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Boston Globe
7 days ago
- General
- Boston Globe
Today in History: Devastating Maui wildfires
In 1775, 250 years ago, a skirmish between a British warship and Gloucester citizens unfolded after the HMS Falcon chased two rebel schooners toward Cape Ann. After one of the schooners became grounded in the harbor, British sailors attempted to seize it. Armed mostly with only muskets, residents raced to the shore and attacked the British, who eventually surrendered on the grounded schooner. Several British sailors were taken prisoner and other Americans who had been forcibly conscripted were freed. In 1814, during the War of 1812, peace talks between the US and Britain began in Ghent, Belgium. Advertisement In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena to spend the remainder of his days in exile. In 1876, Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric pen — the forerunner of the mimeograph machine. In 1908, Wilbur Wright made the Wright Brothers' first public flying demonstration at Le Mans racecourse in France. In 1911, President William Howard Taft signed a measure raising the number of US representatives from 391 to 433, effective with the next Congress, with a proviso to add two more when New Mexico and Arizona became states. In 1954, The Boston Globe announced the opening of the first elevated expressway in the United States. Hailed as an engineering marvel and a model of urban planning, the Central Artery incorporated the latest technology, including on and off ramps that could melt snow. Reporters predicted that a 25-minute commute would be reduced to a mere two minutes. It would eventually become one of the most gridlocked expanses of pavement in the United States. In 1963, Britain's 'Great Train Robbery' occurred as thieves made off with £2.6 million in banknotes. In 1969, photographer Iain Macmillan took the iconic photo of The Beatles that would appear on the cover of their album 'Abbey Road.' In 1974, President Richard Nixon, facing damaging new revelations in the Watergate scandal, announced he would resign the following day. In 1988, Chicago's Wrigley Field hosted its first-ever night baseball game; the contest between the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies would be rained out in the fourth inning. Advertisement In 1992, the Queen Elizabeth II ran aground off the Elizabeth Islands in Massachusetts, ripping a 74-foot gash in its double hull. Ferry boats the next day evacuated 1,815 passengers and most of 1,000 crew members before the 963-foot boat -- one of the world's last luxury liners -- steamed to Boston for repairs. In 2000, the wreckage of the Confederate submarine, H.L. Hunley, which sank in 1864 after attacking the Union ship Housatonic, was recovered off the South Carolina coast and returned to port. In 2009, Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the US Supreme Court's first Hispanic and third female justice. In 2022, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the residence of former president Trump, located at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.; over 13,000 government documents, including 103 classified documents, were seized. In 2023, a series of wind-driven wildfires broke out on the Hawaiian island of Maui, destroying the town of Lahaina and killing more than 100 people.
Chicago Tribune
7 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Wrigley Field hosted its first-ever night game
Today is Friday, Aug. 8, the 220th day of 2025. There are 145 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 8, 1988, Wrigley Field hosted its first-ever night baseball game; the contest between the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies would be rained out in the fourth inning. Vintage Chicago Tribune: How Wrigley Field got lights and why Cubs fans had to wait past 8-8-88 to raise 'W' flagAlso on this date: In 1814, during the War of 1812, peace talks between the United States and Britain began in Ghent, Belgium. In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena to spend the remainder of his days in exile. In 1876, Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric pen—the forerunner of the mimeograph machine. In 1908, Wilbur Wright makes the Wright Brothers' first public flying demonstration, at Le Mans racecourse in France. In 1911, President William Howard Taft signed a measure raising the number of U.S. representatives from 391 to 433, effective with the next Congress, with a proviso to add two more when New Mexico and Arizona became states. In 1963, Britain's 'Great Train Robbery' took place as thieves made off with 2.6 million pounds in banknotes. In 1969, photographer Iain Macmillan took the iconic photo of The Beatles that would appear on the cover of their album 'Abbey Road.' In 1974, President Richard Nixon, facing damaging new revelations in the Watergate scandal, announced he would resign the following day. In 2000, the wreckage of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, which sank in 1864 after attacking the Union ship Housatonic, was recovered off the South Carolina coast and returned to port. In 2009, Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the U.S. Supreme Court's first Hispanic and third female justice. In 2022, FBI agents executed a search warrant for former President Donald Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida; over 13,000 government documents, including 103 classified documents, were seized. In 2023, a series of wind-driven wildfires broke out on the Hawaiian island of Maui, destroying the town of Lahaina and killing more than 100 people. Today's Birthdays: Actor Nita Talbot is 95. Actor Dustin Hoffman is 88. Actor Connie Stevens is 87. Actor Larry Wilcox is 78. Actor Keith Carradine is 76. Movie director Martin Brest is 74. Radio-TV personality Robin Quivers is 73. Percussionist Anton Fig is 72. Actor Donny Most is 72. Rock musician Dennis Drew (10,000 Maniacs) is 68. TV personality Deborah Norville is 67. Rock musician The Edge (U2) is 64. Rock musician Rikki Rockett (Poison) is 64. Rapper Kool Moe Dee is 63. Rock singer Scott Stapp is 52. Country singer Mark Wills is 52. Actor Kohl Sudduth is 51. Rock musician Tom Linton (Jimmy Eat World) is 50. Singer JC Chasez ('N Sync) is 49. Actor Tawny Cypress is 49. R&B singer Drew Lachey (98 Degrees) is 49. R&B singer Marsha Ambrosius is 48. Actor Lindsay Sloane is 48. Actor Countess Vaughn is 47. Actor Michael Urie is 45. Tennis player Roger Federer is 44. Actor Meagan Good is 44. Britain's Princess Beatrice of York is 37. Actor Ken Baumann is 36. Pop singer Shawn Mendes is 27.
