. They badly beat up
train driver Jack Mills. He never returned to work and died seven
years later without making a full recovery. Ronald Biggs claimed to
be one of the 15 men and later lived freely in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. His share of the robbery was $2.8 mil but he was arrested
just four weeks after the robbery. He escaped from Wandsworth Prison
in 1965 and was still wanted in Britain. Only 1/8 of the money
stolen was ever recovered. Dinner at home with Mr. Biggs could be
purchased for $50. In 1994 Biggs published an autobiography. In 1999
a video game was developed based on the event. Biggs (71) returned
to Britain in 2001 and in 2009 he was up for parole. Reynolds spent
five years as a fugitive. On his return to Britain he was caught by
police and sentenced 25 years in prison for the train heist, of
which he served just 10. Reynolds published a memoir titled
"Autobiography of a Thief" and became a consultant on a crime film.
(SFE, 10/1/95, p.T-8)(AP, 8/8/97)(WSJ, 11/4/99,
p.A28)(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A1)(AFP, 7/1/09)(AP, 2/28/13)
1963 Aug 23, Beatles released
"She Loves You" in UK.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1963 Aug 30, Guy Burgess
(b.1911), British spy for the USSR, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Burgess)
1963 Sep 7, The Beatles made
their 1st US TV appearance on ABC’s Big Night Out.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1963 Oct 7, President Kennedy
signed the documents of ratification for a nuclear test ban treaty
with Britain and the Soviet Union.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1963 Oct 9, British premier
Harold MacMillan resigned.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1963 Oct 19, Beatles recorded
"I Want to Hold Your Hand."
(MC, 10/19/01)
1963 Oct 20, Alec Douglas-Home
formed a British government.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1963 Oct 22, Britain’s
"National Theatre Company," founded under Laurence Olivier, opened
with Hamlet. In 2017 Nicholas Hytner authored “Balancing Acts:
Behind the Scenes at the National Theater.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_National_Theatre)(Econ 5/6/17,
p.75)
1963 Nov 22, Aldous L. Huxley
(69), English author (Devils of Loudon, Brave New World), died in
Los Angeles.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ahuxley.htm)
1963 Nov 22, C.S. Lewis,
English author the Narnia series and other books, died of
osteoporosis. In 2005 Alan Jacobs authored “The Narnian,” a
biography of Lewis. In 2013 Alister McGrath authored “C.S. Lewis--A
Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet.”
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cslewis.htm)(WSJ, 10/15/05,
p.P13)(Econ, 5/18/13, p.88)
1963 Dec 10, Zanzibar was
granted independence by the United Kingdom and became a
constitutional monarchy under the Sultan.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sultans_of_Zanzibar)
1963 Dec 12, Kenya gained
independence from Britain and the Kenyan African National Union
Party (KANU) began ruling. Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, was the first
president and served until 1978. The Kikuyu and closely related Meru
and Embu groups comprised some 28% of Kenya’s people. Kenya’s
population at this time was under 8 million. This was later
commemorated as Jamhuri Day.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A8)(SFC, 7/1/97,
p.A9)(AP,12/12/97)(SFC,12/23/97, p.D4)(SFC, 8/8/98, p.A12)(Econ,
2/28/09, p.87)(Econ, 3/14/09, p.49)(SSFC, 5/25/14, p.P3)
1963 Sir Lawrence van der Post
(1906-1996) wrote "The Seed and the Sower." It was filmed in 1983 as
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence with David Bowie.
(SFC, 12/17/96, p.B4)
1963 Nora Beloff (1919-1997),
British political writer and foreign correspondent, wrote "The
General Says No: Britain’s Exclusion from Europe."
(SFC, 2/24/96, p.A17)
1963 The English satirical
musical “Oh, What a Lovely War!” was directed by Joan Littlewood
(1914-2002) and based on Alan Clark’s “The Donkeys” (1961), a
scathing examination of British First World War generals.
(SFC, 9/24/02,
p.A25)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Littlewood)
1963 Yehudi Menuhin founded the
Yehudi Menuhin School at Stoke d'Abernon, in Surrey, England,
combining musical and scholastic training to gifted students.
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A9)
1963 Sir Andrew Huxley
(1917-2012), British neurophysiologist shared a Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine with Alan Hodgkin and John Eccles.
(Econ, 6/16/12,
p.102)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Huxley)
1963 John R. Hopkins won a
British Screenwriter’s Guild Award for the TV police show "Z Cars."
(SFC, 8/4/98, p.C2)
1963 The British light cruiser
HMS Belfast saw active service until 1963. The cruiser saw
distinguished service in World War II and Korea and now serves as a
floating museum on the River Thames in London. Belfast is, in fact,
the last survivor of the Royal Navy’s all-gun cruisers. Although she
still, by special privilege, flies the White Ensign and has the
right to the designation Her Majesty’s Ship, she is now a permanent
floating museum, a branch of the world-famous Imperial War Museum.
She was the first warship to be preserved by Great Britain since
Lord Nelson’s HMS Victory.
(HNQ, 6/2/01)
1963 Britain relaxed laws on
betting. Gambling as a result moved off tracks to betting shops. By
2006 attendance at dog races fell to some 3.6 million from a high of
38 million in 1936.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.74)
1963 David Low (72), British
political cartoonist, died.
(WSJ, 5/29/02, p.D7)
1963 Kenya gained independence
from Britain and the Kenyan African National Union Party began
ruling.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A8)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1964 Feb 6, Paris and London
agreed to build a rail tunnel under the English Channel.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1964 Feb 7, The British
band The Beatles began their first American tour as they arrived at
New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where they were
greeted by 25,000 screaming fans.
(SFEM, 3/9/96, p.35)(AP, 2/7/97)(HN, 2/7/99)
1964 Feb 8, Peter Shaffer's
"Royal Hunt of the Sun," premiered in London.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1964 Feb 23, The U.S. and
Britain recognized the new Zanzibar government.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1964 Mar 9, The London
Fisheries Convention was signed in relation to fishing rights across
the coastal waters of Western Europe. The agreement was largely
superseded to the Common Fisheries Policy (the CFP) of 1970, as all
parties are members of the European Union.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisheries_Convention)
1964 Mar 28, First pirate radio
station began to broadcast off the coast of England. Radio Caroline
debuted with a combination of rock music and lively disk jockey
whose patter played to a huge audience in Great Britain. British
authorities, tried unsuccessfully, to shut down the radio station
ship. Radio Caroline had become competition to the staid and usually
dull British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). [see Dec 23]
(MC, 3/28/02)
1964 Apr 5, 1st driverless
trains ran on the London Underground.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1964 May 6, Joe Orton's
"Entertaining Mr. Sloan," premiered in London.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertaining_Mr_Sloane)
1964 Jun 9, W. Maxwell Aitken
(85), Lord Beaverbrook, English Minister of Info, died.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1964 Jul 6, Beatles' film "Hard
Day's Night" premiered in London.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1964 Jul 6, Malawi, the former
British protectorate and part of the Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland gained independence.
(WUD, 1994, p.867)
1964 Aug 12, Ian L. Fleming
(56), British spy, journalist, writer (James Bond), died. He had
recently sold a 51% share of the copyright of his books to Sir Jock
Campbell, who chaired the Booker Brothers. In 2000 Fleming’s heirs
bought back the copyright to the books.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming)(Econ,
5/31/08, p.90)
1964 Sep 9, John Osborne's
"Inadmissible Evidence," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1964 Sep 21, Malta became an
independent member of the British Commonwealth.
(AP, 9/21/97)(Econ, 7/14/07,
p.57)(www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5382.htm)
1964 Oct 16, Harold Wilson
(d.1995) of the Labor Party assumed office as prime minister of
Britain, succeeding Conservative Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Wilson’s
Labor government took over from Harold MacMillan’s Conservatives.
