Scott Allsop's Blog, page 85

4th February 1945: Yalta Conference begins, attended by the ‘Big Three’ of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin

The conference saw Allied leaders United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin meet to discuss the government of post-war ...

3rd February 1961: Operation Looking Glass begins its 29-year Cold War flight above the USA

Operation Looking Glass began flying an Airborne Command Post above the United States 24 hours a ...

2nd February 1852: World’s first modern flushable public toilets open in London

Despite their elegant mahogany and brass design, and an extensive promotional campaign that featured the distribution of 50,000 handbills alongside an advertisement in The Times newspaper, the toilets proved ...

1st February 1960: Start of the Greensboro sit-ins to protest segregation

The Greensboro sit-ins began when four black students sat at the ‘whites only’ lunch counter in the Woolworth department ...

31st January 1983: It became compulsory for drivers in the UK to wear a seat belt

The modern 3-point seat belt was created by Swedish inventor Nils Bohlin, who was a safety engineer for car manufacturer ...

30th January 1649: Execution of King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland outside the Banqueting House in London

Charles was executed on 30 January, having requested to wear two shirts as protection from the cold so that the crowd wouldn’t think he was shaking from fear. Six days later, Parliament abolished the ...

29th January 1942: Desert Island Discs, the longest-running radio show in the UK, first broadcast

Desert Island Discs is Britain’s longest-running radio ...

28th January 1986: NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds after launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida

At 11.39am Challenger lifted off, and seventy-three seconds later the Shuttle began to disintegrate following a huge fireball. All seven members of crew were killed, and the disaster led to NASA suspending all Space Shuttle missions for over two and a half ...

27th January 1945: Soviet soldiers liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp

The advancing Soviet troops met some resistance from remaining Nazi troops in the Polish city of Oświęcim, but by 3pm on 27 January 1945 they had captured the Main Camp and Auschwitz ...

26th January 1564: Pope Pius IV confirms the decrees of the Council of Trent

Pope Pius IV issued a Papal bull confirming the decrees of the Council of Trent that defined Catholic doctrine in the face of the Protestant ...