People
Talent contests
Smoking
Abortion
& Birth Control – see Appendix 1 below. For divorce see Women’s Rights.
Animal Protection – see Appendix 2 below
Beauty contests – see Appendix 3 below
Child
Protection – See Appendix 4 below
Clothing
and Cosmetics – see Appendix 5 below.
Drugs – see
Appendix 6 below
Family
relations – see Appendix 7 below
Gambling – see
Appendix 8 below
Homosexuality
and attitudes towards – see Appendix 9 below
Pornography
and intimacy – see Appendix 10 below
Religion – see
Appendix 11 below
Temperance
& Prohibition (of alcohol) – see Appendix 12 below
2017, In the UK,
15.5% of adults smoked, down from 20.2% in 2011.
2015, In the
UK, 17.2% of adults smoked. This was down from 46% in 1974, 33% in 1984 and 28%
in 1994.
7/2007, The UK
banned smoking in ‘enclosed workplaces’, including bars and restaurants.
1/4/2002, The Netherlands became the first country to legalise
euthanasia.
2/10/2000, The Human
Rights Act came into force in the UK. It incorporated into English law the
provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.
1/1/1998, California banned smoking in all its bars and
restaurants.
1/3/1993. Funeral
of two-year-old James Bulger,
abducted from Bootle shopping centre on 12/2/1993 and later murdered by two
youths on a Liverpool railway line; his body was found by the tracks on
16/2/1993. Two boys aged ten from Walton, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, were charged with
the murder on 20/2/1993. The case provoked a moral panic about social breakdown
in society and ‘loss of values’.
24/6/1992, The
family of US woman Rose Cipollone, who died of lung cancer after
42 years of smoking, succeeded in a lawsuit against the cigarette companies.
1/9/1987, Belgium became one of the first countries to ban smoking inside public
buildings, two decades before Britain followed suit.
4/2/1987. Death of US pianist Liberace, unofficially of AIDS.
The official cause of death was a brain tumour.
8/4/1977, The Dammed
played in New York, the first punk band to play in the USA.
5/3/1977. The first Punk
Rock LP, Dammed, Dammed, Dammed, was released.
6/1/1977. EMI dismissed the Sex Pistols due to their outrageous behaviour and foul language,
with a £40,000 payoff. The resultant publicity boosted sales of the Sex Pistol’s album Anarchy in the UK; sales reached 50,000.
1/12/1976, The Sex Pistols, a punk
rock group, were interviewed by Bill Grundy on Thames TV Today.
6/11/1975. The punk rock band Sex Pistols played their first gig at St Martin’s College of Art in
London.
6/9/1974. Mary Whitehouse described as ‘completely
irresponsible’ a sketch on the BBC children’s programme Jackanory in which actors walked away unharmed after blowing up a
car.
4/1/1974. Teachers
requested that 16 year old ‘bovver boys’
(“they don’t even speak English, they just grunt”) should be allowed to leave
school as soon as exams were over rather than having to stay on till the end of
term.
12/10/1973. Students jostled the Queen when she visited
Stirling University.
8/2/1972, Fans demonstrated outside the Albert Hall, London,
after Frank
Zappa and the Mother of
Invention concert was cancelled due to obscenities
in one of their songs.
2/7/1970. The London Tourist Board
spoke out against young tourists roughing it in London, sleeping out around the
Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park, causing ‘squalor and moral problems’. 250 seal
pups were shot in The Wash in the last cull of the open season, before the
Conservation of Seals Act finally outlawed the seal killing on 29/8/1970.
1/1/1970. In the UK the age of majority was reduced from 21
to 18.
26/5/1969. John Lennon and Yoko Ono began a ‘bed – in’ at a Montreal
hotel in aid of world peace. See 8/12/1980.
15/6/1967. In Britain the Latey Commission reported that the
voting age should be lowered to 18.
29/11/1965. Mary Whitehouse began her clean up campaign
concerning TV broadcasts, by setting up the National Viewers and Listeners
Association to tackle ‘bad taste and irresponsibility’.