The election was about 13 wasted Tory years and Wilson’s promised
“white heat of technology”.
(AP, 10/16/99)(WSJ, 7/26/00, p.A26)(Econ,
4/29/17, p.42)
1964 Nov 25, Eleven nations
gave a total of $3 billion to rescue the value of the British
currency.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1964 Dec 9, Dame Edith Sitwell
(d.1964), English poet, died. "Good taste is the worst vice ever
invented." A book of her collected poems was published in 2006. In
2011 Richard Greene authored “Edith Sitwell: Avant Garde Poet,
English Genius.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Sitwell)(WSJ,
7/22/06, p.P10)(Econ, 2/19/11, p.94)
1964 Dec 21, Britain’s House of
Commons voted to ban the death penalty. Parliament voted to abolish
the death penalty. The vote was in part due to the country’s unease
over the 1953 Bentley hanging
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A16)(HN, 12/21/98)
1964 Dec 23, Rock 'n' Roll
Radio- in the guise of Pirate Radio- came to England where one had
to listen to the BBC or nothing at all. Pirate Radio was a gallant
effort to broadcast commercial radio, which was illegal in Great
Britain at that time.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1964 The British duo Peter and
Gordon made a hit with the song “A World Without Love,” written by
Paul McCartney. The group broke up in 1968 after 9 top 20 records.
Gordon Waller died in 1964 at age 64.
(SFC, 7/24/09, p.D6)
1964 The BBC showed its 26-part
epic of WWI: “The Great War.”
(Econ, 3/29/14, p.88)
1964 The British TV series
"Till Death Do Us Part," written by Johnny Speight (d.1998 at 78),
began. It was copied in the US for the 1971 "All in the Family" that
began in 1971 on CBS TV and ran to 1983 and later became "Archie
Bunker’s Place." Bunker was the first video-taped sitcom.
(SFEC, 5/24/98, DB p.39)
1964 London’s
Caribbean-flavored Notting Hill Carnival was founded following the
disturbances in Notting Hill six years earlier that saw clashes
between whites and newly arrived immigrants from the West Indies.
(AP, 8/29/11)
1964 Zambia established
Independence from Britain. Pres. Kenneth Kaunda was in charge.
(SFC, 5/22/96, p.A9)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1964-1970 Harold Wilson was the prime minister of
Britain.
(SFC, 9/6.96, p.A23)
1964-1977 Secret germ warfare was conducted during
this time over London and southern England. Scientists released
three types of bacteria: bacillus globigii, killed serratia
marcescens, and E. Coli 162. Officials claimed that the bacteria was
rendered harmless.
(SFC, 2/3/97, p.C2)
1965 Jan 15, Sir Winston
Churchill suffered a severe stroke.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1965 Jan 4, T.S. Eliot, English
poet, died in London at age 76. In 1995 Anthony Julius published
"T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form." Julius was the lawyer
who won a divorce settlement of $23 million for Princess Diana in
1996. "Little Gidding" is an Eliot work. In 2015 Robert Crawford
authored “Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land.”
(SFC, 7/17/96, p.E6)(NH, 8/96, p.57)(AP,
1/4/98)(Econ., 2/14/15, p.74)
1965 Jan 24, Winston Churchill,
former prime minister (1940-45, 51-55), died from a cerebral
thrombosis in London at age 90. "I am always ready to learn, but I
do not always like to be taught." Lord Moran (Sir Charles Wilson),
his personal physician, later authored "Churchill At War:
1940-1945."
(AP, 1/24/98)(AP, 1/17/00)(HN, 1/24/01)(WSJ,
12/14/02, p.W10)
1965 Jan 30, The state funeral
of Winston Churchill took place.
(MC, 1/30/02)
1965 Feb 2, Joe Orton's farce,
"Loot," premiered in Brighton.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1965 Feb 15, John Lennon passed
his driving test.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1965 Mar 4, David Attenborough
became the new controller of BBC2.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1965 Apr 13, Beatles recorded
"Help."
(MC, 4/13/02)
1965 May 14, An acre at the
field at Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Carta, was
dedicated by Queen Elizabeth as a memorial to the late John F.
Kennedy, US President.
(www.camelotintl.com/365_days/may.html)(http://tinyurl.com/flw65)
1965 Jul 26, Republic of
Maldives gained independence from Britain.
(www.findmaldives.com/Maldives-Independence.html)
1965 Jul 29, Beatles movie
"Help" premiered and Queen Elizabeth attended.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1965 Jul 31, J. K. Rawling,
British writer, was born in Yate, Gloucestershire. She became famous
for her Harry Potter fantasy series.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling)
1965 Jul, British Great Train
Robber Ronnie Biggs (1929-2013) escaped prison and spent the next 35
years on lam between Paris, Australia, Panama and Brazil.
(Econ, 1/4/14, p.74)
1965 Sep 4, Beatles' "Help!,"
single went #1 for 3 weeks.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1965 Sep 13, The Beatles
released "Yesterday."
(MC, 9/13/01)
1965 Sep 26, Queen Elizabeth
decorated the Beatles with the Order of the British Empire.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1965 Oct 8, London's Post
Office Tower opened as the tallest building in England.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1965 Oct 26, Beatles received
MBEs at Buckingham Palace.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1965 Oct, In Britain
child serial killers Myra Hindley (d.2002) and her boyfriend, Ian
Brady (the Moors Murderers), were caught. [see 1966]
(AP, 11/16/02)
1965 Nov 13, Director Kenneth
Tynan said "Fuck" on BBC.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1965 Nov, The British Indian
Ocean Territory (Biot) was created by detaching the Chagos island
group from Mauritius and other small islands from the Seychelles,
then both British colonies. Mauritius was given £3m in compensation;
the following year, Britain signed a military agreement with the US
leasing it the largest island, Diego Garcia, for 50 years. This
meant deporting some 1,500 Chagossians, mostly to Mauritius and the
Seychelles.
(www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1636549,00.html)(Econ 7/1/17,
p.49)
1965 Dec 3, Beatles began their
final UK concert tour in Glasgow.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1965 Dec 16, Somerset Maugham
(91), British playwright and author, died in France. His books
included “Of Human Bondage” (1915) and “The Moon and Sixpence”
(1919), a novel whose main character is based on Paul Gauguin. In
2004 Jeffrey Meyers authored "Somerset Maugham: A Life."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham)(SSFC, 2/29/04,
p.M3)(Econ, 3/6/04, p.75)
1965 Dec 23, In Britain Roy
Jenkins (1920-2003) began serving his first term as Labour Home
Secretary under PM Harold Wilson and continued to September 30, 967.
Jenkins was responsible for the relaxation of the laws relating to
divorce.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Jenkins)(Econ,
4/8/17, p.50)
1965 Samuel Beer (1911-2009),
Harvard professor, authored “British Politics in the Collectivist
Age.” This established him as the foremost scholar on modern British
politics.
(Econ, 5/2/09, p.88)
1965 Harold Fielding (d.2003 at
86) produced "Charlie Girl" in London. It ran for over 5 years.
(SFC, 10/4/03, p.A18)
1965 Peter Laslett (1915-2001),
English historian, authored “The World We Have Lost: England
Before the Industrial Age”.
(Econ, 10/4/14, p.82)
1965 In Britain The Who made 3
consecutive hits with "I Can’t Explain," "Anyway Anyhow Anywhere,"
and "My Generation." The group included bassist John Entwistle
(d.2002), drummer Keith Moon (d.1978), singer Roger Daltrey, and
guitarist Pete Townshend.
(SFC, 6/28/02, p.A2)
1965 The Int’l. Standard Book
Number (ISBN) was invented in Britain and rapidly took off as an
int’l. standard for classifying books.
(Econ, 3/2/13, p.60)
1965 In Britain Bob Guccione
founded Penthouse Magazine. It was a sex magazine with more
provocative poses than Playboy Magazine.
