Today in history

[Bulgaroctonus]

On January 30, 1948, on his way to a prayer meeting, Gandhi was shot dead in Birla House, New Delhi, by Nathuram Godse. Godse was a Hindu radical with alleged links to right-wing Hindu organisations, like the Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening the new government by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Godse and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were later tried and convicted, and executed on 15 November 1949. A prominent revolutionary and Hindu extremist, the president of the Mahasabha, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was accused of being the architect of the plot, but was acquitted due to lack of evidence.

It is indicative of Gandhi's long struggle and search for God that his dying words were said to have been a homage to God, Rama: "He Ram!" (Oh God!). This is seen as an inspiring signal of his spirituality as well as his idealism regarding the possibility of a unifying peace. The words are inscribed upon his memorial called Raj Ghat in New Delhi. While some are sceptical of this, evidence from a number of witnesses supports the claim that he made this utterance (see External links). Some sources state that Gandhi's last words were "He Ram, He Ram" or "Rama, Rama". It has also been claimed that when Gandhi fell to the ground dying, he clasped his hands together in the form of the namaste.

Soon after, Jawaharlal Nehru announced Gandhi's death with the words:

"Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not for me only, but for millions and millions in this country."

[Garry]

Vasiliy Zaitsev was reburried to Stalingrad today

The guy became a hero when he was made a symbol of fight for vanishing troops in Stalingrad rubbish. It was terrible fight there for every meter of land... especially at the end when Russians were left just 1km strip along the Volga... it got shrink to 300m. Zaitsev has record of more than 200 ememy soldiers including 11 snipers. His battle with german sniper major Kening was considered myth for long time even by many Soviet historians. But today they put major's rifle and his documents in the museum... at day when Zaitsev was reburried.

In real life Zaitsev was never left alone against other snipers. A whole group of snipers guarded him and his flanks. In 1942 he was an important symbol for soldiers who knew that MOST OF THEM will not suvive even few days in Stalingrad. Casualties were very high and people needed some hope to hold. Many soldiers start copying Zaitsev and went sniping.... not all of them successfully. Many did not last long as snipers, while some survived in their hobby and became pretty dangerous snipers. But in overall this movement created such a wave of sniping among Russian troops that Germans has lost around 10,000 soldiers and officers due to precision shots of these amateurs.

[Dreadnought]

Coretta Scott King dead at 78.

ATLANTA (AP) - Coretta Scott King, who turned a life shattered by her husband's assassination into one devoted to enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality, has died at the age of 78.

Flags at the King Center were lowered to half-staff Tuesday morning.

"We appreciate the prayers and condolences from people across the country," the King family said in a statement. The family said she died during the night. The widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. suffered a serious stroke and heart attack last August.

"It's a bleak morning for me and for many people and yet it's a great morning because we have a chance to look at her and see what she did and who she was," poet Maya Angelou said on ABC's "Good Morning America."


"It's bleak because I can't - many of us can't hear her sweet voice - but it's great because she did live, and she was ours. I mean African-Americans and white Americans and Asians, Spanish-speaking - she belonged to us and that's a great thing."

King died at Santa Monica Hospital, a holistic health center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, 16 miles south of San Diego, said her sister, Edythe Scott Bagley of Cheyney, Pa.

She had gone to California to rest and be with family, according to Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who broke the news on NBC's "Today" show.

At a news conference, Young said Coretta King's fortitude rivaled that of her husband.

"She was strong if not stronger than he was," Young said. "She lived a graceful and beautiful life, and in spite of all of the difficulties, she managed a graceful and beautiful passing."


(AP) Key dates in the life of Coretta Scott King. (AP Graphic)
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She was a supportive lieutenant to her husband during the most tumultuous days of the American civil rights movement, and after his assassination in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, she kept his dream alive while also raising their four children.

"I'm more determined than ever that my husband's dream will become a reality," King said soon after his slaying.

She goaded and pulled for more than a decade to have her husband's birthday observed as a national holiday, first celebrated in 1986.