5/9/1965, The word ‘hippie’
first appeared in print, in an article in the San Francisco Examiner by
reporter Michael
Fallon, who was writing a series about the Haight-Ashbury
neighbourhood. "Five untroubled young 'hippies'," Fallon
began, "sprawled on floor mattresses and slouched in an armchair retrieved
from a debris box, flipped cigarette ashes at a seatbelt in their Waller Street
flat and pondered their next move."
31/7/1965, The last advert for cigarettes appeared on British TV.
15/1/1963. The BBC ended its ban on
mentioning politics, royalty, religion, and sex in comedy shows.
11/1/1963, The world’s first disco, called Whisky a Go Go,
opened in Los Angeles.
9/3/1959, A doll named Barbara Millicent
Roberts, or Barbie for short,
was exhibited at the New York Toy Fair, wearing a black and white swimming
costume.
13/2/1959, The first Barbie Doll went
on sale, priced at US$3 (£2), in a zebra-stripe swimsuit. She was created by
Ruth Handler, whose daughter was called Barbara.
3/9/1956, After riots in several towns at cinemas involving Teddy Boys following
the film Rock Around The Clock, the
film was banned.
24/9/1942, Linda McCartney, American photographer who
married ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and campaigned for animal rights, was born.
14/2/1933, Oxford students
declared that ‘they would not fight for King and Country’.
1925, Coco Chanel, fashion designer,
appeared with a suntan, challenging previous notions that a lily-white skin was
the height of sophistication. This created a demand for suntan oils, and in
1936 L’Oreal began marketing the
first mass-market sun lotion, called Ambre
Solaire.
1921, John William Gott, Bradford
trouser salesman, became the last person jailed in Britain for blasphemy. He
was sentenced to 9 months hard labour for calling Jesus a ‘circus clown. He
died soon after his release.
13/4/1914, George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion caused a stir with its use of
the word ‘bloody’.
1/1/1913, Film censorship began in
Britain.
5/11/1912, The British
Board of Film Censors was appointed.
13/6/1910, Mary Whitehouse, General Secretary of the
National Viewers and Listeners Association, was born.
23/5/1909, US police broke up a lecture given by the
anarchist Emma
Goldman.
22/4/1909, In Westminster a Bill was introduced to abolish censorship in plays.
See also Education
for improvements in Child Education during the 19th and 20th
Centuries
29/4/1874, In Britain, the Cremation Society was formed.
1851, Census figures in Britain
showed that only half the population regularly attended church on a Sunday.
12/10/1845, The social worker and prison
reformer Elizabeth Fry died.
1840, In
Britain, the Select Committee on the
Health of Towns exposed slum conditions in many industrial cities.
16/6/1835, Social reformer Mr William Lovett founded the London Working Men’s Association, to
tackle poverty amongst low paid labourers.
1824, In the UK, the Vagrancy Act made it an offence to
sleep rough,out of doors. This was modified in 1935. See also price and economics.
18/12/1792, Thomas Paine was tried in absentia for
publishing The Rights of Man.
1/11/1781. Austria abolished serfdom, and gave all
citizens the right of marriage, free movement, and instruction in any
handicraft. This initially applied to
Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia; to Galicia soon after, and to Hungary in
1785. Landowners had certain rights
remaining, such as corvee, but these were reduced by later laws.
1623, Patent laws introduced in England, to protect inventions.
1558, Tobacco first brought to Europe, from the Americas.
1233, The practice of staining the teeth black (ohaguro) began to be adopted as a sign
of beauty in Japan after it was taken up by one of the aristocratic families.
150 BCE, The Romans closed all schools of dancing because they viewed it as effeminate.
However dancing was still appreciated as public entertainment, although dancers
then had a low social status. In the Bible, Saul’s daughter also look down
witrh scorn when King David ‘danced before Jehovah with all his might’ when the
Ark of the Covenant was returned to Jerusalem. The early Christian Church
similarly looked down on dancing, but again, like the Ro,mans, dancers were
used as entertainment yet denied social standing in the Christian Mediaeval
world. A similar attitude prevailed in the Islamic world. Dancing rose up the
social scale in Europe as the Renaissance got underway.
Appendix 1 – Abortion & Birth Control (for divorce see Women’s Rights)
25/4/1990. The UK Parliament reduced the time limit for abortion from 28 to 24
weeks.