(WSJ, 3/22/96, p.A-1)
1965 The British charity
“Riding for the Disabled Association” was established. Its American
equivalent formed in 1969.
(Econ, 5/21/11, p.88)
1965 Yehudi Menuhin, violinist,
was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He was made a baron, Lord
Menuhin of Stoke d'Abernon, in 1993.
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A9)
1965 The first automatic teller
machines came from England.
(SFC, 7/6/96, p.E4)
1965 Imre Lakatos of London's
School of Economics organized a session chaired by Karl Popper at
which philosopher Thomas Kuhn spoke. In 2003 Steve Fuller authored
"Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science."
(Econ, 8/9/03, p.71)
1965 Gambia gained independence
from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1965 Singapore became
independent from Britain and was booted from the Malayan federation.
Lee Kuan Yew became the new prime minister.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A9A)(SFC, 6/8/96, p.A11)(WSJ,
12/31/96, p.1)
1965-1972 Sir Martin Jones (d.1997 at 84) led M15,
the British counterintelligence agency. He had succeeded Sir Roger
Hollis.
(SFC, 3/17/97, p.A22)
1966 Mar 4, North Sea Gas was
1st pumped ashore by BP.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1966 Mar 23, The 1st official
meeting after 400 years of Catholic and Anglican Church.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1966 Mar 31, Labour Party won
British parliamentary election.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1966 Apr 2, Cecil Scott
Forester (66), English author (Horatio Hornblower), died.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1966 Apr 10, Evelyn Waugh
(b.1903), British writer, satirist (Brideshead Revisited), died. He
also wrote “The Loved Ones,” a satire on California burial customs
and “Vile Bodies.” His correspondence with Nancy Mitford, novelist
of manners, was edited by Charlotte Mosley and published in 1997. In
2007 Alexander Waugh, grandson of Evelyn Waugh, authored “Fathers
and Sons,” his biography of the Waugh family.
(WSJ, 4/29/97, p.A18)(SFC, 9/11/04, p.E1)(WSJ,
5/26/07, p.P6)
1966 Apr 16, Rhodesian PM Ian
Smith broke diplomatic relations with Britain.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1966 May 1, Last British
concert by Beatles was at Empire Pool in Wembley.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1966 Jun 21, Reg Calvert
(b.1938), a pirate-radio operator, was shot and killed by Oliver
Smedley, an ex-army man and commercial rival. In 2010 Adrian Johns
authored “Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the
Information Age.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Calvert)(Econ, 11/20/10,
p.97)
1966 Jul 29, Edward Gordon
Craig (b.1872), the son of English actress Ellen Terry, died. He had
authored the controversial manifesto “On the Art of the Theater”
(1911) and envisioned that the future of theater lay in lights,
sounds, shadows and screens.
(Econ, 8/30/08,
p.80)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gordon_Craig)
1966 Aug 12, Harry Roberts
(v.1936) and two accomplices were sitting in a van in west London
preparing for an armed robbery when they were approached by three
unarmed policemen, who they shot dead. In 2014 Roberts (78) was
released from prison.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd%27s_Bush_murders)(AP,
10/23/14)
1966 Sep 10, The Beatles'
"Revolver," album went #1 & stays #1 for 6 weeks.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1966 Sep 12, The Beatles
received a gold record for "Yellow Submarine."
(MC, 9/12/01)
1966 Sep 30, The Republic of
Botswana, a Texas sized country, declared its independence from
Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(AP, 9/30/06)
1966 Oct 21, More than 140
people, mostly children, were killed when a coal waste landslide
engulfed a school and several houses in south Wales.
(AP, 10/21/97)
1966 Nov 24, The Beatles began
recording sessions for "Sgt Pepper."
(MC, 11/24/01)
1966 The Beatles wrote “Taxman”
to protest at Harold Wilson’s exorbitant “supertax” rates.
(Econ, 1/28/17, p.55)
1966 Harold Wilson, PM of
Britain, established a convention whereby MPs were exempt from some
types of electronic bugging.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.62)
1966 Britain leased Diego
Garcia, the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago, to the United
States and allowed the US to build an air and naval base there. The
existing population of around 1,500 was moved to nearby Mauritius
and the Seychelles and effectively barred from returning. Many
eventually settled in southern England.
(Reuters, 11/16/16)(Reuters, 9/3/18)
1966 Calder Publications was
convicted of obscenity for publishing Hubert Selby's gritty novel
"Last Exit to Brooklyn." The conviction was overturned on appeal,
and effectively ended literary censorship in Britain.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calder)(AP,
8/15/18)
1966 Myra Hindley
(d.2002) and her boyfriend, Ian Brady (the Moors Murderers), were
sentenced to life in prison for the murders of 10-year-old Lesley
Ann Downey and 17-year-old Edward Evans. Brady was also found guilty
of killing John Kilbride, 12, and Hindley for sheltering her lover
after that murder. The pair confessed in 1987 to murdering Pauline
Reade, 16, and Keith Bennett, 12. The serial killings from July 1963
to October 1965 horrified Britain. In 1997 a 13-foot high painting
titled "Myra" by Marcus Harvey was displayed at the Royal Academy of
Arts. It was created from children’s handprints and based on a mug
shot of Myra.
(SFC, 9/18/97, p.E5)(AP, 11/16/02)
1966 Arthur Jackson wounded 2
tellers and killed a man who tried to stop a bank robbery in the
Chelsea section of London.
(SFC, 6/22/96, p.E3)
1966 The Hillman Hunter was an
automobile produced under the Hillman marque by the Rootes Group, a
British automobile manufacturer (later Chrysler Europe), from 1966
to 1979.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillman_Hunter)
1966 Barbados gained
independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1966 Lesotho in southern Africa
gained independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1967 Jan 15, The Rolling Stones
appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.
(www.crazyabouttv.com/edsullivanshow.html)
1967 Feb 17, Beatles released
"Penny Lane" & "Strawberry Fields." Strawberry Fields was a
children’s home run by the Salvation Army. It was closed in 2005.
(http://www.jpgr.co.uk/r5570.html)(SFC, 6/2/05,
p.E8)
1967 Mar 1, Queen Elizabeth
Hall (South Bank Center) opened in London.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_Hall)(http://tinyurl.com/md43c3)
1967 Mar 3, Grenada gained
partial independence from Britain.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1967 Mar 11, British
psychedelic group Pink Floyd released “Arnold Layne,” their 1st
single song.
(http://pinkfloydhyperbase.dk/albums/arnold.htm)(SFC, 9/26/06, p.D6)
1967 Apr 1, Sir Edward Compton,
who had been appointed as Ombudsman-designate in September 1966,
began work as Britain’s Parliamentary Ombudsman.
(www.ombudsman.org.uk/about_us/our_history/timeline.html)
1967 Apr 11, Tom Stoppard's
"Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead," was performed by the
Royal National Theater at London’s Old Vic Theater. It had premiered
on Aug 26, 1966, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead)
1967 Apr 25, Britain granted
internal self-government to Swaziland. The new Swaziland flag
included a black and white shield to depict racial harmony.
(http://flagspot.net/flags/sz.html)(SSFC,
4/22/12, p.H3)
1967 May 6, Gordon /Brown,
Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, announced that he was giving
the Bank of England the responsibility for setting interest rates.
Within weeks Mr. Brown stripped the central bank of its
responsibility for bank regulation and public debt management.
(Econ, 4/29/17, p.12)
1967 May 6, The body of Keith
Lyon (12) of Brighton, England, was found clad in his school uniform
on a grass bank near a rural bridle path between the nearby villages
of Ovingdean and Woodingdean, about 56 miles south of London. He had
left home to buy a geometry set and never returned. Lyon had been
stabbed 11 times in the chest, back and abdomen with a serrated
kitchen knife. In 2006 2 suspects were arrested.