Daily Record
21-07-2025
- General
- Daily Record
Diamond Cleland couple celebrate 60 years of wedding bliss
John and Margaret Canning marked their diamond wedding in style with a presentation from North Lanarkshire Provost Kenneth Duffy and Depute Lord Lieutenant Terry Currie. A loving Cleland couple will celebrate 60 years of wedding bliss surrounded by family and friends. John and Margaret Canning marked their diamond wedding in style with a presentation from North Lanarkshire Provost Kenneth Duffy and Depute Lord Lieutenant Terry Currie. The Provost presented them with a flowers, cards and gift from the councillors and people of North Lanarkshire while Mr Currie presented them with a certificate on behalf of Lanarkshire Lord Lieutenant Lady Susan Haughey. The couple's daughter Lorraine Ingram said: 'They had a fantastic day. We took them out for lunch and they were really pleased to get a visit from the Provost and Mr Currie. 'My dad knows Terry so they had a really good chat. 'We are going to have a party later this month at St Mary's Church in Cleland and I know they are really looking forward to it.' John and Margaret met at Newarthill Miners Welfare back in 1960 when John was 16 and Margaret was 15. The couple were married at St Mary's Church in Cleland on July 10, 1965. John began his working life as a joiner before moving into the licencing trade. The couple had three daughters Lorraine, Suzanne and Kay as well as five grandchildren. Lorraine added: 'I think they are just so well suited. They always told us the key to a happy marriage is to share everything. 'Mum likes to keep the house in order. She's a great home-maker. She loves her crafts and a great seamstress. 'She used to make all of our Irish dancing costumes.' In July 1965, the news was dominated by the Vietnam War with US President Lyndon Johnson announcing his decision to send an additional 50,000 American troops to South Vietnam, increasing the number of personnel there by two-thirds and to bring the commitment to 125,000. In the UK, Ronnie Biggs escaped from the maximum security Wandsworth Prison in London, where he was serving a 30-year prison sentence for the Great Train Robbery while Ted Heath was elected the new leader of the Conservative Party. The Hollies topped the pop charts with I'm Alive while Elvis Presley was at number two with Crying in the Chapel. The Sound of Music soundtrack was top of the album chart while Bob Dylan upset many of his fans at the Newport Folk Festival purists by 'going electric' in a live performance.
