This day in history

[Richard Frost]

1st February

1327 Edward III is crowned King of England aged 14, though the country is ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer

1539 Emperor Karel & King Francois I sign anti-English treaty

1587 Queen Elizabeth I of England signs death warrant for her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots

1662 Dutch garrison on Formosa surrenders to Chinese pirates

1669 French King Louis XIV limits freedom of religion

1713 The Kalabalik or Tumult in Bendery results in Ottoman sultan Ahmed III ordering that his unwelcome guest, King Charles XII of Sweden, be seized

1793 France declares war on Great Britain and Netherlands

1809 Dutch King Louis Napoleon accepts metric system

1810 Seville, Spain surrenders to the French without a fight

1814 Lord Byron's "Corsair" sells 10,000 copies on day of publication

1814 Volcano Mayon on Luzon Philippines erupts killing 1,200

1865 US President Lincoln signs 13th Amendment of US Constitution, abolishing slavery in US; celebrated as National Freedom Day

1902 China's empress Tzu-hsi forbids binding woman's feet

1908 King Carlos I of Portugal and his heir, Prince Luis Filipe are assassinated by Republican sympathizers in Terreiro do Paco, Lisbon

1910 1st British labour exchange opens

1923 Fascists Voluntary Militia forms in Italy under Benito Mussolini

1924 Ramsay MacDonald's incoming Labour government formally recognizes the Soviet Union

1933 German Parliament is dissolved by President Paul von Hindenburg by the request of new chancellor Adolf Hitler

1934 Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss dissolves all political parties but his

1940 Soviet Union begins new offensive against Finland

1948 Important South African anti-apartheid novel "Cry the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton is published in the US

1948 Nine Malay sultanates and two British Straits Settlements (Penang and Malacca) form the Federation of Malaya

1953 Flooding in Netherlands kills 1,835

1959 Swiss men vote against voting rights for women

1961 British minister Enoch Powell makes medical insurance more expensive

1963 Nyasaland (now Malawi) becomes self-governing under Hastings Banda

1965 Martin Luther King Jr. and 700 demonstrators arrested in Selma, Alabama

1967 Severe bushfires in Tasmania destroy $11 million & take 60 lives

1970 Northern Ireland PM Chichester-Clark meets British Home Secretary James Callaghan to discuss the economy of Northern Ireland

1972 British Prime Minister Edward Heath announces the appointment of Lord Chief Justice Lord Widgery to undertake an inquiry into the 13 deaths on 'Bloody Sunday' (30 January 1972)

1972 Kuala Lumpur becomes a city by a royal charter granted by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

1972 The Ministry of Defence issues a detailed account of the British Army's version of events during 'Bloody Sunday'

1972 Wings release single "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" in UK

1974 Kuala Lumpur is declared a Federal Territory.

1979 Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran after 15 years in exile

1991 Afghanistan and Pakistan hit by earthquake, 1,200 die

1994 Large meteorite falls near Kusaie, Pacific Ocean

2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

2004 251 people are trampled to death and 244 injured in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

2005 Canada introduces the Civil Marriage Act, making Canada the fourth country to sanction same-sex marriage.

2009 Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is elected as the first female Prime Minister of Iceland, becoming the first openly gay Head of Government in the modern world.

2014 Syrian civil war death toll reaches 130,000, while 4 million are displaced

2016 Myanmar's first freely elected parliament in 50 years has its opening session in Nay Pyi Taw

2016 Poor weather conditions strand 100,000 Chinese New Year travelers at a railway station in Guangzhou, China

2016 WHO declares a global public health emergency over the rapid spread of zika-linked conditions

2017 British MPs vote in favour of the European Union Bill, allowing the government to begin Brexit

2018 Archaeologists announce discovery of thousands of undetected structures in Mayan lowland civilisation, Guatemala, using Lidar, suggests population of 10 million

2018 The Indian government announces plan to give 500 million people free healthcare

2021 Military stage a coup in Myanmar, detaining civilian leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi and declare a one-year state of emergency

[Chadwick]

1st February

1979 Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran after 15 years in exile

1991 Afghanistan and Pakistan hit by earthquake, 1,200 die

Nothing of note happened in the 1980s.
When I invent my time machine, I shall just hop from Feb 1st to Feb 1st through the 80s and enjoy 10 days of peace and quiet.

