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1980: Voyager 1 flies near Saturn
More than three years after its launch, the U.S. planetary probe Voyager 1 edges within 116,000 miles of Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system. The photos beamed 950 million miles back to California stunned scientists. The high-resolution images showed a world that seemed to confound all known laws of physics. Saturn had not four, but hundreds of rings. The rings appeared to dance, buckle, and interlock in ways never thought possible. Two rings were intertwined, or braided, and pictures clearly showed dark radial spokes moving inside the rings in the direction of rotation. Voyager 2, a sister spacecraft, arrived at Saturn in August 1981. The Voyagers also discovered three new moons around Saturn and a huge storm thousands of miles across.
2001
An American Airlines plane crashes in the Queens neighbourhood off New York after takeoff killing 265 people.1997
Judges in Brazil reject Britain’s application for Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs to be extradited back to Britain to serve the rest of his prison sentence.1997
In America, Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of plotting the bombing of the World Trade Centre, in New York in 1993.1984
The British government announces the withdrawal of the Pound note to be replaced by the Pound coin.1982
After spending 11 months imprisoned without trial, the leader of the Polish Trade Union movement Solidarity, Lech Walesa, is released by the Communist authorities.1982
Yuri Andropov becomes the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.1979
In response to 66 Americans being held hostage in Tehran, American President Jimmy Carter stops the importation of petroleum from Iran.1954
Ellis Island, the immigration processing centre for America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892.1948
Japan’s former premier Hideki Tojo and several other Japanese leaders are sentenced to death by an international war crimes tribunal in Tokyo for their parts in the Second World War.1944
The Second World War: 32 British Lancaster bombers attack and sink the mighty German battleship Tirpitz off the coast of Norway.1942
The Second World War: The start of the naval Battle of Guadalcanal between American and Japanese forces around The Solomon Islands.1799
Andrew Ellicott Douglass, an early American astronomer born in Vermont, witnesses the Leonids meteor shower from a ship off the Florida Keys.