17/10/1985, In Britain, the House of Lords voted to allow
doctors to prescribe contraceptives to girls aged under 16 without
parental consent, despite a campaign against this by Catholic mother Mrs Victoria Gillick.
26/7/1983, Mrs Victoria Gillick lost her case in the High Court
to prevent doctors prescribing contraceptives to girls under 16 without
parental consent.
17/5/1981, In a referendum, Italy voted to legalise abortion.
20/6/1977, The US Supreme Court ruled that States were not required to fund elective abortions on Medicaid.
22/1/1973, The US
Supreme Court ruled, in Roe vs Wade; a ruling that resulted in the liberalisation of abortion laws, so women had
the freedom to choose a private abortion. Abortion
was subsequently legalised in France (1975) and Italy (1977).
The actual case was between Henry Wade,
Dallas County District Attorney, and Norma
McCorvey; McCorvey’s name
was disguised as Jane Roe.
1/4/1972. Hounslow Borough Council began to offer free
contraception on the rates. There was no restriction on the type of
contraception nor on the marital status of the applicants; they only had to be
aged 16 or over and resident in Hounslow.
27/4/1968. Abortion was legalised in Britain,
as the 1967 Abortion Act became Law. The Liberal MP David
Steel had introduced the Abortion Act to Parliament.
27/10/1967, The UK’s Abortion Act received Royal Assent.
25/10/1967. UK Parliament passed the Abortion Act, decriminalising
abortion.
14/7/1967. Parliament in the UK voted to legalise
abortion. This was after a record 64 hour debate. The 1967 Abortion Act allowed for the legal
termination of pregnancy if two registered doctors believed that continuation
of the pregnancy could damage the physical or mental health of the woman, or of
members of her family, or where there was substantial risk of the baby being
born with physical or mental abnormalities.
19/2/1966. Lord Silkin’s Bill to legalise
abortion ran into difficulties in the House of Lords.
4/12/1961. The birth control pill became available on the
National Health Service.
30/1/1961. The contraceptive pill went on sale in Britain. It was called Conovid, see
18/10/1960.
18/10/1960, The first approved contraceptive pill,
called Enovid 10, went on sale in the USA; it was only available to married
couples. Catholics objected. See 30/1/1961.
18/8/1960. The birth control pill, the world’s first oral contraceptive, was launched
in America.
1955, Legalised
abortion was restored in the USSR, although both abortion and birth
control were discouraged.
2/10/1958, Marie Stopes, promoter
of birth control, died (born 1880).
1949, Japan legalised abortion, over
concerns about continued population growth; the population of Japan had risen
from 64 million in 1930 to almost 80 million in 1949.
1936, The 1920 legalisation of abortion in the USSR was reversed; abortion was now only permissible
if the woman’s life was in danger or the child was likely to have some certain
specified inherited disease.
28/1/1935. Iceland became the first country to legalise abortion,
on medical grounds, under Law no.38, allowing abortion at up to 28 weeks if
there was a threat to the mental or physical health of the mother. Most subsequent abortion laws followed this
pattern. However in Ireland the import or sale of contraceptives became illegal.
1930, Italy, under Mussolini, made abortion
‘a crime against the integrity and health of the race’; however
illegal abortions in Italy continued at more than 500,000 a year.
14/8/1930, The Church of England grudgingly accepted birth
control.
15/10/1927. Britain’s Public Morals Committee attacked the use
of contraceptives for ‘causing poor hereditary
stock’.
17/3/1921. First birth control clinic opened
in Holloway, London, by Marie Stopes.
1920,
Abortion was
made illegal in France, because of
population losses suffered in World War One. However the law was widely flouted
and by 1970 there were 500,000 illegal abortions a year in France, with botched
operations causing some 500 deaths per year.
16/10/1916, Margaret Sanger, who coined the
term ‘birth control’, opened the first family planning clinic in the US.
It faced considerable opposition,
1920,
Abortion was
legalised in the USSR.
1873,
In the US,
the Comstock Act authorised the postal
services to restrict dissemination of information about contraception,even from
doctors.
1872,
Germany enacted a new law punishing abortion by up to 5 years in
prison.