(AP, 8/1/06)
1967 May 11, The United Kingdom
re-applied to join the European Community. It was followed by
Ireland and Denmark and, a little later, by Norway. General de
Gaulle was still reluctant to accept British accession.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1961/index_en.htm)
1967 May 11, French President
Charles de Gaulle for a second time said he will veto Britain's
application to join the Common Market. One reason he gave was the
incompatibility of its farming policies.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/27/newsid_4187000/4187714.stm)(Econ,
11/24/12, p.62)
1967 May 12, English poet
laureate John Masefield died.
(AP, 5/12/07)
1967 May 19, The Soviet Union
ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain banning nuclear
weapons from outer space: "Treaty on Principles Governing the
Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space,
including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies." The Int’l. Outer
Space Treaty barred nations from appropriating celestial bodies but
did not mention individuals.
(AP, 5/19/97)(SFC, 6/25/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 7/13/97,
Par p.8)
1967 May 20, BBC disc jockey
Kenny Everett gave the official preview of Sgt Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band on the radio show Where It's At, broadcast on the
BBC Light Program. He was unable to play the final track "A Day in
the Life," which the BBC had banned a day earlier due to drug
references.
(www.beatlesbible.com/1967/05/20/the-bbc-bans-a-day-in-the-life/)
1967 May 25, John Lennon took
delivery of his psychedelic painted Rolls Royce. He had acquired the
Phantom V on June 3, 1965.
(www.blogcatalog.com/blog/jinxi-boo/cc59e352cc28925ddae7f1497e6cd46c)
1967 May 28, Francis Chichester
(1901-1972), English aviator and sailor, arrived home at Plymouth
from a round-the-world, one man sailboat trip.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Chichester)
1967 Jun 1, "Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band," was released in the U.K. and the following
day in the U.S. and was certified "gold" the same day of release. It
topped the charts all over the world, holding the number one slot in
Britain for 27 weeks and for 19 in America. It received four Grammys
including Best Album.
(AP, 6/1/97)
1967 Jun 3, Arthur Ransome
(b.1884), English author of children’s adventure stories, died. He
is best known for writing the “Swallows and Amazons” series of
children's books. It is believed that he served as a double agent
and worked in the Russian service after the collapse of the Czarist
regime. In 1918 he wrote a propaganda pamphlet titled: “On Behalf of
Russia: An Open Letter to America.” In 2009 Roland Chambers authored
“The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome.”
(Econ, 8/29/09,
p.73)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ransome)
1967 Jun 19, Beatle Paul
McCartney, having admitted in Queen Magazine that he had taken LSD,
repeated the admission on television.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCartney)
1967 Jun 25, The Beatles
performed their new song, "All You Need Is Love," during a live
international telecast from the Abbey Road studio.
(AP, 6/25/97)(Sky, 9/97, p.54)
1967 Jun 27, The first
recognizably automated teller machine (ATM) was placed outside the
Barclays PLC branch in Enfield, a north London suburb.
(AP, 6/27/07)
1967 Jul 1, Beatles' "Sgt
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," went #1 for 15 weeks.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1967 Jul 7, Beatles' "All You
Need is Love" was released.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1967 Jul 13, Tommy Simpson,
British cyclist, died as he competed in the Tour de France. Traces
of amphetamine and cognac were found in his blood.
(WSJ, 8/7/06, p.B1)
1967 Jul 28, Pirate Radio
Station 390 (Radio Invicta) in England, closed down.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1967 Aug 9, Joe Orton (34),
English actor, playwright (What the Butler Saw, Loot), was murdered
(bludgeoned with a hammer) while he slept by his male lover. In 1978
John Lahr authored “Prick Up Your Ears,” a biography of Orton.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Orton)(WSJ,
1/13/06, p.P8)
1967 Sep 2, Paddy Roy Bates,
retired British army major, landed on the island of Sealand, a WW II
military fortress 6 miles off the coast of England, and declared it
a sovereign nation, the Principality of Sealand.
(SFEC, 6/4/00,
p.A4)(www.sealandgov.com/history.html)
1967 Sep 11, The Beatles drove
their Magical Mystery Bus around England.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1967 Sep 20, The 963-foot
passenger ship Queen Elizabeth II was launched. The RMS Queen
Elizabeth 2 was christened by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in
Clydebank, Scotland.
(www.cunard.co.uk)(AP, 9/20/07)
1967 Sep, The British, French
and German governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to
start development of the 300 seat Airbus A300 in order to compete
with American companies. Airbus Industrie was formally set up in
1970.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/airbus)
1967 Oct 3, Malcolm Sargent,
English conductor (Last Night of Proms), died at 72.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1967 Oct 8, Clement R. Attlee
(84), former premier of Great Britain (1945-51), died.
(AP, 10/8/07)
1967 Oct 9, The British Road
Safety Act, providing for use of the "breathalyzer" (or
breathalyzer) to detect intoxicated motorists, went into effect.
(AP, 10/9/07)
1967 Nov 27, The Beatles'
"Magical Mystery Tour," album was released in Britain.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Mystery_Tour_(album))
1967 Nov 27, Charles DeGaulle
vetoed Britain’s entry into the Common Market again.
(HN, 11/27/98)
1967 Nov 28, The first
pulsating radio source (pulsar) was observed by British radio
astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish. Burnell made the
news public on Feb 29, 1968.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar)
1967 Dec 8, Beatles "Magical
Mystery Tour" album was released in UK.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1967 Dec 11, The Concorde, a
joint British-French venture and the world’s first supersonic
airliner, was unveiled in Toulouse, France.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1967 Dec 26, BBC-1 television
aired "Magical Mystery Tour," the Beatles' critically drubbed
one-hour special.
(AP, 12/26/07)
1967 Anthony Nutting published
"No End of a Lesson" which explained why he quit his British
government position during the 1956 Suez crises.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A25)
1967 The travel book "Dublin: A
Portrait" by V.A. Pritchett was published.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A21)
1967 Britain’s PM Harold Wilson
dubbed Edgar Louis Granville (d.1998 at 102) Baron Granville of Eye.
(SFC, 2/18/98, p.A18)
1967 The posh Royal Lancaster
hotel opened in central London.
(Econ, 1/14/17, p.51)
1967 Britain abolished capital
punishment.
(SFC, 4/6/98, p.A26)
1967 The British Sexual
Offenses Act partially decriminalized sexual behavior between
consenting males over 21. Elements of the indecency legislation
remained in place until 2003, including anti-gay restrictions
relating to the age of consent, the military, and sex under various
circumstances. The event was later described in the film: "A Bill
Called William." The age of consent for homosexual acts was reduced
to 16 in 1998.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, DB p.49)(SFC, 6/23/98, p.A10)(AP,
1/16/13)
1967 In Great Britain the
Abortion Act of 1967 clarified and prescribed abortions as legal up
to 28 weeks.
(Econ, 2/6/10,
p.62)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law)
1967 Dame Cicely Saunders
founded St. Christopher's, the 1st modern hospice, in West London.
America’s 1st hospice was founded in 1974.
(SFC, 8/5/03, p.A18)(Econ, 8/2/08, p.62)
1967 Britain started pumping
oil from the North Sea.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.60)
1967 An outbreak of
hoof-and-mouth disease in Britain led to the slaughter of 400,000
animals.
(SFC, 2/21/01, p.A12)
1967 Brian Epstein, the manager
of the Beatles, died of a drug overdose.
(SFC, 12/1/01, p.D1)
1967-1973 The entire population of the Chagos
archipelago, which lies 2,200 miles east of Africa and around 1,000
miles southwest of India, was relocated by this year. Britain leased
Diego Garcia, the main island, to the US and barred anyone from
entering the archipelago except by permit. In 2003 a British judge
ruled that former residents have no right to return home or get
compensation.