[Richard Frost]

2nd February

506 Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, promulgates the Lex Romania Visigothorum (or Breviary of Alaric), a collection of Roman law

962 Pope John XII crowns German King Otto I the Great Emperor

1032 Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor becomes King of Burgundy, succeeding Rudolf III

1119 Guido di Borgogna elected Pope Callistus II

1141 Battle of Lincoln: King Stephen captured by forces loyal to Empress Matilda and commanded by Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester

1349 By this date at least 200 people a day were being buried in London as a result of the Black Death

1461 Battle of Mortimer's Cross: in a major battle of the War of the Roses Yorkist army of Edward, Earl of March, defeats Lancaster force led by Jasper Tudor

1536 Pedro de Mendoza founds Argentine city of Buenos Aires

1542 Portuguese under Christovão da Gama capture a Muslim-occupied hillfort in northern Ethiopia in the Battle of Baçente.

1653 New Amsterdam becomes a city (later renamed New York)

1709 British sailor Alexander Selkirk is rescued by William Dampier after being marooned on a desert island for 5 years, his story inspires "Robinson Crusoe

1742 British government of Robert Walpole resigns (1st British Prime Minister)

1829 Madman Jonathan Martin sets York Cathedral on fire, does £60,000 damage

1852 1st British public men's toilet opens in Fleet St, London

1870 Cardiff Giant (supposed petrified human) proved to be gypsum

1880 SS Strathleven arrives in London with first shipment of frozen Australian mutton

1901 Queen Victoria's funeral takes place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England

1920 Estonia declares its Independence from Russia (Dorpat Peace)

1920 Tarto/Dorpat peace treaty: USSR recognizes Estonian independence

1922 It was 2:22:22 on 2/2/22

1931 1st use of a rocket to deliver mail (Austria)

1933 2 days after becoming chancellor, Adolf Hitler dissolves the German Reichstag (Parliament)

1933 Hermann Goering bans Communist meetings/demonstrations in Germany

1943 German 6th Army surrenders after Battle of Stalingrad in a major turning point in Europe during World War II

1954 Snow falls on Gibraltar

1962 8 of 9 planets align for 1st time in 400 years

1971 Idi Amin ousts Milton Obote and appoints himself President (dictator) of Uganda

1972 Angry demonstrators burn the British Embassy in Dublin to the ground in protest at the shooting dead of 13 people on 'bloody sunday'

1989 F. W. de Klerk replaces P. W. Botha as South Africa's National Party leader

1993 Václav Havel becomes the first president of an independent Czech Republic, after the split with Slovakia

1995 US space shuttle Discovery launched

2013 18 people are killed and 34 are injured after a bus catches fire after falling down a ravine in Gansu province, China

2013 23 people are killed and 8 are injured after militants attacked an army base in the Lakki Marwat District, Pakistan

2013 Shinzō Abe, Japan’s Prime Minister vows to defend the Senkaku Islands "at all costs"

2014 Protests in Ukraine turn violent after parliament passes legislation that outlaws protests.

2018 All 955 miners rescued from the Beatrix gold mine in Welkom town, South Africa, after 2 days underground

2019 More than 40 mummies from 323-30 BC found at a burial site at Tuna el-Gebel archaeological site south of Cairo, Egypt

2020 Palindrome Day: the date 02022020 reads the same forward and backward including in the US and China (last one like this 11 November 1111)

2021 Jeff Bezos announces he is stepping down as CEO of Amazon after 30 years, becoming executive chairman

[Richard Frost]

1377 Mass execution of population (between 2,500 and 5,000) of Cesena, Italy, by Breton troops of Giovanni Acuto under the command of Robert, Cardinal of Geneva, acting as the legate of Pope Gregory XI

1451 Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror inherits the throne of the Ottoman Empire

1488 Portuguese Explorer, Bartolomeu Dias discovers Mosselbaai (Angra dos Vaqueros)

1509 The Battle of Diu, naval battle at port of Diu, India between Portugal and the Ottoman Empire, establishes Portuguese trading control

