On this day: Apollo 14 | Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash verdict

Published on 05/02/2013 00:00

Events, anniversaries and birthdays for 5 February

5 February

1782: Spanish forces captured Minorca from British.

1811: The Prince of Wales became Prince Regent on the established chronic porphyria of George III.

1885: Congo state was established under Belgium’s King Leopold II as personal possession.

1918: Church and state in Russia were officially separated.

1920: Royal Air Force College at Cranwell opened and had its first intake of apprentices.

1922: First issue of Reader’s Digest published, in New York.

1924: The BBC “pips” or time signals from Greenwich Observatory were heard for the first time.

1931: Captain Malcolm Campbell, driving Bluebird, set world land speed record of 245mph at Daytona Beach. He was first man to exceed 200mph.

1962: The conjunction of the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn was watched with interest by astronomers. In India the end of the world was forecast and all events were cancelled, including Hindu weddings, as people waited for doomsday.

1967: The Musicians’ Union banned the Rolling Stones’ Let’s Spend The Night Together from the Eamonn Andrews TV show.

1971: Astronauts from US Apollo 14 landed on the Moon.

1976: Almost 23,000 lives lost in Guatemala earthquake.

1982: Laker Airlines, created by former British pilot Sir Freddie Laker to cut prices and make air travel more accessible, collapsed with debts of £270 million.

1983: Klaus Barbie, Nazi war criminal, was flown to France to face charges.

1994: A controversial last-minute penalty gave England a 15-14 win over Scotland in the Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield.

1996: US president Bill Clinton was ordered to testify at the trial of Susan McDougal, one of his partners in the failed Whitewater Arkansas land deal.

1997: The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announced a $71m fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.

2002: Two pilots found guilty of “gross negligence” by the Ministry of Defence after the Mull of Kintyre Chinook helicopter crash, in which 29 people died, were cleared by a specially constituted House of Lords committee.

2004: Twenty-three Chinese people drowned when a group of 35 cockle-pickers were trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England. Twenty-one bodies were recovered.

BIRTHDAYS

Michael Sheen OBE, actor, 44; Bobby Brown, singer, 44 Sven-Göran Eriksson, football coach, 65; Russell Grant, astrologer, 62; Christopher Guest (Nigel Tufnel), actor, writer, director and musician, 65; Barbara Hershey, actress, 65; Susan Hill CBE, novelist and playwright, 71; Jennifer Jason Leigh, actress, 51; Michael Mann, film director, 70; Jose-Maria Olazabal, golfer and Ryder Cup winning captain, 47; Charlotte Rampling OBE, actress, 67; Cristiano Ronaldo, footballer, 28.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1788 Sir Robert Peel, prime minister, founder of Conservative Party; 1840 John Boyd Dunlop, Scottish veterinary surgeon, patentee of pneumatic tyre; 1893 Captain WE Johns, First World War pilot and creator of Biggles; 1914 William Burroughs, writer; 1920 Frank Muir, writer and broadcaster.

Deaths: 1881 Thomas Carlyle, essayist and historian; 1988 Emeric Pressburger, film producer; 2004 Frances Partridge, Bloomsbury group diarist.