Scott Allsop's Blog, page 21

13th December 1939: The Battle of the River Plate takes place off the coast of Uruguay and Argentina as the first major naval battle of WW2

Although the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee inflicted significant damage on the British HMS Exeter, the combined efforts of three British cruisers successfully crippled the Graf Spee’s fuel system and she was later ...

11th December 1866: The first transatlantic yacht race begins in Sandy Hook, New Jersey

The first transatlantic yacht race, from Sandy Hook in New Jersey to the Needles off the coast of the Isle of Wight in England, was the result of a drunken wager between three prominent New York businessmen: James Gordon Bennett Jr., Pierre Lorillard, and George ...

5th December 1955: Montgomery bus boycott begins in Alabama, marking a pivotal moment in the American Civil Rights Movement

The boycott lasted for 381 days and called for African Americans in Montgomery to refrain from using the city’s buses, which were segregated, until fair treatment was ...

3rd December 1973: NASA’s Pioneer 10 becomes the first space probe to send close-up images of the planet Jupiter

Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft designed to explore beyond the inner planets and, after a 21-month journey, was approaching Jupiter when it began transmitting data and images as it passed within 132,000 kilometres (82,000 miles) of the planet’s cloud ...

29th November 1972: Pong is officially released by Atari, and soon becomes the first commercially successful video game

By the end of 1972, Atari had produced around 2,500 PONG machines, which were distributed across the United States and sparked the growth of the arcade game ...

28th November 1943: The Tehran Conference begins, marking the first meeting between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin

The secret conference took place in Tehran, Iran, with the primary purpose of discussing the opening of a second front in Western Europe during the Second World ...

27th November 1924: First Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade takes place in New York City

Organized by the department store R.H. Macy & Co., the inaugural event was called the “Macy’s Christmas Parade” and was intended to be a way for Macy’s to attract customers and kick off the holiday shopping ...

26th November 1805: The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, the highest canal aqueduct in the world, opens in North Wales

Built to carry the Llangollen Canal across the River Dee, which provided a direct waterway link between the industrial towns of Shropshire and the Welsh coalfields, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is one of the most remarkable engineering achievements of the Industrial ...

25th November 1952: Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap opens in London, later to become the longest-running play in the world

Christie stipulated that The Mousetrap should not be adapted into other formats, helping to maintain its appeal as a unique theatrical experience. It holds the world record for the longest continuous run of any play, with more than 29,000 ...

19th November 1985: Reagan and Gorbachev meet for the first time at the Geneva Summit

U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev met for the first time at the Geneva ...