1576 Henry of Navarre (future Henry IV) escapes from Paris

1591 German monarchy forms Protestant Union of Torgau

1634 Most elaborate masque of the Carolinian age - "The Triumph of Peace" held at Whitehall Palace, London, in front of King Charles I, written by James Shirley with sets by Inigo Jones

1660 General Monck's army reaches London

1740 Charles de Bourbon, King of Naples, invites Jews to return to Sicily

1743 Philadelphia establishes a "pesthouse" to quarantine immigrants

1752 Dutch States-General forbids export of windmills

1781 Dutch West Indies island of St Eustatia taken by British

1807 A British military force, under Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Auchmuty captures the city of Montevideo in the Battle of Montevideo, then part of the Spanish Empire now capital of Uruguay (Napoleonic Wars)

1815 World's first commercial cheese factory established, in Switzerland

1825 Dutch North Sea coast floods

1863 Samuel Clemens first uses the pen name Mark Twain in a Virginia City newspaper, the "Territorial Enterprise"

1882 Circus owner P. T. Barnum buys his world-famous elephant Jumbo

1916 Canada's original Parliament buildings in Ottawa burn down

1927 Uprising against regime of General Carmona in Portugal

1928 Paleoanthropologist Davidson Black reports his findings on the ancient human fossils found at Zhoukoudian, China in the journal Nature and declares them to be a new species he names 'Sinanthropus pekinensis' (now known as 'Homo erectus')

1931 New Zealand's worst natural disaster, the Hawke's Bay earthquake, kills 256 and injures thousands, devastating Napier and the Hawke's Bay region

1943 "The Four Chaplains" drown after giving up their life jackets to others as the US Army transport ship Dorchester sinks in the North Atlantic

1944 World War II: United States troops capture the Marshall Islands.

1945 Almost 1,000 Flying Fortresses drop 3,000 tons of bombs on Berlin

1945 WWII: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Yalta, Crimea, Soviet Union for the "Big Three" Yalta Conference

1959 "The Day the Music Died" plane crash kills musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, J. P. Richardson (aka The Big Bopper), and the pilot. near Clear Lake, Iowa

1959 American Airlines Electra crashes in NY's East River, killing 65

1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan makes his famous "wind of change" speech in Africa, against the apartheid regime, angering South African politicians

1962 US President John F. Kennedy bans all trade with Cuba except for food & drugs

1965 Orbiting Solar Observatory 2 launches into Earth orbit (552/636 km)

1966 1st operational weather satellite, ESSA-1 launched US

1966 1st soft landing on Moon (Soviet Luna 9)

1967 Ronald Ryan, the last person to be executed in Australia, is hanged in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne

1969 Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O'Neill announces the dissolution of the Stormont parliament and the holding of new elections

1971 A series of house searches by the British Army in Catholic areas of Belfast, resulting in serious rioting and gun battles

1978 Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and US President Jimmy Carter discuss the Middle East peace process in Washington, D.C.

1979 "YMCA" by Village People peaks at #2 on pop singles chart

1982 John Sharples of England finishes 371 hours of disco dancing

1982 Porn star John Holmes ordered to stand trial for murder

1984 10th NASA Space Shuttle Mission (41B): Challenger 4 launches

1986 Pixar Animation Studios (Toy Story; The Incredibles) headed by Edwin Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, is spun off from Lucasfilm, Ltd as an independent film production company, with backing of Steve Jobs
Apple Co-founder

1986 The Pope and Mother Teresa meet in Calcutta

1988 Nurses across the UK strike over pay and funding for the NHS

1993 Federal trial of 4 police officers charged with civil rights violations in videotaped beating of Rodney King begins in Los Angeles, California

1994 STS-60 (Discovery) launches into orbit

1995 STS 63 (Discovery 19), launches into orbit

1998 Karla Faye Tucker is executed in Texas, first woman executed in the United States since 1984

1998 Stamps commemorating Diana, Princess of Wales, go on sale in Britain

2013 33 people are killed by a suicide bombing by an explosive-packed truck in Kirkuk, Iraq

