Timeline Great Britain 1942-1971
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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 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 Mar 30, Graeme Edge, rock
drummer (Moody Blues-Your Wildest Dreams), was born in England.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1942 May 30, The Royal Air
Force launched the first 1,000 plane raid over Germany. 1,047 RAF
bombers bombed Cologne.
(HN, 5/30/98)(MC, 5/30/02)
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 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, 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 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 Sir William Beveridge
(1879-1963) laid the foundations of Britain’s post-war welfare state.
In 1953 he authored “Power and Influence.”
(Econ, 11/12/05,
p.78)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUbeveridge.htm)
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 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 the British
planted with false invasion plans, into the Mediterranean off the coast
of Spain.
(HN, 4/30/98)
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 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)
1943-1947 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 1st use of
helicopters during warfare was by a British Atlantic patrol.
(MC, 1/2/02)
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 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 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.
(AP, 6/13/97)(HNQ, 6/13/98)(MC, 6/13/02)
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 Mar 1, Roger Daltrey
Hammersmith, rocker, actor, producer (The Who-Tommy), was born in
London, England.
(SC, 3/1/02)
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 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 Jun 6, Danny Brotheridge,
British lieutenant, became the 1st to die during D-Day. Over the next
10 weeks of fighting 300,000 men, women and children died in Normandy.
In 2009 Antony Beevor authored “D-Day: The Battle for Normandy.”
(SSFC, 6/6/04, D7)(http://tinyurl.com/lvhqs7)(Econ,
5/30/09, p.84)
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.
(AP, 6/13/97)(HNQ,
6/13/98)(www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/v1.htm)
1944 Jun 25, British assault at
Caen, Normandy.
(MC, 6/25/02)
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 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 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 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 4-12, President
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader
Josef Stalin began a wartime conference at Yalta, in the southern
Ukraine.
(AP, 2/4/97)(WUD, 1994, p.1653)
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 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 5, Opera "Peter Grimes"
by Benjamin Britten," premiered in London.
(MC, 6/5/02)
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, Labour Party won
British parliamentary election.
(MC, 7/5/02)
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 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 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 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 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 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)
c1945 The Bank of England was
nationalized after WW II.
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A22)
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)
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 2009
Peter Clarke authored “Keynes: The Twentieth Century’s Most Influential
Economist” and Robert Skidelsky authored “Keynes: The Return of the
Master.”
(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)
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)
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)
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 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, a base near
London for fighter planes during WWII, was converted to civilian use.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.91)
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.
(SFC, 5/7/02,
p.A9)(www.myanmar.gov.mm/Perspective/persp2001/2-2001/uni.htm)
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 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 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, Aleister Edward S.
Crowley (72), British occultist, died. In 2000 Lawrence Sutin authored
"Do What Thou Wilt, A Life of Aleister Crowley."
(SSFC, 1/14/01, BR p.12)(MC, 12/1/01)
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 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 Bangladesh as part of
Pakistan gained independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
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 Jul 5, Britain's National
Health Service Act went into effect, providing government-financed
medical and dental care. Aneurin Bevan was its political founder.
(AP, 7/5/98)(Econ, 7/17/04, Survey p.5)
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 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.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.74)
1948 Composer Benjamin Britten
(1913-1976) co-founded the Aldeburgh Festival with Sir Peter Pears and
writer Eric Crozier.
(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 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 Marie Provaznikova, Check
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)
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 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.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)
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 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. “Those in
power control the future by controlling 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 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 3, 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.
(MC, 2/3/02)(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 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 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.
(WSJ, 10/20/97, p.A19)(SFEC,12/21/97, BR p.7)(SFC,
7/11/00, p.A23)
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 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.
(Wired, 2/98, p.135)
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 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 lost to Conservatives. Winston
Churchill became prime minister, and Anthony Eden became foreign
secretary.
(HN, 10/25/98)
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 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)
1951-1955 Winston Churchill served as Prime Minister
a 2nd time.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)
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.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)
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 4, Killer fogs began in
London, England. "Smog" became a word. [see Dec 5]
(MC, 12/4/01)
1952 Dec 5-8, A 4-day London
smog killed 4,703 people. Oxides of sulfur and other irritants from
coal smoke were blamed. [see Dec 4]
(PCh, 1992, p.937)(MC, 12/5/01)
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 The British government
abolished ID cards.