1/10/1847, Annie Besant, social reformer
and theosophist, was born. With radical atheist Charles Bradlaugh, she promoted birth
control, for which she was prosecuted.
28/4/1780, The first advertisement for an abortion clinic
appeared on the back page of London’s Morning
Post. The address was 23, Fleet Street, London
Appendix 2 – Animal
Protection
3/4/1993, Animal Rights activists
disrupted the Grand National at Aintree, Liverpool.
18/10/1927. Dancing bears were banned from the streets of Berlin.
20/9/1917. The first RSPCA
animal clinic was opened in Liverpool.
1866, The American Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Aniamls (ASPCA) was founded by New York
shipbuolder’s son Henry Bergh, 43, who served as the first president of the
ASPCA. It’s main objective was preventing the abuse of horses.
15/6/1824. The RSPCA was founded in London.
1822, The UK Government passed a
Bill outlawing cruelty to cattle.
Appendix 3 – Beauty
contests
13/6/1988, The first beauty contest was
held in the USSR.
17/11/1970. The Sun published its first ‘page three girl’, Stephanie Rahn.
7/9/1968, Protests by the New York Radical
Women (NYRW) Group disrupted the Miss World competition in New York.
11/9/1954, The ‘Miss America’ beauty contest, held in Atlanta
City, New Jersey, was televised across the USA.
19/4/1951. Eric Morley, publicity officer for Mecca, devised the first Miss World beauty contest
as part of the Festival of Britain.
The contest was held at the Lyceum ballroom off The Strand, London. The Swedish
entrant, Miss
Kiki Haakonson, won.
10/9/1938. Death of the dog show founder Charles Cruft.
7/9/1921. The first Miss America beauty
contest was held in Atlantic City.
The winner was 15 year old, blonde, Margaret
Goorman, of Washington DC.
14/8/1908, The first international beauty
contest was held at the Pier Hippodrome, Folkestone, Kent.
Contestants included six English, three French, one Irish, and one Austrian.
23/12/1905, The final of the earliest
known beauty contest in Britain was held at
Newcastle on Tyne.
19/9/1888. The world’s first beauty
contest took place at Spa, Belgium. The winner was
18-year-old Bertha
Soucaret from Guadeloupe, who won a
5,000 Franc prize.
10/3/1886, The first Cruft’s dog show in London took place; the first ever
Cruft’s was in 1859 in Newcastle on Tyne.
13/7/1871, The first cat show took
place. It was held at Crystal Palace,
London, organised by Harrison Weir.
14/10/1854, The first baby show was
held, at Springfield, Ohio. There were127 exhibits.
Appendix 4 – Child
Protection. See Crime and Punishment for other
legal developments
1991, In Britain the Child
Support Agency (CSA) was set up. The principle was to trace errant absent fathers not
paying maintenance for their children. However single mothers acting
‘unreasonably’ in failing to divulge details of the father faced Benefits
sanctions, leading to accusations that the CSA was in fact to save the Treausry
money, rather than assist single mothers.
1/8/1963, In the UK, the minimum age for prison was raised
to 17 by the Criminal Justice Act.
1937, The Factory Act prohibited
persons under 16 from working more than 44 hours a week. Persons aged 16 – 18,
and women, were limited to 48 hours a week.
1935, In the USSR, Joseph Stalin
decreed that children
over 12 were subject to the same draconian laws as adults – for
example, 5 years in a labour camp for stealing cucumbers, or 8 years for
stealing corn or potatoes.
1933, In the UK, the Children and
Young Offenders Act raised the age band for being tried at a juvenile court
from 7 - 16 upwards to age range 8 – 17. See 1908.
1/9/1916, In the US the Keating-Owen
Act was signed, outlawing work in mines and on night shifts by children
under 16. Daytime shifts formunder-16s were limited to 8 hours, and interstate
commerce in articles made by children under 14 was banned.
4/1/1910, The first Juvenile Courts in Britain opened in
London.
1908, In the UK, the Children and
Young Persons Act abolished the practice of sending children aged under 14
to prison. The
death penalty was abolished for persons aged under 17. Special
juvenile courts were set up for young offenders aged 7 to 16. This Act also
made it an offence for parents to neglect their children’s health. See 1933.
