BRITAIN AND THE WORLD SINCE 1953
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| Jan20 | United States observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. |
| Britain and France announced plans to build the Channel Tunnel | |
| Jan24 | Voyager 2 passes within 81593km of the planet Uranus and in doing so discovers two moons |
| Jan28 | Soviet Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev demands reforms and announces plans for radical changes in economic policy. |
| Nine years and a day after the first launch, (27 Jan 1967) the 25th Space Shuttle (51L)-Challenger 10 explodes 73 seconds after lift off killing the crew of five men and two women. | |
| Feb9 | Halley's Comet reaches 30th perihelion (closest approach to Sun) |
| Feb19 | USSR launches Mir space station into the Earth's orbit |
| Feb25 | Former Philippines President Ferdinand E Marcos flees the country |
| Feb28 | Swedish Premier Olof Palme is assassinated in Stockholm |
| Mar2 | The Australia Bill formally severs Australia's constitutional ties with Britain |
| Mar20 | The highest gust of wind ever recorded in th UK at a high level site ((1,245 m AMSL) occurred at the Cairngorms. It measured 150 knots an hour |
| Mar23 | Greater London Council and six Metropolitan Councils are abolished by the Tory government |
| Mar26 | U.S. Sinks Libyan Patrol Boats. Four Libyan vessels were sunk or damaged and an SA-5 radar site was crippled |
| Apr11 | Halley's Comet makes closest approach to Earth this trip, 63 M km It was named after Edmund Halley, who predicted its orbit but he died before he could see his prediction come true. Halley's most famous appearance was in 1066 AD before the Battle of Hastings. |
| Apr14 | US aircraft attacks five terrorist locations in Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5th; Libya says 37 people, mostly civilians, were killed. |
| Apr17 | British journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped in Beirut. He was released in August 1991, by the Islamic Jihad. Also on this day, Britons Philip Padfield, John Leigh Douglas and American Peter Kilburn were found shot dead. The pro-Libyan Revolutionary Cells said it killed them in retaliation for the U.S. bombing of Libya. |
| Apr26 | Chernobyl nuclear reactor no 4 explodes in Russia - radiation reaches Britain 2 May |
| Apr30 | Indian police invade the Golden Temple at Amritsar, massacring the people there |
| Jun19 | Argentina beats West Germany 3-2 in soccer's 13th World Cup Final |
| Jul23 | Britain's Prince Andrew marries Sarah Ferguson. |
| July7 | Boris Becker wins the mens singles title at Winbledon defeating Kevin Curran in the Final. He is 17 years old |
| Jul30 | Estate agent Suzy Lamplugh is reported missing after meeting a client in London. |
| Oct19 | President Samora Machel is killed in an air crash in Mozambique. |
| Nov22 | By beating Trevor Berbick in two rounds in Las Vegas Mike Tyson becomes the Worlds youngest ever Heavyweight Boxing Champion |
| Dec14 | Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, took off from Edwards AFB, CA on 1st non-stop, non-refueled flight around world |
| Dec19 | Andrei Sakharov the Russian dissident is permitted to return to Moscow after seven years internal exile |
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Last Updated 21/07/03 10:18