(AP, 10/9/03)
1968 Jan 24, An Israeli
submarine, the Dakar, a British-made submarine with a 69-man crew,
was lost in the Mediterranean Sea while enroute from England to
Israel. The sunken ship was found May 28, 1999, between Crete and
Cyprus.
(SFC, 5/31/99,
p.A8)(www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/9650/dakar.html)
1968 Feb 18, British adopted
year-round daylight savings time.
(www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/time-facts/british-summer-time-(bst))
1968 Mar 1, The first 15-minute
version of the musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat" by Andrew Lloyd Weber was performed at Central Hall,
Westminster, London.
(www.thisistheatre.com/joseph/index.html)
1968 Mar 1, The British
Parliament amended its Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 further
reducing rights of citizens of the Commonwealth of Nations countries
to migrate to the UK.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Immigrants_Act_1968)
1968 Mar 12, The British-ruled
African island of Mauritius became an independent country within the
Commonwealth of Nations and many Europeans left the country. GDP per
person was about $200. By 2008 it rose to $7,000 per person.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(SSFC,
12/9/01, p.C9)(AP, 3/12/08)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.58)
1968 Mar 17, A peaceful
anti-Vietnam War protest in London was followed by a riot outside
the US Embassy; more than 80 people were reported injured. Some
20,000 people at the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in London were
mowed down by police on horses as they marched.
(www.springerlink.com/content/qg812p1147300117/)(AP, 3/17/08)(SFC,
5/22/98, p.C12)
1968 Apr 18, London Bridge was
sold to a US oil company. It was later erected in Arizona.
(www.londonbridgeresort.com/history/london_bridge.html)
1968 Apr 20, Enoch Powell
(1912-1998) became a national figure in Britain following his
address to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area
Conservative Political Center, which became known as the "Rivers of
Blood" speech. It pointedly criticized immigration into Britain from
the Commonwealth nations and opposed the then
proposed–anti-discrimination legislation Race Relations Bill being
mooted at the time.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Powell)
1968 May 14, The Beatles in NYC
announced the formation of their Apple Corp.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps)
1968 May 25, In Newcastle,
England, Mary Flora Bell, one day before her 11th birthday,
strangled Martin Brown (4). She and unrelated friend Norma Bell (13)
were later tried for the murders of 2 boys Martin Brown (4) and
Brian Howe (3), committed 9 weeks apart. In 1972 Gitta Sereny
published "The Case of Mary Bell," based on her coverage of the
trial. In 1999 Gitta Sereny published "Cries Unheard: Why Children
Kill: The Story of Mary Bell," based on interviews with Mary Bell.
(SFEC, 6/6/99, BR
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bell)
1968 Jun 1, The British
television series "The Prisoner," starring Patrick McGoohan, had its
American premiere on CBS.
(AP, 6/1/08)
1968 Jul 1, The United States,
Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. India refused to sign.
(AP, 7/1/97)(SFC, 5/28/98,
p.A9)(http://tinyurl.com/d5cf45)
1968 Jul 4, Arthur Kopit's
"Indians," premiered in London.
(www.enotes.com/indians)
1968 Jul 17, Beatle's animated
film "Yellow Submarine" premiered in London. The US premiere was on
November 13.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqUKJj0gGkM)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0063823/releaseinfo)
1968 Jul 18, The UK enacted
sanctions against Rhodesia for a 2nd time. The first time was on
June 17.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(http://tinyurl.com/c5kcs9)
1968 Jul 26, Britain’s Theater
Act abolished censorship of the theatre and amended the law in
respect of theatres and theatrical performances.
(www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1968/cukpga_19680054_en_1)
1968 Jul, The British blues
group Cream, with vocalist and bassist Jack Bruce (1943-2014),
drummer Ginger Baker (b.1939) and guitarist Eric Clapton (b.1945)
released their double album “Wheels of Fire” in the US. It became
the first double album to go platinum.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheels_of_Fire)
1968 Aug 15, Pirate Radio Free
London began transmitting.
(http://radio.eric.tripod.com/in_breach_of_the_law.htm)
1968 Sep 6, Swaziland in
southern Africa gained independence from Britain.
(http://tinyurl.com/ydbsn2hd)
1968 Sep 28, Beatles' "Hey
Jude" single went #1 and stayed #1 for 9 weeks.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Jude)
1968 Oct 14, The Beatles "White
Album" was completed at the Abbey Road Studios.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album))
1968 Oct 27, Lisa Meitner
(b.1878), Austrian-born Swedish physicist, died in England. During
the war while in hiding from Hitler in Sweden, she analyzed and
understood for its significance the work of Otto Hahn who in 1944
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on nuclear
fission.
(MT, 10/94, letters,
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner)
1968 Nov 6, The play “The
Ruling Class” by Peter Barnes (1931-2004) opened in Nottingham,
England. It was a satirical attack on the church and British
aristocracy. It was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole
received an Oscar nomination.
(SFC, 7/3/04,
p.B6)(www.answers.com/topic/the-ruling-class-play-6)
1968 Nov 22, Beatles released
their "Beatles," (White Album) their only double album.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album))
1968 Nov 28, In London,
England, John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared at the Marylebone
Magistrates' Court. John pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis
resin and was fined 150 pounds plus 20 guineas costs.
(http://tinyurl.com/qjbdgb)
1968 Dec 7, The Rolling Stones
released their album "Beggar’s Banquet" in the US, one day after it
was released in the UK. They soon filmed a concert performance right
after the Who’s performance of "A Quick One" that the Stones did not
match and the film was shelved. In 1996 it was planned to release
the film where Jethro Tull and Taj Mahal are also featured. The
album included the song "Sympathy for the Devil."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_Banquet)(SFC, 8/16/96,
p.D11)(SFC, 10/23/00, p.F3)
1968 Quentin Crisp (1908-1999),
English gay writer born as Denis Pratt, authored his autobiography:
"The Naked Civil Servant." In 1975 The Naked Civil Servant was
broadcast on British and American television and made both actor
John Hurt and Crisp himself into stars.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Crisp)(SFC,
11/22/99, p.C4)(WSJ, 7/14/00, p.W11)
1968 Graham Greene (1904-1991),
English author and playwright, wrote "Travels With My Aunt." In 1989
it was adopted for stage by Giles Havergal, director of the
Citizens’ Theater in Glasgow.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, DB
p.25)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene)
1968 The film "Yellow
Submarine" from England was directed by George Dunning.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, DB p.44)
1968 In Britain the literary
Booker Prize was founded by Sir Michael Caine (d.1999 at 71), an
executive for Booker PLC, which specialized in food distribution and
agribusiness. The prize was modeled after the French Prix Goncourt.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.C3)
1968 Cash-strapped Britain said
it was pulling military forces from the Persian Gulf and South-East
Asia.
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.70)
1968 The London Sunday Times
sponsored the 1st Golden Globe round-the-world sailboat race. Robin
Knox-Johnston was the only entrant to complete the race, becoming
the first person to sail single-handed and non-stop around the
world. The race gave birth to the French Vendee Globe race. In 1999
Derek Lundy authored "Godforsaken Sea," an account of the 1996
Vendee Globe. In 2001 Peter Nichols authored "A Voyage for Madmen,"
an account of the race and its 9 skippers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Times_Golden_Globe_Race)(SFEC,
8/15/99, BR p.5)(WSJ, 6/22/01, p.W12)
1968 British Leyland was put
together by Harold Wilson’s industrial planners. It was nationalized
in 1975, and sold to British Aerospace in 1988. BMW picked up Rover
in 1994.
