ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY 23rd June 1314 Preliminary actions began for the Battle of Bannockburn, with the main battle beginning not long after daybreak the following day when the Scots began to move towards the English. It was one of the decisive battles of the First War of Scottish Independence. 1661 A marriage contract was signed between Charles II of England and Portuguese Catherine of Braganza. Catherines dowry secured to England Tangier, the Seven islands of Bombay, trading privileges and two million Portuguese crowns (about £300,000). 1683 William Penn, the English Quaker, signed a treaty with the Indian chiefs of the Lenni Lenade Tribe in an attempt to ensure peace in his new American colony, Pennsylvania. 1757 British troops, commanded by Robert Clive, won the Battle of Plassey in Bengal - laying the foundations of the British Empire in India. 1894 Birth of Edward, Duke of Windsor who was King Edward VIII from 20th January to 10th December 1936 before abdicating to marry twice-divorced Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson. 1939 The Government of Eire declared membership of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) to be illegal. 1940 The BBC’s Music While You Work programme was first broadcast on radio to brighten up the lives of munitions workers doing boring factory jobs. 1940 World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler surveyed newly defeated Paris in German occupied France. 1942 Germanys latest fighter, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, was captured intact when it mistakenly landed at RAF Pembrey in Wales. 1951 Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, missing diplomats, fled to the USSR as Russian spies before the British authorities had the opportunity to arrest them for spying. They surfaced in Moscow in 1956. 1970 The world’s first all-metal liner, Brunel’s Great Britain returned to Bristol from the Falkland Islands where it had lain rusting since 1886. 1985 A terrorist bomb aboard Air India flight 182 brought down a Boeing 747 off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 people aboard. 1986 Brighton bomber Patrick Magee, found guilty of planting the bomb at the Grand Hotel, Brighton during the Conservative Party Conference in 1983, was jailed for a minimum of 35 years. 1989 The Home secretary announced that the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad had been disbanded in the wake of allegations of malpractice. 1994 It was announced that the Royal Yacht Britannia would be sold or scrapped. 1997 Diana, Princess of Wales apologized for taking her two sons, Princes William and Harry, to see the 15 certificated film The Devils Own, about an IRA assassin. 2013 The RSPB told householders to stop weeding and let the garden grow messy, in its biggest ever campaign to save wildlife by building “homes for nature”. Source: Beautiful Britain
Posted on: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 05:26:52 +0000
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