Happy Anniversary: French engage in a mid-air fit of pique

HERE are some of the justly neglected anniversaries of the week, writes William Hartston.

2 May:

1923: First 'Woman's Hour' broadcast on BBC Radio.

1965: First satellite television programme links up 300 million viewers in 9 countries.

1982: General Belgrano sunk by HMS Conqueror.

3 May:

1808: Monsieur la Pique is killed by a pistol shot in the first duel in hot-air balloons above Paris.

1810: Lord Byron swims the Dardanelles Strait in 1 hour and 10 minutes.

1949: High Court judges get their first pay rise since 1872.

4 May:

1904: Charles Rolls and Henry Royce sign an agreement to build cars.

1935: Leicester Square tube station opens with the world's largest escalator.

1964: The Pulitzer committee decides no music, fiction or drama is worth an award.

1976: 'Waltzing Matilda' is adopted as the Australian national anthem. 10 years later it is replaced by 'Australia Fair'.

1979: Margaret Thatcher moves into 10 Downing Street.

1980: Nine worshippers trampled to death while seeing the Pope in Kinshasa.

5 May:

1713: Whipping post for vagrants and sturdy beggars set up at Butters Cross, Doncaster.

1760: First use of the hangman's drop at Tyburn. Earl Ferrers is executed for murdering his steward.

1912: First issue of Pravda in Russia.

1961: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space.

1988: First live broadcast from summit of Everest appears on Japanese television.

6 May:

1851: Linus Yale patents the Yale lock.

1954: On the day that Roger Bannister breaks the four minute mile, the Home Secretary says the problem of 'Edwardians' or 'teddy boys' is not widespread.

1990: London telephone codes 071 and 081 are introduced.

7 May:

1956: Minister of Health refuses campaigning against smoking, as he is not convinced it does harm.

1980: Paul Geidel is released from Fishhill Correctional Facility in New York, after serving a record 68 years and eight months.

1988: First gathering of alien abductees in Boston.

1991: Geneticists at John Hopkins University are given permission to clone Abraham Lincoln's genes. They hope to discover whether he suffered from Marfan's syndrome.

8 May:

1876: Death of Tuganini, the last Tasmanian aborigine.

1906: Sir W Anson MP, describes the Education Bill as a 'tyrranical imposition of knowledge' in a Commons debate.

1921: Sweden abolishes capital punishment.

1924: Afrikaans becomes official language of South Africa.

1933: Nevada uses gas chambers for the first time.

1962: Trolley buses run in London for the last time.