(Econ, 4/16/05, p.15)
1968 The Pacific island of
Nauru gained independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1968 Swaziland in southern
Africa gained independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1969 Feb 2, Boris Karloff
(b.1887), British actor born as William Henry Pratt, died. He is
best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of
Frankenstein's monster in the 1931 film Frankenstein.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Karloff)
1969 Mar 2, The Concorde
jetliner's 1st test flight took place in Bristol, England.
(www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20031013/026200.html)
1969 Mar 5, “What the Butler
Saw,” the final play of Joe Orton (1933-1967), was first performed
in London. The sex farce was set in a mental hospital.
(SFC, 6/12/09,
p.E1)(http://talkingbroadway.org/regional/sanfran/s823.html)
1969 Mar 12, Paul McCartney
married Linda Eastman in London.
(AP, 3/12/98)
1969 Mar 20, John Lennon
married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.
(AP, 3/20/97)(HN, 3/20/98)
1969 Apr 6, Sir Wally Herbert
(1934-2007), English explorer, reached the North Pole on foot along
with 3 others on his team. They became the first men to cross the
entire frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean on foot covering the 3,720
miles in 16 months. Roy Koerner, a glaciologist accompanying
Herbert, drilled more than 250 ice core samples during the journey.
(www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1929131.ece)
1969 Apr 9, The maiden flight
of Concorde 002 was from Filton to Bristol.
(www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/aeronautics/1977-45.aspx)
1969 Apr, In England Bernadette
Devlin (b.1947) of Northern Ireland became the youngest woman ever
elected to British Parliament. Her 1969 book, “The Price of My
Soul,” did much to publicize widespread discrimination against Roman
Catholics in Northern Ireland.
(SFEC, 3/23/97,
p.A15)(www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=6234)
1969 May 4, F. Osbert S.
Sitwell (b.1892), English poet (Who Killed Cock Robin?), died at
castle Montegufoni near Florence, Italy.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osbert_Sitwell)
1969 May 11, The Monty Python
comedy troupe formed.
(www.querycat.com/faq/a99b3004b7265291928d484e51b547ea)
1969 May 23, The BBC ordered 13
episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
(www.querycat.com/faq/a99b3004b7265291928d484e51b547ea)
1969 May 23, The Who released
their rock opera "Tommy."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_(album))
1968 May 24, In Britain Mick
Jagger and the Rolling Stones released their song "Jumping Jack
Flash." The US release was on June 1.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpin%27_Jack_Flash)
1969 May 29, Britain's
Trans-Arctic expedition made the 1st crossing of Arctic Sea ice. Roy
Koerner (1932-2008), more commonly known as Fritz, was one of the
four members of Sir Wally Herbert’s British Transarctic Expedition
which, on April 6, 1969, stood at the North Pole.
(www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1929131.ece)
1969
Jul 3, Brian Jones (27), founder of the Rolling Stones (1962), was
found dead at the bottom of Cotchford Farm swimming pool.
(www.hotshotdigital.com/WellAlwaysRemember.4/BrianJones.html)
1969 Jul 4, "Give Peace a
Chance" by Plastic Ono Band was released in UK.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_Peace_a_Chance)
1969 Jul 11, David Bowie
(b.1947), British musician, released his single “Space Oddity,"
supposedly in conjunction with the July 20 Apollo 11 moon landing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Oddity)
1969 Jul 19, John Fairfax
(1937-2012), British self-proclaimed "professional adventurer,"
became famous as the first person to row solo across the Atlantic
Ocean. Two year later he rowed across the Pacific with his
then-girlfriend Sylvia Cook.
(AFP,
2/19/12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fairfax_%28rower%29)
1969 Aug 12, In Northern
Ireland the Apprentice Boys, a Protestant fraternal group, led a
parade that ignited rioting in the Bogside section of Londonderry,
that led to the bloody period known as The Troubles. Loyalist
attacks on Catholic areas set off rioting in Belfast. Eight people
died and British troops were sent in. The Provisional Irish
Republican Army began a 25-year sniping and bombing campaign.
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.A8)(SFEC, 12/22/96, Z1
p.7)(http://tinyurl.com/ddovv8)
1969 Aug 14, British troops
arrived in Northern Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence
between Protestants and Roman Catholics. The outlawed Irish
Republican Army came into Northern Ireland to protect and encourage
Catholics and the Provisional IRA soon began terrorist actions
against the British troops and Protestant civilians. This culminated
in an attack on the Bogside which started on August 12 and ended Aug
14. Some 500 houses were burned to the ground, 1,500 people forced
from their homes, and 9 people murdered.
(SFC, 6/18/96, p.A8)(AP, 8/14/97)(HNQ,
8/17/99)(MC, 8/14/02)
1969 Aug 14, Leonard Sidney
Woolf (b.1910), English publisher, writer, died. He was the husband
of writer and critic Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). His books included
“The Village in the Jungle,” a novel based on his time in Sri Lanka
(1904-1911). In 2006 Victoria Glendinning authored “Leonard Woolf: A
Biography.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Woolf)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.93)
1969 Sep 26, The Beatles last
album, "Abbey Road," was released.
(HN, 9/26/99)
1969 Oct 1, Guernsey &
Jersey begin issuing their own postage stamps.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1969 Oct 1, The prototype
Concorde 001, designed by the British and French, broke the sound
barrier during a test flight. Commercial service began in 1976.
(WSJ, 7/26/00, p.B1)(MC, 10/1/01)
1969 Oct 5, Monty Python's
Flying Circus made its debut on BBC Television. It ran on British TV
until 1974.
(WSJ, 6/16/98, p.A17)(AP, 10/5/98)
1969 Nov 1, Beatles' "Abbey
Road," album went #1 and stays #1 for 11 weeks.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1969 Nov 19, The Benny Hill
Show premiered in Britain. It ran on Thames Television (ITV) from
1969-1989.
(www.tv.com/the-benny-hill-show/show/3329/summary.html)
1969 Nov 28, The Rolling
Stones, English rock band, released its "Let It Bleed" album.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Bleed)
1969 Dec 18, Britain's
Parliament abolished the death penalty for murder.
(AP, 12/18/97)
1969 London artists Gilbert
Proesch and George Passmore wrote their four “Laws of Sculptors.”
They later became known simply as Gilbert and George.
(SFC, 2/16/08, p.E1)
1969 E.J.B. "Jim" Rose (d.1999
at 89) and Nicholas Deakin published "Color and Citizenship," a
report on Britain’s integration and immigration problems.
(SFC, 9/7/99, p.C2)
1969 George MacDonald Fraser
(1925-2008), British writer, authored the novel “Flashman,” the 1st
in a series celebrating the adventures of Sir Harry Paget Flashman.
Brigadier-General Sir Harry Paget Flashman is a fictional character
originally created by the author Thomas Hughes in his
semi-autobiographical work Tom Brown's Schooldays, first published
in 1857. In this book, set at Rugby School, Flashman is the
notorious bully, who persecutes its eponymous hero Tom Brown.
(WSJ, 11/5/05,
p.P8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Paget_Flashman)
1969 Dusty Springfield
(d.1999), English pop singer, recorded her album "Dusty in Memphis."
(SFC, 3/4/99,
p.D2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_Springfield)
1969 Rod Stewart (b.1945),
English singer, made his solo debut with "The Rod Stewart Album."
(USAT, 3/24/99,
p.5E)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Stewart)
1969 Sir Michael Tippett,
British composer, premiered his 3rd opera "The Knot Garden" based on
a love scene between two men.
(SFC, 1/10/98, p.A19)
1969 The Labor government of
Harold Wilson forced Pollard Bearings, led by John King (d.2005),
into a merger. Pollard sold the firm for a large profit.
(www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/world/europe/13iht-obits.html?_r=1)
1969 British PM Harold Wilson
ennobled Kenneth Clark following the triumph of the epic TV series
“Civilization.”
(Econ, 10/1/16, p.79)
1969 The old British
ten-shilling note disappeared. It was replaced by a new 50-pence
piece.