Daily Mirror
05-07-2025
- Daily Mirror
Inside Ronnie Biggs' prison escape more daring than audacious £2.4m robbery
The Great Train Robbery convict's best friend lifts the lid on Ronnie Biggs' incredible life as the world's most famous fugitive It was one of the most audacious crimes in British history. But nearly two years after the Great Train Robbery shocked and fascinated the country, an equally daring escape turned the least significant member of the gang into the world 's most famous fugitive. Ronnie Biggs played only a minor part in the 1963 robbery of the Glasgow-to-London mail train. Recruited late, he didn't handle any of the loot and only earned a relatively small share of the record £2.4m haul. Caught three weeks later - after his fingerprints were found on a tomato sauce bottle - the petty criminal seemed destined to be little more than a footnote in the story of an infamous heist. But 60 years ago on Monday, Ronnie, then 36, pulled off something even more extraordinary than the robbery itself, 15 months after he was jailed for 30 years - by escaping. By the end of the summer of 1965, and during the ensuing years, as he fled around the world, eventually settling in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, everyone would know his name. Biggs was sent to Wandsworth Prison, south west London, in April 1964, after losing his appeal, with the judge slamming the robbery as 'an act of organised banditry touching new depths of lawlessness'. A high security jail housing some of Britain's most dangerous criminals - that didn't stop Biggs from smuggling in cans of lobster and crab meat, or listening to pop music on a small illegal radio. Biggs, who died in 2013, later wrote in his autobiography how a hit song by The Seekers became the 'inspiration' for his escape. He wrote: 'It contained the line, 'There's a new world somewhere, they call it the promised land'.' Biggs, helped by two fellow inmates, started to meticulously plan what would become Wandsworth's most brazen escape. And he later told Chris Pickard, his best friend in Rio, who ghostwrote Biggs' books, how he managed it. Chris says: 'He and another prisoner, Paul Seabourne, came up with some crazy plans. One idea was a helicopter, which they decided would be too dangerous. 'Every afternoon they were allowed to walk around the yard for an hour. Ron and Paul worked out that the wall of that courtyard was the outside wall of the prison. Then Ron managed to count the bricks in the wall, which is hard to do as you're walking around. Because he was a builder and knew the size of a brick, he worked out the escape height of the wall, 25ft. 'That was higher than a removal van, but if you put an extension on the top of the van it could reach the top.' Seabourne was released in April 1965 and began to coordinate the jail break from the outside. He would get information to Biggs through the bent lawyers of another prisoner, Eric Flower, who was due to be sentenced for armed robbery and planned to escape with him. Another two inmates agreed to grab the prison officers as soon as Seabourne threw a rope ladder over the wall. 'They knew they'd get into trouble, but they said they'd look after that for the honour of helping Ron,' Chris says. Prisoners were normally chosen at random for one of the two walkabouts at different times in the day, so the conspirators devised a plan to get out of being picked for the first one, which included feigning illness or running out of twine for sewing the mail bags. In the countdown to the planned breakout, Biggs became more anxious. 'He was very nervous, he knew there was so much that could go wrong,' says Chris. 'He also realised that if you're going to climb up a basic rope ladder at that height, you have to be pretty fit. So he was having to be pretty discreet in his prison cell, doing press ups and sit ups without making it obvious. 'He said that several of the guards made comments, like 'good to see you're keeping in shape, Ron,' and he had to joke about why he was doing it, but they didn't catch on.' The escape was set for 3.05 on July 7, 1965 - but just before they were due to walk around the yard it started to lightly rain and the session was cancelled. Chris says: 'Luckily for them, Paul Seabourne, who was driving to Wandsworth in the removals van, also realised they wouldn't be let out in the rain, so turned back. They had agreed that if anything happened the escape would be put back a day.' The next day, Seabourne returned - but first went round every red telephone box in the vicinity and unscrewed the mouthpieces, so no-one would be able to call the police. Biggs' wife, Charmian, who was also in on the plan and who had provided the money to pay for the escape, had gone to Whipsnade Zoo for a day out, so she had an alibi and couldn't be implicated. This time, everything worked perfectly. 'Ron said that, as they walked around the yard they could hear the old removal truck pulling up outside. Then a head appeared over the wall with the traditional stockings over the face, and the rope ladders came down. Ron and Eric made a beeline for it, while these two other guys rugby-tackled the guards. 'They went up and over the wall, followed by two other men who decided they wanted to escape too. They jumped onto a mattress in the van, then all piled into the back of a waiting green Ford Zephyr and drove off. 'Ron told me they passed some police cars with their sirens on going in the other direction, but nobody followed them. 