2016 Lord Lucan's death certificate is granted, 42 years after he disappeared following the murder of nanny Sandra Rivett

2019 Pope Francis arrives in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on the first ever papal visit to the Arabian peninsula

2019 Wreckage from light aircraft carrying EPL team Cardiff City's record signing Emiliano Sala is discovered on seabed of the English Channel; cause of death, head and trunk injuries

2020 Cruise ship Diamond Princess with 3700 passengers quarantined in Yokohama port, Japan after cases of COVID-19 found on board

2021 Engineers at MIT announce they have engineered spinach to send emails when detecting explosive materials in groundwater as part of plant nanobionic research

2022 Austria brings into force its vaccine mandate for all, first country in Europe to do so

2022 ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi blows himself and his family up during a raid by US Special Forces in Syria

[macliam]

1488 Portuguese Explorer, Bartolomeu Dias discovers Mosselbaai (Angra dos Vaqueros)

"Mosselbaai" or Mossel Bay in English was the first landfall beyond the Cape of Good Hope, so the relevance is that Dias had managed to navigate beyond this barrier. Bartolomeu Dias had been appointed by King João II of Portugal to search for a route to India by sea. He named the landfall "Angra dos Vaqueiros" (The Bay of Cowherds) and called the Cape the name "Cabo das Tormentas" (the 'Cape of Torments'), although King João II later changed this to "Cabo da Boa Esperança" (the Cape of Good Hope). Rounding Cape Horn was a major step in establishing a new trading route.

1509 The Battle of Diu, naval battle at port of Diu, India between Portugal and the Ottoman Empire, establishes Portuguese trading control

The Battle of Diu was between the Portuguese and a joint fleet of the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, and the Zamorin of Calicut with support of the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. Hence it was the upstart Portuguese against the established partners in the spice trade monopoly, who had erswhile controlled the availability (and price) of spices to Western Europe. It was a total defeat for the alliance and established the Portuguese Empire.

1927 Uprising against regime of General Carmona in Portugal

Óscar Carmona came to power in 1926. He is described as "never a supporter of democratic government"! This rebellion, by another general, Adalberto Gastão de Sousa Dias, was an attempt to oust Carmona before he could transform Portuguese politics to his "National Dictatorship" but ended with the surrender and arrest of the rebels, after about 80 deaths and 360 injuries in Porto and more than 70 deaths and 400 injuries in Lisbon. Sousa Dias was exiled and the next year carmona appointed António de Oliveira Salazar as finance minister. Salazar would later replace carmona.... and the rest, as they say, is history.

1969 Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O'Neill announces the dissolution of the Stormont parliament and the holding of new elections

This was as a result of the demands for Civil Rights, which O'Neill had tried to defuse by introducing a Five Point Reform Programme, which granted a number of concessions that were demanded but NOT one man one vote. 12 dissident MPs signed a motion of no confidence against O'Neill and Brian Faulkner resigned from the Government. So, O'Neill called a surprise general election but lost an overall majority among UUP MPs. O'Neil almost lost his own constituency to Ian Paisley and resigned as leader of the UUP and Prime Minister on 28 April 1969.

1971 A series of house searches by the British Army in Catholic areas of Belfast, resulting in serious rioting and gun battles

This was a major escalation in British attempts to constrain the IRA, but was a disaster - ending in death of Gunner Robert Curtis on 6th February, who became the first British Army soldier to be killed in the Troubles.

1537 -Thomas FitzGerald, "Silken Thomas", Lord of Offaly, 10th earl of Kildare and five of his uncles were executed in London. Silken thomas was a cousin of King Henry VII and his father had been deputy governor of Ireland. In June 1534, Thomas had heard rumours that his father had been executed in the Tower of London and that the English government intended the same fate for himself and his uncles, so he decided to rebel against the crown. He later surrendered, having been offered protection by Lord Grey ,Lord Deputy of Ireland, but was betrayed and both hung and beheaded. His uncles were also quartered as traitors to the crown and this is the end of the FitzGeralds (the geraldines) as a major power in Ireland.