(Econ, 5/12/12, p.78)w
1969 Hugh Fish (d.1999 at 76)
environmental engineer, was named chief purification officer of the
Thames Conservancy and set about to restore fish to the Thames
River. An angler caught the first prize salmon in 1985.
(SFC, 7/21/99, p.C3)
1969 Barbara Anne Castle
(d.2002), Britain’s Labor Cabinet minister, published a plan called
"In Place of Strife," to inject some discipline into industrial
relations and to make trade unions subject to legal sanctions.
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1969 Britain’s chocolate maker
Cadbury merged with Schweppes. In 2006 the Schweppes unit was spun
off.
(Econ, 11/7/09, p.63)
1969 Princess Alice (b.1885)
died at Buckingham Palace. In 2002 Hugo Vickers authored "Alice:
Princess Andrew of Greece."
(SSFC, 4/7/02, p.M3)
1969 Britain discovered oil and
gas in the North Sea. By 2012 some 40 billion barrels of oil was
extracted.
(Econ, 2/18/12, p.59)
1970 Feb 2, Bertrand Russell
(B.1872), philosopher, social gadfly and British MP, died in
Merioneth. "Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs
up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?" He wrote
"Pricipia Mathmatica." In 1996 "Bertrand Russel: The Spirit of
Solitude," 1871-1921 by Ray Monk was published.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell)(WSJ, 9/27/96,
p.A16)(AP, 1/7/99)(HN, 5/18/99)
1970 Feb 17, Joni Mitchell
(b.1943) held a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
(http://tinyurl.com/3etl9t)
1970 Feb 26, Beatles released
"Beatles Again," aka the "Hey Jude" album.
(www.dmbeatles.com/disk.php?disk=54)
1970 Mar 6, The Beatles
released "Let it Be" in UK.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be_(song))
1970 Mar 17, The United States
cast its first veto in the UN Security Council. The US killed a
resolution that would have condemned Britain for failure to use
force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.
(AP, 3/17/00)
1970 Mar 25, The Concorde, an
Anglo-French airplane, made its first supersonic flight.
(HN,
3/24/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde)
1970 May 13, Beatles
movie "Let it Be" premiered.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1970 May 20, The Beatles movie
"Let it Be" premiered in Britain. The documentary film was about a
Beatles’ recording session.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, DB
p.47)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0065976/)
1970 Jun 7, E.M. Forster
(b.1879 as Edward Morgan Forster), English novelist, died. His
novels included “A Room With a View” (1908) and “A Passage to India”
(1924). In 2010 Frank Kermode authored “Concerning E.M. Forster.”
Wendy Moffat authored “A Great Unrecorded History: A new Life of
E.M. Forster.”
(SFC,12/26/97,
p.C22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster)(Econ, 5/1/10,
p.87)
1970 Jun 13, Beatles' "Let It
Be," album went #1 & stayed #1 for 4 weeks.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be)
1970 Jun 19, Edward Heath
(1916-2005) began serving as Britain’s prime minister and continued
to 1974. Derek George Rayner (d.1998 at 72), later Lord Rayner, soon
joined the government to centralize defense procurement for PM
Edward Heath. Margaret Thatcher served as his education secretary.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Heath)(Econ,
3/19/05, p.32)(SFC, 7/18/05, p.B6)(Econ, 4/13/13, p.27)
1970 Jun 21, Tony Jacklin
became the first British golfer to win the US Open for 50 years, and
with his British Open victory eleven months earlier, he became only
the third golfer to accomplish this double within a 12-month period.
(Camelot, 6/21/99)
1970 Jul 3, A British Dan-Air
charter, flying a Comet 4 turbojet, crashed near Barcelona and 112
were killed.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=834)
1970 Jul 18, Arthur Brown
(b.1942), English rock singer, was arrested for stripping on stage
in Palermo, Sicily.
(www.godofhellfire.co.uk/60s.htm)
1970 Jul 29, John G.B.
Barbirolli (b.1899), English conductor, composer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barbirolli)
1970 Sep 13, The supersonic
airliner Concorde landed for the 1st time at Heathrow airport.
(www.aviation-news.co.uk/concordeChronology.html)
1970 Sep 18, Jimi Hendrix (27),
rock star guitarist, died in London of drug overdose. Hendrix had
performed briefly as an opening act for the Monkeys as well as
behind the Isley Brothers and Little Richard. In 1978 David
Henderson authored the biography “Scuse me While I Kiss the Sky.” In
2005 Charles R. Cross authored “Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of
Jimi Hendrix.”
(WSJ, 1/9/97, p.A8)(AP, 9/18/97)(WSJ, 4/16/99,
p.W13C)(SSFC, 8/21/05, p.F1)
1970 Sep, 19, The 1st
Glastonbury Fair attracted some 1,500 revelers. The first festival
at Worthy Farm was the Pilton Festival, mounted by Michael Eavis,
and attended by 1,500 people. The first act to perform was the group
Stackridge; the headline act was T.Rex. The larger free festival at
the summer solstice in June the next year was the first to attract
nationwide interest, and the event became an important precursor of
the later Glastonbury Festivals. In 2004 some 115,000 were expected
for what had become Britain’s biggest pop festival.
(Econ, 6/26/04,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Festival#1970s)
1970 Oct 10, In the October
Crisis Quebec Provincial Labor Minister Pierre Laporte and the
British trade commissioner James Cross were kidnapped by the
left-wing, nationalist Front de Liberation du Quebec, Quebec
Liberation Front (FLQ), a militant separatist group. Laporte's body
was found about a week later. Mr. Cross was released but Mr. LaPorte
was found dead strangled in the trunk of a car. The Canadian
government refused to pay a ransom. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
responded by suspending civil liberties in Quebec and invoking the
War Measures Act, and sending over 1,000 troops to the
French-Canadian province.
(SFC, 10/3/96, p.C6)(SFC, 11/22/96, p.A20)(AP,
10/10/97)
1970 Oct, Britain’s council
workers went on strike.
(Econ, 9/25/10, p.104)
1970 Nov 13, Bessie Braddock
(b.1899), British Labour politician, died. She was known as an
ardent socialist and fiery campaigner, nicknamed 'Battling Bessie',
her special interests included maternity, child welfare and youth
crime.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Braddock)
1970 Nov 27, George Harrison
released his solo album "All Things Must Pass." He became the 1st
Beatle to have a solo No. 1 hit with "My Sweet Lord."
(SFC, 12/1/01,
p.D1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Things_Must_Pass)
1970 Nov 28, "I Hear You
Knocking" by Dave Edmunds" peaked at #1 on the U.K. pop singles
chart and stayed there for seven weeks.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Hear_You_Knocking)
1970 Nov, The Sun, a British
tabloid newly acquired by Rupert Murdoch, introduced topless photos
on Page 3.
(Econ, 8/17/13,
p.50)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_3)
1970 "Slag," the first major
play by English dramatist David Hare (b.1947), had its premier.
(WSJ, 7/16/97, p.A20)
1970 Harold Pinter (b.1930),
English playwright and actor, wrote his play "Old Times."
(SFC, 6/16/98, p.D1)
1970 The British Monty Python
film "And Now for Something Completely Different" was produced.
(SFC, 6/3/98, p.E3)
1970 The thriller play "Sleuth"
by Anthony Shaffer (d.2001 at 75) opened in London and ran for 2,359
performances.
(SFC, 11/8/01, p.A25)
1970 The British government
ended a policy of sending poor and orphaned children overseas under
state-approved programs. Some 150,000 children had been sent to
British colonies since the 17th century.
(SFC, 8/30/18, p.A2)
1970 Lord Geoffrey Rippon of
Hexham (1924-1997), a member of PM Heath’s cabinet, was given the
responsibility for negotiating favorable terms for Britain’s entry
into the European Economic Community.
