1608: Dutch lens-maker Hans Lippershey demonstrates the first telescope. 1871: Mormon leader Brigham Young is arrested for bigamy. 1901: The first British submarine is launched in Barrow. 1950: First appearance of the Peanuts cartoon strip by Charles...

Then the gloves came off. Kasparov, like any other cornered animal whose territory is threatened, snarled into action with a sudden increase in hostility in moves and actions. In game 10, he crushed Anand with a fine piece of opening preparation, a b...

Pounds and ounces are out. Grams and kilos are in. Products must be labelled in metric. They can have imperial labels too, and they don't actually have to change the size of the product they package. So a pound of cheese is fine so long as the label ...

A month or two ago, for whites at least, the connection scarcely arose. Simpson was black, yes, but the colour of his skin was irrelevant. He had made his way in a white world, had white friends, even a white wife. His trial, whites assured themselve...

THE UGLY little dispute about the profits made by privatised public utilties is said to have caused Energy Minister Tim Eggar to become "incandescent", though the utility that got him overheated was electricity rather than gas. It is all a bit sordid...

. . . in 1207, Henry III of England (above) was born. He reigned for 56 years from 1216 and by general consent made a dreadful job of it. He had the excuse that when he succeeded his father, King John, he was only nine and the country was already in ...

It was the first time I'd been forced to face the fact that I'd now completely fallen off the Internet. In the early days of the information superhighway I'd have been in front of my Apple at half-past six in the morning, sitting up in eager anticipa...

The Gibraltar killings on 6 March 1988 were certainly an example of effective counter-terrorism in the strictly military sense. Danny McCann, Mairead Farrell and Sean Savage were terrorists - "volunteers on active service", as the IRA said after they...

During my tenure as director of Scientific and Technical Intelligence in the Defense Intelligence Agency, the remote viewing phenomenon was in fact under evaluation. Because the field was infested with charlatans and zealots, I had strict controls pu...

However, should not immigration officials satisfy themselves that anyone seeking entry into the UK is indeed an EU citizen? They may therefore be entitled to insist on seeing a valid passport or similar document. Not very useful, then after all, that...

Hoof may have access to the wharf, but it is those outside who have exposed overcrowding, overloading, ill and infirm animals and lorries not being weighed. They have also negotiated with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and local Trad...

Does this mean that the loony right is now admitting the immorality of demanding from those of us who are long resident the pounds 60 levy that all Commonwealth emigres were forced to pay in 1988 to retain the right of abode? A nice little earner and...

Despite his failure to solve the shower problem, Eco is now probably the most famous intellectual in the world. With Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault dead, his beard and glasses and beady, mocking eyes have become the international symbol for profe...

Yet the mood in much of the publishing and bookselling trade - and particularly among what may loosely be termed the literary intelligentsia - is one of gloom and apprehension. Why? Because these people are suspicious of the consequences of a free ma...

Perhaps you caught the "documentary" on commercial television on Thursday last. If so, you will have been unable to avoid seeing the cameras smuggled into my Arnold Park Country House Hotel near Bath. At one point, I was pictured giving an under-chef...

Mr Blair is more interesting than Wilson, though not as clever. But he is the cleverest of the present party leaders, for what that may be worth. He has certainly done interesting things to the Labour Party. Three apparently disparate happenings last...