King became a symbol, in her own right, of her husband's struggle for peace and brotherhood, presiding with a quiet, steady, stoic presence over seminars and conferences on global issues.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was with her husband when he was assassinated, said Tuesday that she understood that every time he left home, there was the chance he might not come back. "Like all great champions, she learned to function with pain and keep serving," he said. "So her legacy is secure as a freedom fighter, but her work remains unfinished."


(AP) King Center employee Bobby Blacklock, right, and an unidentified security officer bring flowers to...
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King wrote a book, "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.," and, in 1969 founded the multimillion-dollar Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. She saw to it that the center became deeply involved with the issues she said breed violence - hunger, unemployment, voting rights and racism.

"The center enables us to go out and struggle against the evils in our society," she often said.

She became increasingly outspoken against businesses such as film and television companies, video arcades, gun manufacturers and toy makers she accused of promoting violence. She called for regulation of their advertising.

After her stroke, King missed the annual King holiday celebration in Atlanta two weeks ago, but she did appear with her children at an awards dinner a couple of days earlier, smiling from her wheelchair but not speaking. The crowd gave her a standing ovation.

At the same time, the King Center's board of directors was considering selling the site to the National Park Service to let the family focus less on grounds maintenance and more on King's message. Two of the four children were strongly against such a move.


(AP) King Center employee Bobby Blacklock arranges flowers in front of the crypt of Dr. Martin Luther...
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Also in the news recently was a new book, "At Canaan's Edge" by Taylor Branch, that put allegations of her husband's infidelity back in the spotlight. It said her husband confessed a long-standing affair to her not long before he was assassinated.

Coretta Scott was studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music and planning on a singing career when a friend introduced her to Martin Luther King, a young Baptist minister studying at Boston University.

"She said she wanted me to meet a very promising young minister from Atlanta," King once said, adding with a laugh: "I wasn't interested in meeting a young minister at that time."

She recalled that on their first date he told her: "You know, you have everything I ever wanted in a woman. We ought to get married someday." Eighteen months later - June 18, 1953 - they did, at her parents' home in Marion, Ala.

The couple moved to Montgomery, Ala., where he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and organized the famed Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. With that campaign, King began enacting his philosophy of direct social action.

Over the years, King was with her husband in his finest hours. She was at his side as he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. She marched beside him from Selma, Ala., into Montgomery in 1965 for the triumphal climax to his drive for a voting rights law.

Only days after his death, she flew to Memphis with three of her children to lead thousands marching in honor of her slain husband and to plead for his cause.

"I think you rise to the occasion in a crisis," she once said. "I think the Lord gives you strength when you need it. God was using us - and now he's using me, too."

The King family, especially King and her father-in-law, Martin Luther King Sr., were highly visible in 1976 when former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter ran for president. When an integration dispute at Carter's Plains church created a furor, King campaigned at Carter's side the next day.

She later was named by Carter to serve as part of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, where Young was the ambassador.

In 1997, she spoke out in favor of a push to grant a trial for James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to killing her husband and then recanted.

"Even if no new light is shed on the facts concerning my husband's assassination, at least we and the nation can have the satisfaction of knowing that justice has run its course in this tragedy," she told a judge.

The trial never took place; Ray died in 1998.

King was born April 27, 1927, in Perry County, Ala. Her father ran a country store. To help her family during the Depression, young Coretta picked cotton; later, she worked as a waitress to earn her way through Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

In 1994, King stepped down as head of the King Center, passing the job to son Dexter, who in turn passed the job on to her other son, Martin III, in 2004. Dexter continued to serve as the center's chief operating officer. Martin III also has served on the Fulton County (Ga.) commission and as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, co-founded by his father in 1957. Daughter Yolanda became an actress and the youngest child, Bernice, became a Baptist minister.

On the 25th anniversary of her husband's death, April 5, 1993, King said the war in Vietnam which her husband opposed "has been replaced by an undeclared war on our central cities, a war being fought by gangs with guns for drugs."

