This day in history

[macliam]

"The American contribution to the successful Allied war effort spanned four long years and cost more than 400,000 American lives." Obviously an American website being quoted..... to put losses in context, over 400,000 were lost for the UK alone, from a far smaller population, over the 6 years of WW2 (384,000 forces and 70,000 civilians) and about 25m Soviets. 7m Germans and 3m Japanese died over that same period.

43 AD - Cicero was assassinated on the orders of Marcus Antonius.

1732 - The Royal Opera House opened its doors for the first time for a performance of "The Beggar's Opera".

1917 - The USA declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I.

1922 - The six counties of Northern Ireland "opted out" of the Irish Free State. Does Stormont get a telegram from the King on its 100th birthday?

1941 - Hitler issued the "Nacht und Nebel" (Night and Fog) degree authorising the arrest and summary execution of "persons endangering German security".

1975 - Indonesia invaded East Timor which had gained independence from Portugal after the 1974 Carnation Revolution.

1988 - The PLO led by Yasser Arafat proclaimed the State of Palestine, and recognized Israel for the first time.

[Richard Frost]

1980 John Lennon shot

John Lennon, a former member of the Beatles, the rock group that transformed popular music in the 1960s, is shot and killed by an obsessed fan in New York City.

The 40-year-old artist was entering his luxury Manhattan apartment building when Mark David Chapman shot him four times at close range with a .38-caliber revolver. Lennon, bleeding profusely, was rushed to the hospital but died en route. Chapman had received an autograph from Lennon earlier in the day and voluntarily remained at the scene of the shooting until he was arrested by police. For a week, hundreds of bereaved fans kept a vigil outside the Dakota–Lennon’s apartment building–and demonstrations of mourning were held around the world.

John Lennon was one half of the singing-song writing team that made the Beatles the most popular musical group of the 20th century. The other band leader was Paul McCartney, but the rest of the quartet–George Harrison and Ringo Starr–sometimes penned and sang their own songs as well. Hailing from Liverpool, England, and influenced by early American rock and roll, the Beatles took Britain by storm in 1963 with the single “Please Please Me.” “Beatlemania” spread to the United States in 1964 with the release of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” followed by a sensational U.S. tour. With youth poised to break away from the culturally rigid landscape of the 1950s, the “Fab Four,” with their exuberant music and good-natured rebellion, were the perfect catalyst for the shift.

The Beatles sold millions of records and starred in hit movies such as A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Their live performances were near riots, with teenage girls screaming and fainting as their boyfriends nodded along to the catchy pop songs. In 1966, the Beatles gave up touring to concentrate on their innovative studio recordings, such as 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, a psychedelic concept album that is regarded as a masterpiece of popular music. The Beatles’ music remained relevant to youth throughout the great cultural shifts of the 1960s, and critics of all ages acknowledged the song writing genius of the Lennon-McCartney team.

Lennon was considered the intellectual Beatle and certainly was the most outspoken of the four. He caused a major controversy in 1966 when he declared that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus,” prompting mass burnings of Beatles’ records in the American Bible Belt. He later became an anti-war activist and flirted with communism in the lyrics of solo hits like “Imagine,” recorded after the Beatles disbanded in 1970. In 1975, Lennon dropped out of the music business to spend more time with his Japanese-born wife, Yoko Ono, and their son, Sean. In 1980, he made a comeback with Double-Fantasy, a critically acclaimed album that celebrated his love for Yoko and featured songs written by her.

On December 8, 1980, their peaceful domestic life on New York’s Upper West Side was shattered by 25-year-old Mark David Chapman. Psychiatrists deemed Chapman a borderline psychotic. He was instructed to plead insanity, but instead he pleaded guilty to murder. He was sentenced to 20 years to life. In 2000, New York State prison officials denied Chapman a parole hearing, telling him that his “vicious and violent act was apparently fuelled by your need to be acknowledged.” He remains behind bars.

John Lennon is memorialized in “Strawberry Fields,” a section of Central Park across the street from the Dakota that Yoko Ono landscaped in honour of her husband.

