ON THIS DAY
1912:
William Booth, English social reformer, evangelist and founder of the Salvation Army, died aged 83.
Harry Brearley of Sheffield cast the first stainless steel.
Adolphe Pegond baled out from a Bleriot airplane 700ft above Buc in France. His parachute brought him down safely, making him the first to parachute from a plane.
British sprinter Eric Liddell refused to run in the heat of the 100m at the Paris Olympics because it fell on a Sunday and was against his religious convictions. He had been tipped as the likely winner.
Calder Hall, in Cumbria, the
1913: 1913: 1924: 1956:
world’s first large-scale atomic power station, began generating.
Russia sent tanks into Czechoslovakia.
The Voyager I spacecraft was launched on its journey via Jupiter and Saturn to become the first man-made object to leave the Solar System.
The Thames pleasure cruiser Marchioness was hit by a dredger and 51 young people attending a party on the boat were killed.
George Adamson, British naturalist and conservationist, best known for his work with his wife Joy and the lioness Elsa, was murdered
1968: 1977: 1989: 1989:
by bandits in a game park in Kenya.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was allowed to return to Tripoli on compassionate grounds as he had been diagnosed with cancer and given three months to live. He was serving a life sentence for the murder of 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988.
Sylvester McCoy, actor, 77; Robert Plant, rock singer, 72; Steve McMahon, former footballer, 59; Joe Pasquale, comedian, 59; Scott Quinnell, former rugby player, 48; Jamie Cullum, singer, 41; Andrew Garfield, actor, 37.
2009: BIRTHDAYS: