BRITAIN AND THE WORLD SINCE 1953
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| Jan10 | Thirty years after the end of WW2 Teruo Nakamura a Japanese surrenders on the Indonesian Island of Morota |
| Jan16 | Angola gains independence from Portugal |
| Feb11 | Margaret Thatcher becomes leader of Conservative party (in opposition) after defeating the former Prime Minister Edward Heath |
| Former US Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to two and a-half to eight years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up. | |
| Feb 14 | The novelist PG Wodehouse dies in Remsemburg, Long Island. There are long held suspicions that he was a Nazi sympathiser |
| Feb28 | At 8.37a.m. a Northern Line Underground train crashes through the buffers at Moorgate Station and hits a dead end wall. The death toll amounts to 41 people and 50 are seriously injured. The rescue operation took three days to complete |
| Mar7 | The body of kidnapped heiress Lesley Whittle was found in a 60ft drain shaft. She had been held for 52 days then strangled by Donald Nielson, "the Black Panther", who was later given four life sentences (21st June 1976). He was also the murderer of three sub-postmasters who were killed in raids on their businesses |
| Mar25 | King Faisal of Saudi-Arabia is assassinated by his nephew - the latter is beheaded on June 18th |
| Apr17 | Khmer Rouge enter the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh and begin the forceable removal of its inhabitants to the countryside. Year Zero |
| Apr30 | End of Vietnam war as South Viet-Nam is taken by the North Vietnamese |
| May16 | Mrs Junko Tobei of Japan becomes the first woman to climb Mount Everest |
| May27 | Worst UK motor vehicle disaster;a bus of elderly women plunges off Dibble's Bridge Yorks, killing 38 persons |
| Jun5 | Suez Canal reopens (after Six Day War resulted in its closure) to international maritime traffic |
| Jun6 | British voters decide to remain in Common Market after the U.K.'s first ever referendum |
| Jun19 | Lord Lucan is found guilty of the murder of the nanny Sandra Rivett but is still at large. |
| Jun28 | Mozambique gains independence from Portugal |
| July4 | A jury in Hamburg sentences the former Head of the Gestapo in Warsaw Ludwig Hahn to life imprisonment |
| Jul5 | Arthur Ashe wins Men's Singles Championship at Wimbeldon |
| Cape Verde Is gain independence after 500 years of Portuguese rule | |
| Jul29 | Gerald Ford becomes first US President to visit Auschwitz Poland |
| Jul30 | Former U.S. Teamsters Union President James Hoffa was reported missing. He was last seen in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township,It is believed that he was subsequently murdered by members of an organised crime syndicate but despite extensive FBI investigations no substantial evidence was found. He was declared "presumed dead" on December 8, 1982. |
| Aug8 | Samuel Bronfman, son of the president of Seagrams, was kidnapped in Purchase,New York, on August 8, 1975. His family paid the $2.3 million ransom.His kidnappers were apprehended soon after in Brooklyn and were convicted for extortion |
| Aug11 | British Leyland the only major British owned Motor Co comes under government control |
| Aug15 | Birmingham Six are sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombing of two pubs in Birmingham which resulted in the deaths of 21 people. |
| Aug19 | The England - Australia test match at Headingley is abandoned after the wicket is dug up by a group campaigning for the release of jailed London taxi-driver George Davis |
| Aug24 | Those who are held responsible for the military coup in Greece in 1967 are sentenced to death in Athens. The sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment |
| Aug27 | Haile Selassie the Emperor of Ethiopia dies |
| Sep5 | Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempts to assassinate Gerald Ford in Sacramento Ca |
| Two die and sixty three are injured after a bomb explosion at London's Hilton Hotel | |
| Sep11 | The last Wolsey rolls off the production line |
| Sep14 | Rembrandt's painting "The Night Watch" is slashed a dozen times at a gallery in Amsterdam |
| Papua New guinea gains independence from Australia | |
| Sep19 | The magnificent "Fawlty Towers" is shown for the first time on BBC 2. John Cleese and Connie Booth wrote the 12 episodes of the series |
| Sep28 | Members of the Black Liberation Front hold members of staff hostage in what was to become known as the "Spaghetti House" siege (77 Knightsbridge London). After five days the hostages were released unharmed and the abducters arrested |
| Sep30 | The "Thriller in Manila" - Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier to retain the World Heavyweight Boxing Title |
| Oct5 | Austrian Niki Lauda becomes Formula OneWorld Motor Racing Champion |
| Oct9 | One person dies and twenty are injured after a bomb explosion outside Green Park Tube Station near Piccadilly (London) |
| Oct10 | Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor remarry in a remote village in Botswana |
| Oct29 | Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe kills the first of his thirteen victims |
| Oct30 | First detected in France in 1918 a Forestry Commission Report states that 6.5 million trees have been destroyed by Dutch Elm Disease |
| Nov3 | First North Sea oil comes ashore [some say 11 June] |
| Nov7 | Tiede Herrema is released after 36 days after being kidnapped by the IRA. the abducters surrender to the Guarda after a siege lasting 19 days |
| Nov11 | The Australian Labour Government of Gough Whitlam is sacked and is replaced by a caretaker government |
| Nov22 | King
Juan Carlos was sworn in as King of Spain, the first
Spanish monarch since Alfonso XIII went into exile in
1931. General Franco, who had ruled Spain since 1939, died two days previously. |
| Nov25 | Irish Republican Army was outlawed in Britain following the deaths of 21 people in a pub bombing in Birmingham. |
| Nov27 | Ross
McWhirter, co-editor and compiler of the Guinness Book of
World Records, was shot dead by Irish Republican Army (IRA) active service unit outside his home. - see Dec 12 "The Balcombe Street Siege" |
| Nov29 | Two times world motor racing champion Graham Hill is killed along with five members of the Lotus Grand Prix team in a plane crash near Elstree airport Hertfordshire. |
| Dec12 | UN General Assembly demand that Indonesia withdraws from East Timor |
| Dec14 | Six South Moluccan terrorists surrender, holding 23 hostages for 12 days |
| Dec12 | A IRA Provisional IRA ASU is arrested after the siege in 22B Balcombe Street London in which the two occupants John and Sheila Matthews were held hostage for six days. The four members Martin O'Connell, Edward Butler, Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty were given life sentences at their subsequent trial for ten murders and twenty bombings. They were freed in April 1999 under the terms of the multi-party peace deal for Northern Ireland, known as the Good Friday Agreement |
| Dec27 | Equal Pay Act and Sex Discrimination Act come into force |
| Dec29 | 11 are killed and 75 hurt by terrorist bomb at LaGuardia Airport in New York |
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Last Updated 08/10/03 10:46