1854 Pope Pius IX proclaims Immaculate Conception, makes Mary, free of Original Sin

1864 The Clifton Suspension Bridge, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is finally opened in Bristol, England, 5 years after his death

1914 Battle of the Falkland Island: British Royal Navy destroys a German battle squadron

1914 Boers rebelling against the British in South Africa suffer several defeats, with one of their leaders, General Beyers, accidentally drowning

1915 John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields" appears anonymously in "Punch" magazine

1921 Eamon de Valera publicly repudiates Anglo-Irish Treaty

1923 Labour/Liberals win British parliament

1931 Coaxial cable patented

1933 French nun Bernadette Soubirous, who saw the vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, is canonized by the Catholic Church

1949 Chinese Nationalist government moves from Chinese mainland to Formosa

1955 Black Ealing comedy "The Ladykillers", directed by Alexander Mackendrick and starring Alec Guinness is released in the UK

1962 Attempted coup in British-controlled Brunei

1966 US and USSR sign treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space

1967 The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" EP is released in UK; issued in US as an album, including additional singles from 1967

1974 Irish Republican Socialist Party forms

1984 Ringo Starr hosts "Saturday Night Live"; Herbie Hancock is the musical guest

1987 Occupied Palestinians start "intefadeh" (uprising) against Israel

2009 Bombings in Baghdad, Iraq kill 127 and injure 448.

2020 The UK begins vaccinating for COVID-19 using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine

2021 Olaf Scholz is sworn as the new Chancellor of Germany, replacing Angela Merkel after 16 years

[macliam]

1922 - Liam Mellows, Rory O'Connor, Joseph McKelvey and Richard Barrett, anti-treaty IRA members, are executed by the new Free State.

[Richard Frost]

1625 Netherlands & England sign military treaty

1688 King James II's wife and son flee England for France

1738 Jews are expelled from Breslau Silesia

1747 Great Britain & Netherlands sign military treaty

1762 British parliament accepts Treaty of Paris

1783 First execution at Newgate Jail in London (now the site of the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey), relocated from Tyburn (now the site of Marble Arch)

1854 Alfred Tennyson's poem "Charge of the Light Brigade" is published in "The Examiner"

1856 The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces.

1868 The first traffic lights are installed outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.

1892 English football club Newcastle United founded

1899 Boer War: During Siege of Ladysmith, Boers storm King's Post and Caesar's Camp - driven back

1917 British forces under General Allenby capture Jerusalem

1940 British assault on Benghazi, Libya: first major allied offensive in North Africa

1952 Great Smog of London (England): Wind resumes, lifting city's worst smog after 4 days; over 8,000 deaths attributed to conditions; clean air legislation enacted in its wake

1960 1st broadcast of "Coronation Street" on British ITV

1968 In “The Mother of All Demos" Douglas Engelbart demonstrates the computer system NLS (oN-Line System) to a live audience in San Francisco. Shows for the first time, the mouse, word processing, windows, hypertext links, video conferencing, real-time collaboration, and other modern computing concepts.

1968 Terence O'Neill, Northern Ireland Prime Minister, makes a television appeal for moderate opinion in what became known as the 'Ulster stands at the Crossroads' speech

1997 "Tomorrow Never Dies", 18th James Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh, premieres in London

2002 "Star Trek: Nemesis" film directed by Stuart Baird, and starring Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes premieres

2005 "Brokeback Mountain" film released, directed by Ang Lee, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, based on story by Annie Proulx

2015 German Chancellor Angela Merkel named Time Magazine's Person of the Year, for her handling of debt and refugee crises

2017 "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" directed by Rian Johnson, starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Adam Driver premieres in Los Angeles

2017 Same-sex marriage is legalized in Australia after being signed into law by the Governor General

[Richard Frost]

December 10th

1041 Michael IV, Paphlagonicus, Byzantium Emperor dies of results of dropsy. His wife Empress Zoe elevates her adoptive son to the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire as Michael V.