(SFC, 1/30/97,
p.C2)(www.onpedia.com/encyclopedia/Geoffrey-Rippon)
1970 Britain put together a
classified “War Book,” featuring a doomsday scenario, with a
step-by-step guide for dealing with a crisis, from the first stages
of conflict to "R hour," the designation for the release of all
Britain's nuclear weapons. The 1970 version was declassified in
2009. A 1964 version printed just 96 copies.
(AP, 6/23/09)
1970 The South Pacific islands
of Tonga gained independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1970 Development of the English
town of Milton Keynes was begun.
(Econ, 8/7/04, p.45)
1970 A Paul Gaugin still life
that was stolen from a private collection in Britain. It hung in
Sicilian autoworker's kitchen for 40 years until it was recovered by
authorities in 2014. The man said he bought the painting, along with
one of lesser value by Pierre Bonnard, at a 1975 Italian state
railway auction of unclaimed lost items, for the equivalent of about
$100.
(AP, 4/2/14)
1970-1974 In 2010 Dominic Sandbrook authored
“State of Emergency: The Way We Were. Britain, 1970-1974.”
(Econ, 9/25/10, p.104)
1971 Jan 31, "My Sweet Lord" by
George Harrison hit #1 on UK pop chart.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1971 Feb 4, Rolls-Royce
collapsed due to rising development costs on the RB.211, the sole
powerplant selected for the Lockheed TriStar. The Conservative
nationalized the company to save it from collapse.
(http://widebodyaircraft.nl/chro1971.htm)(Econ,
1/10/09, p.11)
1971 Feb 15, Britain abandoned
the unit of the penny on Decimal Day, February 15, 1971, replacing
the shilling with five new pence, so that one pound sterling became
divided into 100 new pence.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%A3sd)
1971 Apr 23, The Rolling Stones
released their Sticky Fingers album. Following the release of Sticky
Fingers, the Stones left England after allegations by the UK Inland
Revenue service of unpaid income tax.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_Fingers)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones)
1971 May 25, Terence De Marney
(b.1908), English film and TV actor, died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0210117/)
1971 Jun 1, Harold Pinter's
play "Old Times" premiered in London.
(Econ, 2/9/13,
p.81)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Times)
1971 Jun 14, The first hard
Rock Café opened in Piccadilly, London, under the ownership of young
Americans Peter Morton and Isaac Tigrett.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Rock_Cafe)
1971 Jun 20, A 5-day
Glastonbury Fair opened at Worthy Farm near Glastonbury, England.
Arabella Spencer-Churchill (1949-2007), granddaughter of former PM
Winston Churchill, helped found the fair. It featured Hawkwind,
Traffic, Melanie, David Bowie, Joan Baez and Fairport Convention,
and attracted some 12,000 people. Revived as a three-day festival in
1979, it had grown by 2007 to draw 153,000 people to hear acts
including Coldplay, Brian Wilson, Kaiser Chiefs and Elvis Costello.
(AP,
12/21/07)(www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/glastonbury/1971/)
1971 Jul 1, Great Britain and
Argentina signed an accord on sea and air links to the Falkland
Islands, which later caused a war (1982).
(www.bartleby.com/67/2791.html)
1971 Jul 8, In Northern Ireland
the British army used lead bullets for the first time. Seamus Cusack
(28) and Desmond Beattie (19) were killed.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya9evj75)(Econ, 3/25/17,
p.82)
1971 Aug 3, Paul McCartney
announced the formation of his group Wings.
(www.rockhall.com/inductee/paul-mccartney)
1971 Aug 9, British begin
internment without trial in Northern Ireland when almost 300 men
were arrested and interned under the Special Powers Act in dawn
swoops that ended around August 14th. Not one unionist
extremist was interned. Word soon got out of the internment camps
that the men were being routinely mistreated and tortured. Sectarian
attacks continued, supported by the British army. These actions and
other repressive actions by the British administration of the time
lead to the peaceful march which turned bloody on 30 January
1972, now known as Bloody Sunday.
(SFC, 1/30/97,
p.A18)(www.bloodysundaytrust.org/eduintern.htm)
1971 Aug 13, Britain requested
to exchange US dollars for gold. This prompted Pres. Nixon on August
15 to suspend such conversions.
(Econ, 3/27/10, p.86)
1971 Aug 15, Bahrain proclaimed
independence after 110 years of British rule. December 16, 1971, is
the date of independence from British protection.
(http://ixpats.com/bahrain.html)
1971 Aug 31, John Lennon left
UK for NYC, never to return.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon)
1971 Sep 3, The Quadripartite
Agreement on Berlin, between the United States, the Soviet Union,
the United Kingdom and France. ended a long time source of tension.
(WUD, 1994, p.
1688)(http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga5-710903.htm)
1971 Sep 3, Qatar declared
independence from Britain.
(www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-11034.html)
1971 Sep 9, John Lennon
released his mega hit "Imagine" album in the US. It was released in
Britain on October 8. A film was made of his recording work and in
April 2000 a version titled "Gimme Some Truth" was released on DVD.
(www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=1109009)
1971 Sep 25, Over 100 Russian
officials were expelled from Britain for spying. Information from
Oleg Lyalin, supposedly a member of the USSR's trade delegation in
the UK, led to the expulsion of 105 Soviet officials from Britain.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/30/newsid_2523000/2523669.stm)
1971 Nov 1, The Five Power
Defense Arrangements were concluded by the defense ministers of
Australia, Britain, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. In 2017 it
was upgraded to deal with terrorism threats and new security
concerns.
(Econ, 11/5/11, p.54)(AP, 6/2/17)
1971 Nov 10, Two women were
tarred and feathered in Belfast for dating British soldiers. In
Londonderry, Northern Ireland, a Catholic girl was tarred and
feathered for her intention of marrying a British soldier.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1971 Dec 16, Bahrain won
independence from Britain from British protection. It had declared
independence on Aug 14.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.D8)(AP,
12/17/02)(http://ixpats.com/bahrain.html)
1971 James Blades (d.1999 at
97, percussionist, authored his encyclopedic reference work:
"Percussion Instrument and Their History."
(SFC, 5/25/99, p.B2)
1971 Former Beatle John Lennon
wrote his song "Imagine," and released his "Imagine" album. A film
was made of his recording work and in 1999 a 56 version titled
"Gimme Some Truth" was reported to be released on DVD in 2000.
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.E1)(SFC, 10/7/99, p.E3)
1971 The Electric Light
Orchestra, commonly abbreviated ELO, a symphonic rock group from
Birmingham, England, released their first of studio album. By 1986
they released 10 more and another album in 2001. The ELO was one of
the most innovative bands of the era.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Light_Orchestra)(SFC, 7/7/96,
DB p.50)
1971 "Dr. Jekyll and Sister
Hyde" was a British Hammer Film production about a transsexual
serial killer.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, DB p.67)(SFEC, 9/7/97, DB p.43)
1971 The British film "I Want
What I Want" was about a transsexual real-estate agent.
(SFEC, 9/7/97, DB p.43)
1971 Keith Wylie (1945-1999),
British croquet star, in the Open Championship completed "the
sextuple peel," which involved knocking a ball through 6 hoops using
another ball. He authored "Expert Croquet Tactics" in 1985.
(SFC, 12/7/99,
p.B4)(www.mauicroquetclub.org/people/KeithWylie.htm)
1971 Britain’s Open University
started teaching via radio and television.
(Econ, 12/22/12, p.101)
1971 Peter Brook (b.1925),
British stage and film director, founded his Int’l. Center for
Theater Research in Paris. In 1998 Brook published his memoir
"Threads of Time: Recollections."
(SFEC, 6/14/98, BR
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Brook)
Go to GB 1972
See http://www.timelinesdb.com/
Subject = Britain