1911 - Death of Dublin-born Robert Noonan, better known as Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (originally called The Ragged Arsed Philanthropists). Noonan moved to South Africa in 1891 and was active in the Irish Nationalist circle in the Transvaal. The Boer government supported Irish nationalists as allies against the British and Noonan worked with Arthur Griffith (later President of Sinn Féin) and John MacBride (1916 rebel leader). In 1901, Noonan moved to England. In 1906 he became a founder member of the Hastings branch of the Social Democratic Federation and began work on The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. In 1909 Noonan travelled to Liverpool to arrange emigration to Canada. He wrote under the pen name Robert Tressell as he feared the socialist views expressed in the book would have him blacklisted. He completed the manuscript in 1910, but the 1,600-page hand-written text was rejected by the three publishing houses. He became a patient at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary, where he died of 'phthisis pulmonalis' (i.e. pulmonary tuberculosis) on 3 February 1911, aged 40. The book was not published until 1914

1919 - Harry Boland and Michael Collins engineered Eamon de Valera's escape from Lincoln Jail in England. de Valera had been jailed in May 1918, on allegations of conspiring with Germany, in an attempt to discredit de Valera's party and its military arm, the IRA. After his daring escape, Collins arranged for de valera to reach the USA, where he pressed for recognition of the Irish Republic and became de facto leader of the IRA campaign in the Irish war of Independence.

1929 - Val Doonican, entertainer, was born in Waterford

1998 - Northern Ireland politician, Billy Hutchinson, himself a former UVF militant, faced a death threat from the Loyalist Volunteer Force - and branded the outlawed terror group as "a bunch of thugs, drug dealers and police informers"

[Richard Frost]

5th February 1953: Britain's sweets rationing comes to an end
In place since the start of World War Two, sweets rationing limited the amount of sugary goods the public could buy. The first day of unrationed sweets sees toffee apples, nougat sticks and liquorice strips selling fast.

1428 King Alfonso V, orders Sicily's Jews to attend conversion sermons

1512 French troops under Gaston de Foix rescue Bologna, which was under siege from a combined Papal-Spanish army

1556 King Henry II of France and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sign the Treaty of Vaucelles, creating a temporary truce in the Italian War of 1551–59

1597 A group of early Japanese Christians, known as the 26 Martyrs, are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society

1631 Founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams arrives in Boston from England

1649 Prince of Wales proclaimed King Charles II of Great Britain by Covenanter Parliament of Scotland

1663 Charlevoix Earthquake in Quebec, felt strongly in New England

1679 German emperor Leopold I signs peace with France

1736 Methodists John and Charles Wesley arrive in Savannah, Georgia

1783 Earthquakes ravage Calabria, killing 30,000

1803 English explorer George Bass and crew set sail from Sydney to Tahiti and Chile - they're never seen again

1811 Prince George, Prince of Wales, later George IV, is appointed as Prince-Regent after his father King George III is recognized as insane due to mental illness

1869 World's largest alluvial gold nugget, the Welcome Stranger, found by John Deason and Richard Oates (weighting 97.14kg) in Moliagul, Australia

1870 1st motion picture shown to a theater audience, Philadelphia

1879 Joseph Swan demonstrates light bulb using carbon glow

1885 King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal colonial possession

1885 News of the fall of Khartoum reaches London

1900 British troops under Gen Buller occupy Vaal Krantz, Natal

1900 The United States and the United Kingdom sign treaty for Panama Canal

1919 Hollywood film studio United Artists founded by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D. W. Griffith

1922 Reader's Digest magazine 1st published

1923 Mass arrests of socialists & communists in Italy

1924 The Royal Greenwich Observatory begin broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".

1931 Malcolm Campbell sets world land speed record speed of 246.08 mph driving his famous Blue Bird car at Daytona Beach, Florida

1944 358 RAF bombers attack Stettin

1945 WWII: US troops under General Douglas MacArthur enter Manila, Philippines; month long battle ends 3 years of Japanese military occupation