1294 Pope Coelestinus V becomes Pope (until Dec 13th)

1520 Martin Luther publicly burns papal edict demanding he recant

1652 Sea battle at Dungeness: lt-admiral Maarten Tromp beats English fleet

1684 Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley

1688 King James II flees London

1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's army reaches Manchester

1884 "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain is first published in the UK and Canada (US Feb 1885, due to printing error)

1901 First Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to Red Cross founder Jean Henri Dunant and peace activist Frederic Passy

1901 First Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Wilhelm Röntgen for his discovery of X-rays

1902 German organic chemist Emil Fischer is award the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on sugar and purine syntheses

1903 Nobel Prize for physics awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie for their study of spontaneous radiation

1904 Ivan Pavlov awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for work on the physiology of digestion, first Russian to win a Nobel Prize

1904 John William Strutt [Lord Rayleigh] and William Ramsay are presented with the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery of Argon

1905 Austrian pacifist and writer Bertha von Suttner becomes the 1st woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1906 Frenchman Henri Moissan is presented with the Nobel prize for Chemistry for isolating Fluoride

1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal "in recognition of their work on the anatomy of the nervous system" [1]

1906 US President Theodore Roosevelt is the 1st American awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1907 Rudyard Kipling receives the Nobel prize for literature, the first English-language writer to do so

1907 The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London, when 1,000 medical students clash with 400 police officers over the existence of a memorial for animals who have been vivisected.

1909 Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature

1910 Dutch Physicist Johannes van der Waals wins the Nobel Prize for physics

1911 Belgium poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck is presented in absentia with the Nobel Prize for Literature

1911 Dutch lawyer Tobias Asser receives the Nobel Peace Prize

1912 Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Gustaf Dalén for inventing automatic regulators for gas accumulators for lighthouses and buoys

1913 Belgium head of the International Peace Bureau Henri La Fontaine becomes the first Socialist to win the Nobel Peace Prize

1913 Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore becomes the first non-European to be presented with the Nobel Prize for Literature for "Gitanjali"

1913 Dutch scientist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes receives Nobel prize for physics

1919 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to US President Woodrow Wilson

1920 August Krogh is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the regulation mechanisms of capillaries in skeletal muscle

1922 Nobel prizes awarded to Danish physicist Niels Bohr for his work on the structure of atoms, Francis William Aston for Chemistry and a Peace Prize to Fridtjof Nansen for his work on behalf of displaced victims of World War I at a ceremony in Copenhagen

1925 Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature

1926 2nd part of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf published

1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine jointly awarded to Christiaan Eijkman and Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins for the discovery of vitamins

1930 German chemist Hans Fischer is awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on haemin

1930 Indian Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman is presented with the Nobel Prize for Physics for work on light scattering - first Asian and non-white to win a Science Nobel

1931 Jane Addams named co-recipient of Nobel Peace Prize; 1st American woman Nobel laureate [1]

1933 Nobel Prize for Physics is presented to Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory"

1935 James Chadwick is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the neutron

1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry awarded to Irene Joliot-Curie (daughter of Marie Curie) and her husband Frédéric Joliot for the discovery of artificial radioactivity

1936 Britain replaces King Edward VIII stamp series with King George VI

1936 Edward VIII signs Instrument of Abdication, giving up the British throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson

1936 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Carlos Saavedra Lamas for mediating end to Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia, 1st Latin American to win

1936 Stockholm: physicist PBJ Debije receives Nobel prize for chemistry
1938 CFL Grey Cup: In repeat of last year, Toronto Argonauts defeat Winnipeg Blue Bombers, 30-7 to retain Championship

Nobel Prize
1938 Italian scientist Enrico Fermi receives the Nobel Prize for Physics (work on reduced radioactivity)

1941 British battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse (Force Z) sunk following Japanese aerial attacks off Malaya. 840 men die

1942 An early report the Holocaust prepared by the Polish government-in-exile, using information obtained by Witold Pilecki, is addressed to UN member states

1946 German/Swiss novelist Hermann Hesse wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and high qualities of style"

1947 American physiologists Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Gasser presented with Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in Stockholm (awarded 1944), for research into nerve function

1948 UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1950 Ralph Bunche (1st black American) presented the Nobel Peace Prize for mediation in Israel

1954 Albert Schweitzer receives Nobel Peace Prize

1954 Linus Pauling wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its applications

1957 Chinese physicists Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on parity laws, which created a major breakthrough in particle research

1959 Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Sicilian writer Salvatore Quasimodo for his lyrical poetry

1960 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine awarded to Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Peter Medawar for work on tissue grafting