"The value of life in our cities has become as cheap as the price of a gun," she said.

King received numerous honors for herself and traveled around the world in the process.

In London, she stood in 1969 in the same carved pulpit in St. Paul's Cathedral where her husband preached five years earlier.

"Many despair at all the evil and unrest and disorder in the world today," she preached, "but I see a new social order and I see the dawn of a new day."

[Parihaka]

30 January 1972: Army kills 13 in civil rights protest

British troops have opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the Bogside district of Londonderry, killing 13 civilians.

Seventeen more people, including one woman, were injured by gunfire. Another woman was knocked down by a speeding car.

The army said two soldiers had been hurt and up to 60 people arrested.


They just came in firing - there was no provocation whatsoever

Father Daly
It was by far the worst day of violence in this largely Roman Catholic city since the present crisis began in 1969.

Bogsiders said the troops opened fire on unarmed men - including one who had his arms up in surrender.

The trouble began as a civil rights procession, defying the Stormont ban on parades and marches, approached an Army barbed wire barricade.

The largely peaceful crowd of between 7,000 and 10,000 was marching in protest at the policy of internment without trial. Some of the younger demonstrators began shouting at the soldiers and chanting, "IRA, IRA".

A few bottles, broken paving stones, chair legs and heavy pieces of iron grating were thrown at the troops manning the barrier.

Stewards appealed for calm - but more missiles were thrown and the area behind the barricade was quickly strewn with broken glass and other debris.

The 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, which had been standing by in case of trouble, sprang into action. Squads leapt over the barricades and chased the demonstrators.

The gates were opened and eight armoured vehicles went into the Bogside and the remaining demonstrators were quickly surrounded.

Army claims provocation

The army says it opened fire after being shot at first by two snipers in flats overlooking the street. It claims acid bombs were also thrown.

The gun battle lasted about 25 minutes.

Father Edward Daly, a Catholic priest, was caught on film helping to carry a teenager who had been fatally wounded, to safety.

He said: "They just came in firing. There was no provocation whatsoever.

"Most people had their backs to them when they opened fire."

Major General Robert Ford, Commander, Land Forces Northern Ireland, who was in charge of the operation, insisted his troops had been fired on first.

"There is absolutely no doubt at all that the Parachute battalion did not open up until they had been fired at," he said.

In Context
A 14th man later died of injuries received during the demonstration.

An inquiry into what became known as Bloody Sunday headed by Lord Widgery in 1972 exonerated the Army. It said their firing had "bordered on the reckless" but said the troops had been fired upon first and some of their victims had been armed.

The results of the inquiry were rejected by the Catholic community who began a long campaign for a fresh investigation.

In 1998, Tony Blair's government announced a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

The inquiry, headed by Lord Saville, spent two years taking witness statements. It ended in November 2004 and had cost about £150 million.

Lord Saville's final report and conclusions were due to be published in 2005 but the large amount of evidence being considered has delayed publication.

[Parihaka]

30 January 1968: Americans alarmed by 'Tet Offensive'

The American command in Vietnam has reported over 5,000 people dead after two days intensive fighting.

South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu has been forced to declare martial law as communist forces, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, have kept up sustained assaults on several fronts - from Saigon in the south to Hue in the north.

Authorities in the North Vietnamese capital Hanoi, described it as, "a more powerful and more continuous offensive" than ever before.

White House intelligence in Washington anticipated attacks over the Tet holiday to celebrate the lunar new year, but they were surprised by their intensity.

Sporadic fighting is still being reported in Saigon but the main hostilities - which began at 1800 local time two days ago - are reported to have ceased.

Casualties

According to US figures, 4,959 Vietcong have been killed and 1,862 captured while 232 American and 300 South Vietnamese troops have been killed with 929 and 747, respectively, wounded.

Last night, a 19-man Vietcong suicide squad blew a four foot hole in the wall of the US Embassy in Saigon and the nearby British Embassy sustained minor damage.

