On This Day. Группа авторов

      1965 Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister 1940–45 and 1951–55, died aged 90.

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      1972 a Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was discovered on Guam, 28 years after the Japanese surrender, believing that the Second World War was still in progress.

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      1984 the Apple Macintosh personal computer went on sale.

25 JANUARY

      1533 King Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in secret.

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      1640 Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, died.

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      1759 Robert Burns, Scottish poet whose popularity is reaffirmed in the Burns Night celebrations, was born in Alloway, Ayr.

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      1919 the League of Nations was founded to resolve international disputes.

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      1924 the first Winter Olympics began in Chamonix, France.

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      1947 gangster Al Capone died at home of a heart attack.

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      1971 Idi Amin deposed the Ugandan president Milton Obote.

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      1990 Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan, became the first head of government to give birth.

26 JANUARY

      1790 Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was first performed in Vienna.

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      1824 Théodore Géricault, painter who used corpses in the morgue as models for The Raft of the Medusa, died.

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      1855 Gérard de Nerval, French Romantic poet who kept a lobster as a pet, died.

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      1885 General Charles Gordon was killed at Khartoum during the rising led by the Mahdi.

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      1905 the largest diamond in the world, the Cullinan, was mined at Pretoria, South Africa.

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      1950 India became a republic within the Commonwealth.

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      1998 President Bill Clinton denied having had sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky.

27 JANUARY

      1302 Dante Alighieri was expelled from Florence for his political activities, and while in exile wrote his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy.

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      1880 the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was granted a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

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      1944 Leningrad (now St Petersburg) was relieved after a 28-month siege.

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      1945 the Soviet army liberated 5,000 inmates of Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

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      1967 Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee, astronauts, died after an electrical fault ignited pure oxygen in their Apollo 1 spacecraft.

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      1972 Mahalia Jackson, the “Queen of Gospel”, died.

28 JANUARY

      814 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor since 800, died aged 71.

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      1547 King Henry VIII, who had reigned since 1509, died aged 55.

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      1596 Sir Francis Drake, English admiral and circumnavigator of the globe, died aged 55 at Portobelo, Panama.

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      1807 London’s Pall Mall became the first street in the world illuminated by gaslight.

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      1896 the first speeding fine was imposed on a British motorist for exceeding 2mph in a built-up area.

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      1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift-off and its crew of five men and two women were killed.

29 JANUARY

      1819 Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed in Singapore, with it becoming a British colony five years later.

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      1820 King George III, who had reigned since 1760, died aged 81.

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      1856 the Victoria Cross was established by royal warrant to honour acts of valour during the Crimean War.

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      1860 Anton Chekhov, playwright, was born in Taganrog, Russia.

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      1886 Karl Benz patented the first automobile.

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      1942 Desert Island Discs was first broadcast by the BBC.

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      1996 Venice’s opera house, fatefully named La Fenice (The Phoenix), was completely destroyed by fire, suspected to be arson.

30 JANUARY

      1649 King Charles I, who had reigned since 1625, was executed in Whitehall.

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      1661 Oliver Cromwell was ritually executed, more than two years after his death.

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      1790 the first lifeboat was tested by Henry Greathead of South Shields.

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      1933 Hitler was sworn in as German chancellor.

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      1948 Mahatma Gandhi, Indian leader, was assassinated in Delhi.

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      1965 Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral took place in London.

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      1968 the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive against South Vietnam.

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      1972 British troops killed 13 people during a civil rights march in Londonderry on what is now known as Bloody Sunday.

31 JANUARY

      1606 Guy Fawkes and his fellow Gunpowder Plot conspirators were executed.

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      1788 Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), leader of the Jacobite rebellion, died in Rome aged 68.

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      1858 the Great Eastern steamship, the largest vessel in the world, built by Isambard Kingdom