'Paul had assumed they would be chased by the police, so the plan was for them to turn into a cul-de-sac, run down a pathway and get into another waiting car. In fact, they weren't being followed at all, so didn't have to do anything in a rush.' After dropping off the others at Tube stations, Biggs and Flower went back with Seabourne to his flat in Dulwich, south east London, where they toasted their success with champagne. The two escapees were later taken to a safe house in Bermondsey, south east London. The next day, the front page of the Daily Mirror called Biggs' jail break 'the great escape' and quoted a Scotland Yard spokesman warning that the gang may be armed and that the public should not approach them. Chris says: 'In fact, Biggs was offered a gun, but he refused to take it. But it was all over the news, and for the next weeks everyone was spotting Ron everywhere. 'On July 14 police swooped on Heathrow airport, believing Ron was hiding in a crate, which caused chaos, but he wasn't there, he was just sitting in the safe house.' Even Madame Tussauds created waxwork figures of Biggs, as well as Charlie Wilson, another train robber who had escaped from Birmingham's Winson Green Prison a year earlier. By August, the two fugitives were getting fed up of staring at the walls of the London flat, so a house was rented for them in Bognor Regis, where they were finally united with their wives. In October 1965, Biggs and Flower made their way to Paris where their faces were changed by plastic surgery. Under the name 'Terence Furminger', Biggs settled in Adelaide in Australia, joined by Charmian and their children. Eric Flower lived in Sydney until he was captured in 1969 and sent back to Wandsworth to finish his 12-year sentence. With the police closing in on him, in 1970 Biggs flew to Brazil on a false passport, later divorcing Charmian. Under a new name, Michael Haynes, he began to build a new life for himself in Rio. Having a son, Michael, with his Brazilian lover Raimunda de Castro, also won him immunity from extradition under Brazilian law. Chris, who was working as a journalist in the South American city, became a close friend. He says: 'We would spend a lot of time together, sometimes at his house or over food at restaurants, just chatting. Eventually, he asked if I could help write his book because he wanted to set the record straight.' Chris says that it was always his escape from Wandsworth, and not the train robbery, which Biggs talked about most. 'It was his plan, his work, whereas he had nothing to do with the Great Train Robbery. And it was because of that, and not the actual robbery, that he became infamous. 'Although he'd spent all the money by the time he arrived in Rio, it was his fame that allowed him to have such a good life there. 'I'd go round to his house and you never knew who you'd find, a famous celebrity, a journalist or singer. He even had the Sex Pistols round and ended up writing and recording one of their biggest hits. It was an extraordinary life.' Biggs suffered his first stroke in 1998, although he recovered to throw a 70th birthday party. However, second and third strokes followed, permanently ending his days of beaches and parties. In 2001, after evading capture for 36 years, Biggs was arrested and sent to London's high-security Belmarsh prison, where he once again became Prisoner 002731, the same number he was given in April 1964 when he entered Wandsworth. In July 2007 he was moved to a unit for elderly inmates at Norwich Prison, and granted compassionate release from his prison sentence on August 6 2009, just two days before his 80th birthday. Finally free and no longer a fugitive, but imprisoned by his own ailments and unable to eat, speak or walk, he died four years later.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Yahoo
On This Day, May 22: Ireland is 1st to pass marriage equality in popular vote
On this date in history: In 1868, seven members of the Reno gang stole $98,000 from a railway car at Marshfield, Ind. It was the original "Great Train Robbery." In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt established Crater Lake National Park in southwest Oregon, the fifth-oldest national park in the United States. The defining feature is Crater Lake, the remains of Mount Mazama, a volcano that collapsed after a major eruption thousands of years ago. In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first U.S president to visit Moscow. In 1987, a tornado flattened Saragosa, Texas, population 185, killing 29 residents and injuring 121. In 1990, South Yemen and North Yemen united, forming the new Yemeni Arab Republic. In 1992, Johnny Carson ended his nearly 30-year career as host of The Tonight Show. In 2002, authorities in Birmingham, Ala., convicted a fourth suspect in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls. Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, a former Ku Klux Klansman, was sentenced to life in prison. In 2003, Annika Sörenstam became the first woman in 59 years to compete in a PGA event but her 5-over-par 145 through two rounds of the Bank of America Colonial tournament failed to make the cut. In 2011, the deadliest tornado to strike the United States in half a century roared into the heart of Joplin, Mo., with winds of 200 mph. It killed nearly 160 people, injured about 1,100 others and destroyed nearly one-third of the city. Damage was estimated in the $3 billion range. In 2015, voters in Ireland overwhelmingly approved a measure to allow civil same-sex marriage, making it the first nation in the world to legalize gay unions through a popular vote. In 2017, a suicide bomber killed 22 people attending an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. More than 500 people sustained injuries. In 2020, at least 76 people died in a fiery crash of Pakistan International Airlines Flight PK-8303 near Karachi's Jinnah International Airport. In 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced they would formally recognize Palestine as a state separate from Israel in an effort to inject renewed impetus into a hoped-for two-state solution to decades of conflict.