1953 Sweet rationing imposed in WWII ends in Britain

1958 Vanguard TV-3 back-up launches into Earth orbit; reaches 6 km

1966 BBC opens a relay radio station on Ascension Island

1968 A fishing trawler from Hull sinks off the coast of Iceland

1972 Two IRA members are killed when a bomb they were planting exploded prematurely

1974 British miners begin their strike in reaction to the three-day week

1974 US Mariner 10 returns 1st close-up photos of Venus' cloud structure

1978 Blizzard forms in US North East, 100 people killed in New England and New York over 3 days

1982 British airline Laker Airways collapses owing 270M pounds ($351M)

1983 Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie brought to trial

1987 Soyuz TM-2 launches

1992 Jury selection begins in the trial of Los Angeles police charged with beating Rodney King

1994 68 killed and 200 wounded after a mortar bomb is set off in Sarajevo

1996 British supermarket chains stock genetically modified tomato puree - the first GM food to be sold in the country

2004 Twenty-three Chinese people drown when a group of 35 cockle-pickers are trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, Twenty-one bodies are recovered.

2013 UK House of Commons votes in favour of same-sex marriage

2014 Archaeologists decrypt the 13th C Viking jötunvillur runic code

2015 70's glam rocker Gary Glitter (real name Paul Gadd) found guilty of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault, and one of having sex with a girl under the age of 13 between 1975 and 1980

2019 Pope Francis admits for the first time that clerics have sexually abused nuns

2021 Ocean life is being drowned out by human noise, especially shipping, construction, sonar and seismic surveys according to new research

2022 Body of five-year old Moroccan boy Rayan Oram retrieved from the well he fell down four days previously after huge rescue effort

[macliam]

5th February
1820 - Death of William Drennan, physician, poet, educator and political radical. He was one of the chief architects of the Society of United Irishmen which united catholics and presbyterians against British rule in the 1798 rebellion. The British reaction to this union was to dissolve the Irish parliament and absorb Ireland completely into the new "United Kingdom". Drennan was also the first to refer in print to Ireland as "the Emerald Isle". His brial took place in the Clifton Street burial-ground in Belfast and, according to his will and with deliberate symbolism, his coffin is borne to the grave by three Catholics and three Protestants.

1880 -The Irish Rugby Football Union is founded in Dublin.

[Richard Frost]

6th February 1952 George VI dies and Elizabeth becomes Queen

King George VI dies in his sleep at the age of 56, and his 26-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, succeeds to the throne. She will become the UK's longest-reigning head of state.

1189 Riots in Lynn, Norfolk spread to Norwich

1508 Maximilian I proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor, 1st Emperor in centuries not to be crowned by the Pope

1577 King Henri de Bourbon of Navarra becomes leader of the Huguenots

1626 Huguenot rebels & French sign Peace of La Rochelle

1685 Duke of York becomes King James II of England and VII of Scotland upon the death of his brother Charles II

1716 Britain & Netherlands renew alliance

1778 Britain declares war on France

1819 Stamford Raffles founds Singapore as a British trading port

1832 1st appearance of cholera in Edinburgh, Scotland

1836 HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin arrive in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)

1840 The Treaty of Waitangi is signed between 40 Māori Chiefs (later signed by 500) and representatives of the British crown in Waitangi, New Zealand. The treaty was designed to share sovereignty between the two groups.

1855 British government of Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston forms

1861 British Vice-Admiral Robert Fitzroy issues first storm warnings for ships

1894 Bottle opener patented by William Painter

1900 The Battle of Vaal Krantz, South Africa (Boers vs British army)

1911 Great fire destroys downtown Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey)

1918 Great Britain grants women (30 & over) the vote

1935 "Monopoly" board game goes on sale for 1st time

1935 1st election to allow women to vote in Turkey

1939 Spanish government flees to France

1941 British troops conquer Bengazi, Libya

1945 WWII: Russian Red Army crosses the Oder River between Poland and Germany

1945 WWII: US 8th Air Force bombs oil facilities in Magdeburg and Chemnitz, Germany

1948 1st radio-controlled airplane flown

1952 Queen Elizabeth II succeeds King George VI to the British throne and proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms including Canada, Australia and New Zealand