(Econ, 5/1/04, p.15)
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)
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.
(SSFC, 3/25/01,
p.C3)(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)
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 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 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)
1953-1956 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 Iris Murdoch published her
first novel "Under the Net."
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 The Notting Hill Riots were a
series of violent demonstrations against non-whites 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)
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)
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 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.
(www.iceland.org/efta/the-mission/int-organizations/efta/)
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 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 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, British Somaliland
became Somalia.
(MC, 7/1/02)
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.
(AP, 8/16/97)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A26)
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).
(WSJ, 11/13/95, p.A-10)(WSJ, 10/14/95, p.A-1)(EWH,
1st ed., p.1172)
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 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 10, "Beyond the Fringe,"
premiered in London.
(MC, 5/10/02)
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 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 Nov 16, Great Britain limited
immigration from Commonwealth countries.
(MC, 11/16/01)
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)
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 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 20, George Macaulay
Trevelyan (86), English royal historian, died.
(MC, 7/20/02)
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 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 BBC TV series "That Was
the Week That Was" began and ran through 36 episodes to 1963. Willie
Rushton impersonated prime minister Harold McMillan.
(SFC, 12/12/96, p.C8)
1962 Mick Jagger, Keith Richards
and Brian Jones made their 1st appearance as the Rolling Stones at a
London jazz club.
(SFC, 12/13/03, p.A2)
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 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 Prime minister Harold Macmillan. The events were dramatized in the
film "Scandal."
(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.B8)
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 Feb, Sylvia Plath (30),
American writer, committed suicide 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
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.
(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.C5)
1963 Mar 12, US House granted
former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill honorary U.S.
citizenship.
(MC, 3/12/02)
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 Jun 24, Zanzibar was granted
internal self-government by Britain.
(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 in Britain.
The pair were caught in Oct, 1965.
(AP, 11/16/02)
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 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.
(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)
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 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.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cslewis.htm)(WSJ, 10/15/05,
p.P13)
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 musical "Oh What
a Lovely War" was directed by Joan Littlewood (d.2002 at 87).
(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A25)
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 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 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)
1963 David Low (72), British
political cartoonist, died.
(WSJ, 5/29/02, p.D7)
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 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 who's
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 Apr 18, Joe Orton's
"Entertaining Mr. Sloane" staged in England.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1964 May 6, Joe Orton's
"Entertaining Mr. Sloan," premiered in London.
(MC, 5/6/02)
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 Jul 11(Jun 11), Queen
Elizabeth ordered Beatles to her birthday party and they attended.
(MC, 7/11/02)
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,
succeeding Conservative Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Wilson’s Labor
government took over from Harold MacMillan’s Conservatives.
(AP, 10/16/99)(WSJ, 7/26/00, p.A26)
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 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 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 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.
(SFC, 7/17/96, p.E6)(NH, 8/96, p.57)(AP, 1/4/98)
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 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.
(www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1636549,00.html)
1965 Dec 3, Beatles began their
final UK concert tour in Glasgow.
(MC, 12/3/01)
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
(SS, 4/25/02)
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 is followed by Ireland
and Denmark and, a little later, by Norway. General de Gaulle is 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.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/27/newsid_4187000/4187714.stm)
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 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 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. 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)
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 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.
(AP, 3/17/08)(SFC, 5/22/98,
p.C12)(www.springerlink.com/content/qg812p1147300117/)
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 May 14, The Beatles in NYC
announced the formation of their Apple Corp.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps)
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 Aug 15, Pirate Radio Free
London began transmitting.
(http://radio.eric.tripod.com/in_breach_of_the_law.htm)
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."
(SFC, 8/16/96, p.D11)(SFC, 10/23/00,
p.F3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_Banquet)
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.
(SFC, 11/22/99, p.C4)(WSJ, 7/14/00,
p.W11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Crisp)
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 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 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 Mary Bell (11) and unrelated
friend Norma Bell (13) were 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)
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 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 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)
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.
(WSJ, 9/27/96, p.A16)(AP, 1/7/99)(HN,
5/18/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell)
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.
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.32)(SFC, 7/18/05,
p.B6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Heath)
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 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."
{Beatles, Britain, Pop&Rock}
(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 "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 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)
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 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 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 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 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