1960 Willard Libby wins the Nobel prize in Chemistry for his work developing carbon-14 dating (radiocarbon dating).

1961 Robert Hofstadter and Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer win the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleon

1962 David Lean's film "Lawrence of Arabia", based on life of T. E. Lawrence and starring Peter O'Toole, premieres at Odeon Leicester Square (Academy Awards Best Picture 1963)

1963 Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta receive the 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the technology of high polymers

1963 Zanzibar gains independenence from Great Britain

1964 Dorothy Hodgkin is the first British woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on penicillin and vitamin B12

1964 Nobel Peace Prize presented to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Oslo, Norway

1966 Israeli Shmuel Yosef Agnon wins Nobel Prize for literature

1966 Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to Robert S. Mulliken

1967 Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm


1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Ragnar Granit, Haldan Keffer Hartline and George Wald "for discoveries about the make-up of the eye

1968 Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", occurs in Tokyo.

1970 Soviet novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn chooses not to claim his Nobel Prize in Literature for fear that the USSR would prevent his return afterwards. Accepts in 1974 after he was deported.

1971 West German Chancellor Willy Brandt receives the Nobel Peace Prize

1974 European Economic Community calls for a European Parliament

1974 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Irishman Seán MacBride for his human rights work and Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Satō for signing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

1975 Andrei Sakharov's wife Yelena Bonner, accepts his Nobel Peace Prize

1976 Samuel C. C. Ting is the first person to deliver a Nobel Prize lecture in Mandarin, during the ceremony to award him and Burton Richter the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering the J/ψ particle

1978 Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo

1983 Danuta Walesa, wife of Lech Wałęsa, accepts his Nobel Peace Prize

1984 South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu is presented with his Nobel Peace Prize

1994 European Campaign against Racism "All different, All equal" begins

1998 Indian Professor Amartya Sen is awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to welfare economics

1998 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine presented to Gertrude B. Elion, George H. Hitchings and James W. Black for development of new drugs

2001 "The Fellowship of the Ring" Lord of the Rings film directed by Peter Jackson and starring Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen premieres in London

2001 Nobel Prize for Economics awarded jointly to Joseph Stiglitz, George A. Akerlof and A. Michael Spence "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information"

2006 One million Lebanese opposition supporters gather in downtown Beirut, calling for the government to resign.

2009 US President Barack Obama accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo

2010 Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Stockholm, while imprisoned in China

2014 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology awarded to John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for their discoveries of nerve cells in the brain that enable a sense of place and navigation

2016 Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature at a ceremony he does not attend in Stockholm

2018 Theresa May cancels UK parliament vote on Brexit bill in face of certain defeat

[Richard Frost]

11th December

1282 Llywelyn ab Gruffydd/Llywelyn the Last, last native Prince of Wales is killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, south Wales. Reigned from 1259.

1395 John "Eleanor" Rykener, a male cross-dressing prostitute, is brought to court in London for "committing that detestable unmentionable and ignominious vice" in late medieval England's only recorded case on same-sex intercourse (verdict unknown)

1620 Mayflower Pilgrims come ashore in Plymouth Bay, traditionally thought to be at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts

1688 King James II captured in Kent

1878 Anglo-Zulu War: British high commissioner Henry Bartle Frere presents an ultimatum to the Zulu Kingdom to submit to British rule or face war

1896 Chief Electrical Engineer of the British Post Office, William Preece, gives a public lecture in London called "Telegraphy without Wires", praising the work of 22 year old Guglielmo Marconi

1905 A workers uprising occurs, establishing the Shuliavka Republic in Kiev

1913 "Mona Lisa" recovered two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum

1917 German-occupied Lithuania proclaims independence from Russia

1931 Statute of Westminster gives complete legislative independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland (Free State), and Newfoundland (not then part of Canada)

1936 Edward VIII announces in a radio broadcast that he is abdicating the British throne to marry Wallis Simpson

1946 United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established by resolution 57(I) of the UN General Assembly

1950 British Physicist Cecil Frank Powell awarded Nobel Prize in Physics for his study of nuclear processes and the discovery of the pion

1959 Emilio G. Segrè publishes his discovery of the antiproton, a sub-atomic antiparticle for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959

1964 Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. An unknown terrorist fires a mortar shell at the building during the speech.