Vietcong forces have also attacked the Vietnam general staff headquarters, Navy headquarters, two police stations and the Philippine Ambassador's residence as well as blowing up the radio station in Saigon.

Communications are in chaos and commercial flights from the airport have been cancelled.

North Vietnamese - Vietminh - troops have reinforced their siege of Khe Sanh, near the demilitarised zone.

Some commentators expect the so-called Tet Offensive will shatter the American resolve and have a similar effect on the US to that on the French after the North Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 - which contributed to the Geneva Agreements later that year.

The Hanoi goverment has offered talks and a seven-day truce if the US stops its aerial bombardments.

Documents captured by the Americans show the Vietminh troops have been promised an end to the war by February.

[Parihaka]

1 February 2003: Columbia shuttle disintegrates killing seven

The US space shuttle Columbia has broken up as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere killing all seven astronauts on board.

This is the first time there has been an accident on landing in the 42 years of space flight.

President George Bush told a nation in shock: "The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors."

Six of the seven astronauts were US citizens. They were Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, and female astronauts Laurel Clark and Indian-born Kalpana Chawla.

The seventh - fighter pilot Colonel Ilan Ramon - was Israel's first astronaut and was carrying with him a miniature Torah scroll of a Holocaust survivor.

Columbia disintegrated just 16 minutes before it was due to land at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

At 0900 local time (1400 GMT) Mission Control lost all data and contact with the crew.

The US space agency Nasa then sent search teams to the Dallas-Fort Worth area amid reports of "a big bang" and TV pictures showing smoke and fireballs in the sky.

Debris scattered over Texas

In an emotional announcement, Nasa's administrator Sean O'Keefe, said: "This is indeed a tragic day for the Nasa family, for the families of the astronauts and likewise, tragic for the nation."

Flags at the Kennedy Space Center have been lowered to half-mast.

Debris from the shuttle is scattered across eastern Texas and western Louisiana and has crashed into car parks, forests, backyards, a reservoir, a rooftop and a dentist's office.

Nasa has temporarily suspended shuttle flights. Shuttle programme manager Ron Dittemore told a news conference in Houston, Texas, "We will not fly again until we have this understood. Somewhere along the line we missed something."

The finger of blame points to a piece of insulating foam from an external fuel tank that hit the shuttle's left wing as it took off 16 days ago.

Some experts say this could have damaged tiles that protect the craft from intense heat on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

But the lead flight director in mission control, Leroy Cain, assured journalists engineers had concluded any damage to the spacecraft was considered minor.

The shuttle was the world's first reusable space vehicle and Columbia was the oldest of a fleet of four and flew her maiden voyage in April 1981.

Her sister ship Challenger exploded soon after take-off 17 years ago killing six astronauts and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

[Parihaka]

1 February 1979: Exiled Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran

Religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini has made a triumphant return to Iran after 14 years in exile.

Up to five million people lined the streets of the nation's capital, Tehran, to witness the homecoming of the Shia Muslim imam.

Ayatollah Rubollah Khomeini, 78, was imprisoned by the Shah in 1963 for his opposition to reforms and was expelled the following year, to Iraq - via Turkey.

He spent the last few months of his exile in France, near Paris, from where he co-ordinated the revolution in January that forced the Shah of Iran to go into hiding.

The Ayatollah - a title meaning Gift of God - emerged from his chartered plane looking tired and tearful to meet the 1,500 religious and political leaders allowed to meet him in the terminal building.


I will strike with my fists at the mouths of this government

Ayatollah Khomeini
A force of 50,000 police quickly lost control of the crowds outside the airport clamouring to catch a glimpse of the man who has been their spiritual inspiration.

Hands raised in greeting and appreciation, Ayatollah Khomeini made slow progress as his blue and white Chevrolet forced its way through a mass of people.

The cavalcade did not stop in Tehran itself but made the 12 mile journey south to the Cemetery of Martyrs where Mr Khomeini addressed 250,000 supporters.

