On This Day. Группа авторов

11 JANUARY

      1753 Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection was the foundation of the British Museum, died at Chelsea.

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      1891 Georges Haussmann, architect who planned much of modern Paris, died.

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      1922 insulin first used successfully in the treatment of diabetes.

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      1928 Thomas Hardy, author of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, died at Dorchester, Dorset.

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      1946 King Zog of Albania was dethroned.

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      1969 Richmal Crompton, author of Just William, died.

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      1973 the Open University awarded its first degrees.

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      1981 a three-man British team, led by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, completed the longest and fastest crossing of Antarctica after 75 days and 2,500 miles.

12 JANUARY

      1628 Charles Perrault, author of fairytales (Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty), was born in Paris.

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      1856 John Singer Sargent, portrait painter, was born in Florence.

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      1879 the British declared war on the Zulu leader Cetewayo.

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      1948 the London Co-op opened the first supermarket in the capital at Manor Park.

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      1950 64 submariners and dockyard workers were killed when the tanker Divina struck Truculent on the Thames.

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      1970 a Boeing 747 landed at Heathrow after its first flight from New York.

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      1976 Agatha Christie, crime novelist, died aged 85.

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      2010 316,000 people died in an earthquake in Haiti.

13 JANUARY

      1893 the Independent Labour Party formed by Keir Hardie to promote working-class representation.

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      1906 Aleksandr Popov, who used radio waves to transmit a message in 1896, independently of Guglielmo Marconi, died in St Petersburg.

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      1929 Wyatt Earp, gambler and law officer involved in the gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881, died.

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      1941 James Joyce, novelist, died in Zurich aged 58.

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      1978 Nasa selected its first women astronauts.

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      1989 the Friday the 13th virus struck at IBM-compatible computers.

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      2004 Harold Shipman, who killed more than 250 people, hanged himself in prison.

14 JANUARY

      1874 Johann Philipp Reis, whose telephone was not a commercial success, died.

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      1878 the first demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell’s newly invented telephone given to Queen Victoria on the Isle of Wight.

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      1898 Rev Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, died.

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      1957 Humphrey Bogart, actor (Casablanca), died of cancer aged 57.

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      1977 Anthony Eden, prime minister 1955–57, died.

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      1983 Metropolitan Police officers shot and gravely injured film editor Stephen Waldorf, mistakenly believing him to be an escaped convict.

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      1989 Muslims in Bradford ritually burnt a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

15 JANUARY

      1559 Elizabeth I crowned Queen of England.

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      1759 the British Museum opened at Montague House, London.

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      1815 Emma, Lady Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson, died in poverty at Calais.

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      1867 40 skaters drowned when the ice broke on Regent’s Park lake, London.

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      1970 the Nigeria-Biafra war concluded with Biafra’s surrender after the deaths of more than one million people.

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      1973 President Nixon halted US bombing in North Vietnam after peace talks in Paris.

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      2001 the Wikipedia website went online.

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      2009 US Airways Flight 1549 safely crash-landed in the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.

16 JANUARY

      1604 the Hampton Court Conference ended, in which King James I authorised a new translation of the Bible.

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      1920 prohibition of the sale of alcohol began in America.

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      1944 General Dwight D Eisenhower arrived in England as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe.

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      1969 21-year-old student Jan Palach set fire to himself in Prague in protest at the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

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      1970 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi became the leader of Libya, following a coup against King Idris.

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      1979 the Shah of Iran was forced into exile in Egypt.

17 JANUARY

      1773 Captain Cook’s Resolution crossed the Antarctic Circle, the first ship to do so.

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      1874 conjoined Thai-American brothers Chang and Eng Bunker, regarded as the original Siamese twins, died within two hours of one another, aged 62, in North Carolina.

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      1912 Captain Robert Scott reached the South Pole, to discover his rival Roald Amundsen had reached it first.

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      1983 the BBC introduced breakfast television.

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