1967 Supersonic airliner prototype "Concorde" 1st shown (France)

1968 Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O'Neill sacks Home Affairs Minister, William Craig

1971 A bomb explodes outside a furniture showroom on the mainly-Protestant and loyalist Shankill Road, Belfast; four civilians (including two babies) were killed and nineteen wounded

1977 Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, leaders of the group 'Peace People' (an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland) receive the Nobel Peace Prize

2005 The Buncefield Oil Depot in Hemel Hempstead, England, is rocked by explosions, causing a huge oil fire.

2012 British physicist, Stephen Hawking, wins the $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize, the most lucrative academic prize in the world

2012 HSBC bank settles with US authorities to pay $1.9 billion for drug cartel money laundering

2013 20 people are killed by the bubonic plague in a small Madagascan village

2013 Pope Francis is named Time magazine's person of the year

2014 World's 1st penis transplant procedure by a team from Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa

2018 The Arctic is experiencing "unprecedented warmth" caused by human-caused climate change, according to US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Report

2018 Time Magazine Person of the Year 2018 is "the Guardians" journalists targeted for their work, including Jamal Khashoggi

2019 Climate activist Greta Thunberg is named Time magazine's Person of the Year

2020 First same-sex civil union registered in Bolivia after a two-year legal battle by activists

[Richard Frost]

12th December

1098 1st Crusaders capture & plunder Mara, Syria

1279 Discovery of a sarcophagus supposedly containing the body of Mary Magdalene in the crypt of the church of Saint-Maximin, South Eastern France

1479 Jews are expelled from Schlettstadt Alsace by Emperor Frederick III

1524 Pope Clement VII approves Organization of Jewish Community of Rome

1653 English "Barebones" Parliament ends

1694 The Royal Society censures Edmond Halley for suggesting in a paper titled 'Some considerations about the cause of the universal deluge' that the story of Noah's flood could be an account of a cometary impact

1871 Jules Janssen discovers dark lines in solar corona spectrum

1897 Anti-Jewish violence breaks out in Bucharest, Romania

1901 Guglielmo Marconi sends the first transatlantic radio signal, from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland, Canada

1902 German historian Theodor Mommsen is awarded the Nobel prize for Literature for "his historical writing with special reference to his monumental work, "A History of Rome"

1940 British troops conquer Sidi el-Barrani

1948 Malayan Emergency: Batang Kali Massacre - 14 members of the Scots Guards stationed in Malaysia allegedly massacre 24 unarmed civilians and set fire to the village.

1956 Commencement of the Irish Republican Army's Border Campaign.

1959 UN Committee on Peaceful Use of Outer Space is established

1961 Nazi German army officer Adolf Eichmann is found guilty of war crimes in Israel

1968 Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O'Neill receives overwhelming support from Unionist Members of Parliament (MPs) at Stormont

1979 President of Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq, confers Nishan-e-Imtiaz on Nobel laureate Dr Abdus Salam

1980 Apple makes its initial public offering on the US stock market - 38 years later it would become the first US company valued at over $1 trillion

1988 3 trains collide in London, 40 die

1997 Carlos the Jackal, "professional revolutionary", goes on trial in Paris

2006 Peugeot produces its last car at the Ryton Plant signalling the end of mass car production in Coventry, formerly a major centre of the British motor industry.

2014 Over 200 pro-democracy activists arrested in Hong Kong

2018 British Prime Minister Theresa May survives 200-117 no-confidence vote from own Conservative Party

2019 British General Election won by Boris Johnson's Conservative Party in landslide win with 80 seat majority. Scottish National Party also wins 48 of 59 seats in Scotland.

2019 Deepest point on land on earth identified under Denman Glacier, east Antarctica at 3.5km (11,500ft) below sea level

2020 UN Chief Antonio Guterres urges world's leaders to declare "climate emergency" to avoid catastrophic global warning on 5th anniversary of Paris Climate Accord

2021 British PM Boris Johnson announces a emergency COVID-19 booster program to protect the NHS and stem a possible incoming “tidal wave of Omicron”

[Richard Frost]

13 December 1577

Francis Drake sets sail from England on his three-year circumnavigation of the world aboard the Golden Hind. Authorised by Queen Elizabeth I, Drake sailed with five ships on what was termed a “voyage of discovery”, although in effect it was a covert raiding mission and the start of England’s challenge to the global domination of Spain and Portugal.