He was openly belligerent towards the current government of Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar.

"These people are trying to bring back the regime of the late Shah or another regime. I will strike with my fists at the mouths of this government. From now on it is I who will name the government," he claimed.

Dr Bakhtair responded by saying: "Don't worry about this kind of speech. That is Khomeini. He is free to speak but he is not free to act."

The government has tried to re-assert its authority by cutting TV pictures of Mr Khomeini's progress and holding a military parade through Tehran this evening.

[Parihaka]

3 February 1931. Earthquake strikes Hawke's Bay

I could feel the bricks starting to bury my feet'


The Hawke's Bay earthquake rumbled for a terrifying 2½ minutes. When it finally stopped, towns lay in ruins. On today's 75th anniversary of the disaster, survivors tell their stories to Bernard Carpinter.

'Situation appalling. Whole town appears to be on fire'.

The HMS Veronica, docked at Napier, sent that message by morse code to naval headquarters at 1.31pm on February 3, 1931. It was two hours and 45 minutes after the killer quake had struck Hawke's Bay and caused New Zealand's worst natural disaster.

The commercial centre of Napier, comprised mainly of masonry buildings, had collapsed to the extent that when special policeman Ernest Vogtherr arrived there he could not even find his way around: "There were just no streets left," he said.

Hastings and other towns throughout Hawke's Bay were also devastated. In total 258 people lost their lives.

May Blair, nee Forrest, was just 13½ years old and starting her first day at Napier Technical College, proudly wearing her first pair of court (dress) shoes.

"When the quake struck I was on the second-storey sitting about in the middle of the room," Mrs Blair, now an 89-year old widow, recalled this week.

"I remember the building seemed to lean over at an alarming angle before the walls started to collapse. My first thought was the boys in the lab had made some terrible explosion."

As luck would have it, Mrs Blair was in the safest possible place: she had dropped a fountain pen and was on the floor under her desk.

"I think that saved me from a lot of damage. Nine people were killed at the school."

She managed to thread her way through the carnage and arrive safely at her sister's house in Latham St.

"It was then I noticed one of my lovely court shoes was missing and that I had a deep cut on my neck and shoulder."
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The family home in Battery Rd had not been badly damaged – wooden houses survived the quake very well, apart from their chimneys – but with strong tremors continuing the residents were scared to stay indoors. The Forrest family slept outside under a tarpaulin.

"About three days after the quake I went to the grocer and a big crack appeared in the ground in front of me. I turned round and there was another one behind me."

May's brother Bill was in the navy and in Napier for the quake – but seamen were forbidden from leaving the service to check their families.

"After three days he did come to see us – and he got 90 days in Mt Eden jail."

When Mrs Blair returned to school it was housed in tents in Nelson Park and then, briefly, at Napier Girls High.

"We Tech girls were not liked at Girls High so I would not go back."

Despite witnessing first hand the earthquake's horror, Mrs Blair has stayed in Napier: "I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, although I have travelled a lot".

She raised seven children, became a JP, married 950 couples, was president of the Napier branch of the New Zealand Council of Women and was awarded the QSM for volunteer work.

February 3, 1931 was also Gordon Vogtherr's first day at school, the Hastings five-year-old started that day at Mahora School.

"It being my first day, I didn't know which doors went where and everything was rocking but eventually I managed to get out and I immediately took off for home," he recalls.

"The water overflowed from the swimming baths. One girl was killed at the school.

"I told my father to `Spear him!' – I thought it was something like a serpent moving under the ground.

"The chimneys in our house came down and there was this awful smell from it. In the kitchen all the jams and pickles were strewn about. My grandparents lost everything."

Gordon's father Ernest later took a job in Nelson and the family moved there for 3½ years. Seven years after the quake the family returned to Hastings – "my father had a great yearning for Hawke's Bay" – and started what is now called the Holly Bacon Company, still run by the family.