1956 French Prime Minister Guy Mollet pelted with tomatoes in Algiers

1958 21 dead in air crash at Munich-Riem Airport; 8 players and 3 staff are from the Manchester United football team

1964 France & Great-Britain sign accord over building channel tunnel

1969 The New Ulster Movement forms, promoting moderate and non-sectarian policies and to assist those candidates who support Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Terence O'Neill

1971 Bernard Watt (28), a Catholic civilian, is shot and killed by the British Army (BA) during street disturbances in Ardoyne, Belfast

1971 James Saunders (22), a member of the IRA, is shot and killed by the British Army during a gun battle near the Oldpark Road, Belfast

1971 The Irish Republican Army shoots and kills Gunner Robert Curtis, the first British soldier to die during the 'Troubles'

1972 A Civil Rights march held in Newry, County Down; very large turn-out with many people attending to protest at the killings in Derry the previous Sunday

1973 40,000 civil servants demonstrate against higher pension contribution

1977 Alain Prieur jumps his motorcycle 65 m over 16 buses, near Paris

1983 Trial of former Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie begins in France for war crimes during World War II

1990 Steve Briers of Wales recites entire lyrics of Queen's album "A Night At The Opera" in 9 minutes 58.44 seconds backwards!

1997 Diane Blood, 32, in England, won right to use her dead husband's sperm

2005 Tony Blair, now the longest-serving Labour PM, marks 2,838 days as British Prime Minister

2012 6.9 magnitude quake hits near the central Philippines with 43 confirmed deaths

2012 Queen Elizabeth II marks the 60th anniversary of becoming British monarch, becoming only the second to do so

2013 9 people are killed as an 8.0 magnitude 8.0 earthquake strikes off the Solomon Islands coast

2018 6.0 magnitude earthquake strikes Hualien County, Taiwan, leaving 10 dead and over 50 missing

2018 Elon Musk's company SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy, world's most powerful rocket

2019 2018 named the 4th warmest year on record according to NOAA and NASA, after 2016, 2015, and 2017

2019 Honeybees are able to add and subtract and understand concept of zero according to research from RMIT University in Australia

2019 Quadriga, Canada's biggest cryptocurrency exchange is unable to get to $145 million of bitcoin assets after its CEO dies with its access passwords

2022 Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declares a state of emergency over a trucker protest against a covid vaccination mandate on the US-Canada border

2022 Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, marking seventy years on the throne

2023 7.8 magnitude earthquake hits parts of Turkey & Syria Thousands dead and injured

[Richard Frost]

421 Flavius Constantine becomes Co-Emperor as Emperor Constantius III of the Western Roman Empire with Honorius

1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle aged 44 after being convicted of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I in the Babington Plot

1600 Vatican convicts scholar and friar Giordano Bruno (who believed in an infinite universe) of heresy and sentences him to be burnt at the stake

1601 Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, leads an unsuccessful revolt in London against Queen Elizabeth 1

1622 King James I disbands the English parliament

1627 Gunpowder is used in a mining operation instead of mechanical tools in present-day Slovakia, reportedly the first time explosives had been used in mining

1672 Isaac Newton reads 1st optics paper before Royal Society in London

1690 Lord Halifax resigns as Lord Privy Seal

1750 Minor earthquake in London

1855 The Devil's Footprints, hoof-like marks mysteriously appear for over 60km after a snowfall in southern Devon, England

1905 Cyclone hits Tahiti & adjacent islands, killing some 10,000 people

1912 British Emissary journeys to Berlin to suggest that Britain might support German colonial aspirations in Africa if Germany agrees to hold her current naval strength

1920 Bolshevik troops capture Odessa, bringing an end to foreign involvement in the resistance against Bolshevik rule

1920 Swiss men vote against women's suffrage

1923 Coal mine explosion at Dawson, New Mexico kills 120

1926 Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio becomes Walt Disney Studios

1931 Gas explosion Fire in Fushun-coal mine, Manchuria kills 3,000

1933 1st flight of all-metal Boeing 247

1946 Portuguese Dictator António de Oliveira Salazar forbids opposition parties

1955 The Government of Sindh abolished Jagirdari system in the province. One million acres (4000 km²) of land thus acquired is to be distributed among the landless peasants.

