The name 'Gibraltar' comes from the Arabic for 'Tariq's Mountain' ('Jabal Tariq') after the general who led the invasion of Spain.
Fact of the Day
Quote of the Day
"Madam, I have whipped his arse; you may kiss it if you please.
"
~ Buchanan, the young James VI of Scotland's tutor, after being upbraided for punishing his charge
On This Day
1215 Rebel barons renounced allegiance to King John, setting off a chain of events leading to the signing of the Magna Carta.
1260 Grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, became the fifth khagan, or 'great khan' of the Mongol Empire. He would reign for almost 34 years, and establish the Yuan dynasty in China.
1760 Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, became the last peer to be hanged in Britain, for the murder of his steward.
1821 Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile aged 51. He likely died of stomach cancer, but some say it was deliberate arsenic poisoning.
1930 Amy Johnson departed from Croydon on the first solo flight to Australia by a woman, where she arrived on 24 May.
1945 American troops liberated Mauthausen-Gusen, a Nazi concentration camp in Austria. An estimated 120,000 to 320,000 mainly Soviet and Polish citizens had perished there.
1961 Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space.
1971 The Mary Rose was rediscovered by diver Percy Ackland.
1980 SAS troops stormed the terrorist-occupied Iranian Embassy in London. The death toll for the entire incident was five gunmen and two hostages.
1981 Provisional IRA member and British MP, Bobby Sands, died aged 27 while on hunger strike in Maze Prison, Northern Ireland.