Ernest Vogtherr wrote about the earthquake in his autobiography, No Regrets. The first shockwave knocked him down in the street in central Hastings.

"When I recovered from the initial shock I realised that I was right under the Cosy Theatre, and I could feel the bricks from this building coming down at me like snowballs," his book says.

"They started by burying my feet and I could feel them creeping up my body and I thought 'this can't last much longer' as only my head was by now uncovered." Suddenly the bricks stopped and he eventually managed to wriggle free.

"Fortunately the theatre was extremely badly built and the bricks had just fallen apart and came down on me one at a time. Had a portion of the wall held together I would have been crushed to death like so many other unfortunate victims of nature's bad-tempered upheaval.

"The main street was a shambles and impassable. Buildings were cut completely in half leaving bedrooms, etc, exposed whilst the fronts of the buildings lay in the street below."

Ernest Vogtherr had trained as a territorial and was called into the special police force as an inspector. Officers had to deal with a few looters and thieves, and had to keep people out of dangerous areas.

He ordered his men not to let anyone through the picket lines, "not Jesus Christ himself". They even blocked the commissioner of police, which caused some fuss.

Maori from local pa came in to help: "They were magnificent," Mr Vogtherr said in his book.

Another survivor, Dorothy Hollay, now 94 and living in Te Awamutu, has won a competition for recollections of the quake. She was 19 when it struck and was working in the Napier hospital laundry. "The new nurses' home, only built the previous year, was reduced to rubble killing all the nurses who had been on night duty," she said in her memoirs.

"I knew one of these young ladies, it was her very first evening on night duty. This home contained no reinforcements whatsoever, a shocking example of the lack of an enforceable building code in those times."

Though dazed, Mrs Hollay spent the day helping at the hospital on the hill. Down in the town centre the fire station had collapsed and there was no water, allowing fires to rage unchecked.

Many who survived the earthquake died, trapped in the fires.

Mrs Hollay recounted one story about a man who was trapped by his leg as the fires advanced. He begged rescuers to cut his leg off.

"No one had the heart to cut off a man's leg, but the dilemma was soon solved – he yelled again, 'Cut the bloody thing off, it's only a wooden one!' Now that was his lucky day."

Despite the widespread destruction, order was restored surprisingly quickly, with crew from the Veronica and other naval ships working round the clock.

The special police force was disbanded after only three weeks and each member received a personal letter of thanks – Gordon Vogtherr still has his father's.

While the city centre was being rebuilt, "Tin Town" was set up in what is now Clive and Memorial squares. Most of the new shops and offices were built in the style of the day – art deco – which is now one of the region's icons and tourist attractions.

The Government offered up to £100 to each household to repair quake damage. Applications had to be made on a single sheet of paper, with a quote from a builder.

Government officials drew up national building codes to ensure that future buildings would better withstand earthquakes. Many homeowners could afford to rebuild only one of their chimneys and simply blocked off other fireplaces.

The weekend before the quake Dorothy Hollay went sailing on the lagoon just outside Napier.

"It was a perfect day for sailing, and I now find it is hard to believe that there is now no sea on which to sail," she said.

Land rose by up to two metres, so the quake had the effect of providing more land on which Napier could expand.

After the earthquake, many people left the area for different reasons and differing periods, some never returning.

Mrs Blair chose to stay. "We just got on with things."

[Parihaka]

8 February 1952: New Queen proclaimed for UK

Princess Elizabeth has formally proclaimed herself Queen and Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith.

Lords of the Council - numbering 150 - representatives from the Commonwealth, officials from the City of London - including the Lord Mayor - and other dignitaries witnessed the accession of the deceased king's eldest daughter this morning.

The new monarch read an official Proclamation - also ordered to be published - declaring her reign as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second.


I shall always work to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples

Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II read: "By the sudden death of my dear father I am called to assume the duties and responsibilities of sovereignty."

"My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than I shall always work, as my father did throughout his reign, to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples, spread as they are all the world over."