1956 Mine disaster in Quaregnon Belgium, 8 die

1960 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor".

1962 In Paris, 8 people killed at a protest against independence for the French colony Algeria

1965 Eastern DC-7B crashes into Atlantic off Jones Beach NJ, kills 84

1967 Pirate Radio UKGM (England) closes down

1968 Orangeburg Massacre: highway patrol officers kill 3 students and injure 27 others demonstrating at South Carolina State University, 1st student killing by law enforcement in the US

1969 Meteorite weighing over 1 ton falls in Chihuahua, Mexico

1974 3 US astronauts return to Earth after a 85 days in the US space station, Skylab

1975 1800 Unification church couples wed in Korea

1977 Earthquake in San Francisco, at 5.0, strongest since 1966

1983 Ariel Sharon resigns from Israeli government after an inquiry shows he was indirectly responsible for the killings of hundreds of people in 1982

1989 US Boeing 707 crashes into Santa Maria mountain, 145 die

1995 6.4 earthquake at Trujillo, Colombia (46+ killed)

2013 16 people are killed and 27 are wounded by a market bombing in Kalaya, Pakistan

2013 29 people are killed and 69 are injured in a series of Iraq bombings

2013 A massive blizzard begins in the US and Canada that resulted in 15 deaths, 5,300 cancelled flights, and loss of power for 900,000 people

2014 15 people are killed & 130 injured in a hotel fire in Medina, Saudi Arabia

2014 17 people are killed after a truck & bus collide in Mendoza, Argentina

2020 Gunman shoots and kills 29 people in a shopping center in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, with 57 injured. Shooter shot and killed by security forces a day later.

2020 Irish General Election: No party wins a majority, Sinn Féin 37 seats and the popular vote, Fianna Fáil 38 seats, Leo Varadkar's ruling Fine Gael 35 seats

2021 Martial law declared in Mandalay, Myanmar, amid continuing protests against the country's military coup

2021 South Africa halts rollout of Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after research into the South African variant showed no protection against mild and moderate illness

2022 Horn of Africa with 13 million people now facing humanitarian crisis amid drought where the rainy season has failed three years in a row, according to UN World Food Program

[macliam]

8th February

1871 - James Craig, Ist Viscount Craigavon, was born in Belfast. Craig was PM of the new state from 1921 to 1940 and was instrumental in embedding Unionism as the ruling doctrine and overseeing the implementation of rules that disenfranchised Catholics and created a mostly protestant police force and the "B Specials", a part-time armed militia, later disbanded due to sectarian abuses.

1916 - Evacuation of Gallipoli Peninsula in the Dardanelles was completed; The failed eight-month campaign, the brainchild of Winston Churchill, left 100,000 casualties, mostly Australian, New Zealanders and Irish. Whilst it is known for the ANZAC casuaties, as many Irish troops fought there as New Zealanders and on April 25, 1915, the Royal Dublin and Royal Munster Fusiliers attempted to land at Gallipoli. However, the beach was heavily defended by Turkish troops and although 200 troops eventually got ashore, the Irish regiments sustained 90pc casualties in the attack. According to one Irish veteran, the sea turned red from the slaughter.

2007 - The Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine died at age 53 after suffering a heart attack and later a stroke and a brain haemorrhage. Ervine was a former UVF prisoner and was a key figure in brokering the loyalist paramilitary ceasefire of 1994, having decided that conflict was not the way forward. He abstained against attempts by the DUP to exclude Sinn Féin from office and supported the right of Sinn Féin members to make speeches in Irish on the floor of the Assembly. At the funeral of George Best in 2005 he sat next to Martin McGuinness, giving a sign of how politics in NI had moved on.

2020 Irish General Election: No party wins a majority, Sinn Féin 37 seats and the popular vote, Fianna Fáil 38 seats, Leo Varadkar's ruling Fine Gael 35 seats

The outcome of this was that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael formed a coalition to keep Sinn Féin out of power..... which was as likely as a coalition between Labour and the Tories in UK politics.