[Richard Frost]

Roald Amundsen becomes first explorer to reach the South Pole

On December 14, 1911, Norwegian Roald Amundsen becomes the first explorer to reach the South Pole, beating his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott.

Amundsen, born in Borge, near Oslo, in 1872, was one of the great figures in polar exploration. In 1897, he was first mate on a Belgian expedition that was the first ever to winter in the Antarctic. In 1903, he guided the 47-ton sloop Gjöa through the Northwest Passage and around the Canadian coast, the first navigator to accomplish the treacherous journey. Amundsen planned to be the first man to the North Pole, and he was about to embark in 1909 when he learned that the American Robert Peary had achieved the feat.

Amundsen completed his preparations and in June 1910 sailed instead for Antarctica, where the English explorer Robert F. Scott was also headed with the aim of reaching the South Pole. In early 1911, Amundsen sailed his ship into Antarctica’s Bay of Whales and set up base camp 60 miles closer to the pole than Scott. In October, both explorers set off—Amundsen using sleigh dogs, and Scott employing Siberian motor sledges, Siberian ponies, and dogs. On December 14, 1911, Amundsen’s expedition won the race to the Pole and returned safely to base camp in late January.

Scott’s expedition was less fortunate. The motor sleds broke down, the ponies had to be shot, and the dog teams were sent back as Scott and four companions continued on foot. On January 18, 1912, they reached the pole only to find that Amundsen had preceded them by over a month. Weather on the return journey was exceptionally bad—two members perished—and a storm later trapped Scott and the other two survivors in their tent only 11 miles from their base camp. Scott’s frozen body was found later that year.

After his historic Antarctic journey, Amundsen established a successful shipping business. He later made attempts to become the first explorer to fly over the North Pole. In 1925, in an airplane, he flew within 150 miles of the goal. In 1926, he passed over the North Pole in a dirigible just three days after American explorer Richard E. Byrd had apparently done so in an aircraft. In 1996, a diary that Byrd had kept on the flight was found that seemed to suggest that the he had turned back 150 miles short of its goal because of an oil leak, making Amundsen’s dirigible expedition the first flight over the North Pole.

In 1928, Amundsen lost his life while trying to rescue a fellow explorer whose dirigible had crashed at sea near Spitsbergen, Norway.

[Richard Frost]

December 15th

1488 Bartolomeu Dias returns to Portugal after becoming 1st known European to sail round the Cape of Good Hope

1569 Hunted by Queen Elizabeth I for treason in "The Rising of the North", Charles Neville, Earl of Westmorland, escapes to Scotland.

1593 State of Holland grants patent on windmill with a crankshaft

1810 1st Irish magazine in US, "Shamrock" published

1840 Napoleon Bonaparte receives a French state funeral in Paris 19 years after his death

1914 British fleet forfeits chance to destroy German fleet in North Sea

1915 WWI: ANZAC forces begin their withdrawal from the Gallipoli Peninsula after Ottoman forces successfully defend access to Constantinople

1917 Moldavian Republic declares independence from Russia

1956 Emergency crisis in North Ireland proclaimed after IRA strikes

1961 Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death for war crimes in Israel

1965 3rd cyclone of year kills 15,000 at the mouths of the Ganges River in Bangladesh

1973 American Psychiatric Association declares homosexuality is not a mental illness

1979 Chris Haney and Scott Abbott develop the board game Trivial Pursuit

1979 World Court in Hague rules Iran should release all US hostages

1982 Spain reopens border with Gibraltar

1993 British Prime Minister John Major and Irish premier Reynolds signs Downing Street Declaration concerning Northern Ireland self determination

2018 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announces establishment of independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, splitting from Russian Orthodox

2019 Protests against India's new citizenship bill that excludes Muslims, erupt across major cities, killing at least five

2021 COVID-19 Omicron variant called "probably the most significant threat" of the pandemic by head of UK Health Security Agency, warning of "staggering" growth in next few days