Her husband, Prince Philip of Greece, the Duke of Edinburgh, was also present at the 20 minute meeting at St James's Palace.

The couple returned to the UK yesterday after cutting short a tour of the Commonwealth - beginning in Kenya a week ago - because of King George VI's sudden death on 6 February.

After the Accession Declaration, at 1000 GMT, the new Queen held her first Privy Council meeting and her Proclamation was signed by the Lord Chancellor, the prime minister, and many other privy counsellors along with representatives of the Commonwealth and the City and the Lord Mayor of London.

During the ceremonies the 25-year-old Queen also took an oath to assure the security of the Church of Scotland and approved several other Orders in Council.

Other dignitaries formally announced the new sovereign across the UK and Commonwealth.

In a statement this evening the Home Secretary, Sir David Fyfe, asked the nation for two minutes' silence on 15 February when the late King will be buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor.

[Parihaka]

8 February 1983: Sharon quits after massacre inquiry

Israeli defence minister Ariel Sharon has resigned after an inquiry concluded that he had failed to act to prevent the massacre of hundreds in two refugee camps.

Mr Sharon was forced to step down by an Israeli tribunal investigating the 1982 Lebanon killings.

The investigation found that Mr Sharon - as defence minister of the Israeli forces - was indirectly but personally to blame for the massacres.

More than 800 people died at the hands of Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut in 1982.

Israeli troops were in control of west Beirut when right-wing Christian militias entered the camps.

Israel formed a commission of inquiry led by former Supreme Justice Kahan. The report included evidence from Israeli army personnel, political figures and Phalangist officers.

The Kahan Commission's report said Mr Sharon had made a "grave mistake" by failing to order "appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre" at the camps.

It concluded that the former defence minister should have foreseen what the Phalange would do when they entered the camps.

Mr Sharon's lawyer said that because he had no knowledge of what would happen when Israeli troops allowed the militia into the camps, he could not be held to account.

The Kahan report also condemned Israeli General Rafael Eitan for "breach of duty" in not taking steps to stop the massacre. It said he should have anticipated the danger and opposed the decision to send militia into the camp.

The judicial report criticised Israeli prime minister Menachim Begin and his government's role and dismissed the argument that Israel could not be held directly accountable.

In Israel, 300,000 people had taken to the streets of Tel Aviv to demand that Mr Sharon resign.

PLO leader Yasser Arafat criticised the official Israeli report and called for an international tribunal to investigate the killings.

The massacre came after Bashir Gemayel, the Christian Lebanese president-elect and leader of the Phalange, was assassinated.

[The Chap]

and more?

1066 and all that.
Partition.
Marathon.
Salamis
The Washing of the Spears.
'82 -Falklands. The lion was not quite as dead as thought.
1997. God curse that bloody day. A nation proven moron.
Vatican II
1947. The arrival of that all too famous gun
1974. For oh so many reasons ...
1939. Or was it 1942? My yank friends endeavour to keep me confused.
Crecy, Poitier, Ascincout [sic] and Waterloo whilst I'm at it.
Signinig of the Magna Carta. Treaty of Versailles.
American "arbitrary" declaration of "independance". (never ratified)
Some time Last Year. European Constitution rejected. Even by The French.
A.D. 6something - birth of the Prophet inshallah etc.
1682. England allowed to have fun again.
Whenever S. J. published the (or rather had published) the first Dictionary.
The French Revolution. I await the second. It may herald both an age of enlightenment and one of reason. Don't hold y'breath. As the French should.

[Parihaka]

1997. God curse that bloody day. A nation proven moron.

Fraid you'll have to give me more clues on that one?

[The Chap]

Fraid you'll have to give me more clues on that one?

Labour.

[Parihaka]

Labour.

AHA AHAHA HAHA HA (wait: what am I bloody laughing for...)

[The Chap]

AHA AHAHA HAHA HA (wait: what am I bloody laughing for...)

'not sure; best to check with Health and Safety first ...

Once you have a permit for inquiring.