See also Crime
and Punishment.
Other provisions of this Act included;
1) Children were now ‘protected
persons’ and their parents could be prosecuted for neglect or cruelty.
2) Regular insoection of
children’s (orphan’s) homes was instituted.
3) Publicans were prohibited
from admitting children aged under 14.
4) Shopkeepers were probibiuted
from selling
9/12/1908, Germany introduced restrictions on the hours
that women and children could work in factories.
1906, The Education (Provision of Meals) Act allowed local authorities to
use public money to provide free meals for children of poor parents. See also prices and the
economy, years 1846 and 1834.
The significance of this Act was that children
were now being seen as a national asset for the future.
1901, In Britain
the Factories and Workshops Act
raised the minimum age of employment in factories to 12.
1900, France limited the working
day for women and children to 11 hours.
1892, Italy raised the minimum
age for marriage for girls to 12.
1891, In Britain the Factories and
Workshops (Consolidation) Act raised the minimum age of employment in
factories to 11.
1886, Italy made it illegal to employ children aged under 9, or
under 10 in mines, or under 12 in night work.
1/10/1885, Lord Shaftesbury, reformer who made it illegal for
children to work in factories, died this day. Many of London’s poor turned out
to pay tribute.
8/7/1884. The National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children was founded in London.
1874, In Brtiain the Factory Act
raised the minimum age of employment to 9 in all sectors. Women and all young
people to work no more than 10 hours a day in the textiles industry. Children
under 14 to work only half a day.
1867, Thomas John Barnardo (1845-1905) established the East End Mission for Destitute Children. This subsequently expanded
to comprise a number of homes across London, known as ‘Dr Barnardo’s Homes’.
The organisation is now the charity known as Barnardos, the largest child care charity in the UK.
1867, The Factory Acts (Extension) Act extended all
previous Factory Acts to all places of employment with more than 50 employees.
1864, In Britain the Factory Acts (Extension) Act extended
the regulations on child employment hours in textiles and mining sectors to
other dangerous sectors, including match-making, pottery and cartridge
manufacture.
1862, In the UK, the Children’s
Employment Commission was appointed to investigate the conditions of work
in as-yet unregulated work sectors.
1859, The world’s first children’s
playgrounds opened in Manchester,
UK. Horizontal bars and swings were installed in Queen’s Park and Philips Park.
1850, In Britain the Factory Act now limited the times of day that women and
young persons could be employed. They could only work between 6am and 6pm, with 1 hour break
for meals. In 1853 a new Factory Act extended the compulsory meal break for
children to 1 ½ hours.
8/6/1847. Britain passed the Factory Act, limiting the working day of women and children aged 13 to 18 to ten
hours.
1842, In Britain
the Mines Act prohibited both women,
and all children aged under 10, from being employed underground.
Inspectors of mines were appointed. Also in
1842 the Factories Act prohibited
the employment of all women (aged 18 and over), and youths of both sexes aged between 13 and 18, from working
more than 12 hours a day in textiles factories. Maximum work hours for
children under 13 were reduced from 9 to 6 ½, however the mimum age for
children starting work was reduced from 9 to 8. In the US,
Massachusetts legislated to limit the working day of children under 12 to 10
hours a day.
1833, In Britain the Factory Act
further restricted the emplpoyment of children in textiles factories. Children
aged 9 to 13 to work no more than 9 hours a day and no more than 48 hours a
week. Young persons aged 14 to 18 to work no more than 12 hours a day or 69
hours a week. No child under 9 to be employed in any textile factory except silk mills.
No night work by anyone aged under 18 in any textile works except in lace factories.
All children aged 9 to 11 (later, 13) to receive 2 hours compulsory education
every day.
1831, In Britain the Truck Act prohibited payment for all
workers in tokens and goods; all workers except domestic servants to be paid in
coinage only. No young people aged under 18 to work more than 12 hours a day.
1819, In Britain the Factory Act
prohibited the employment of children under 9 in cotton mills. Thoise aged 9 and
over were restricted to a 12-hour day.
See also Education
for improvements in Child Education during the 19th Century
1802, In Britain,
the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act
prohibited workhouse children apprenticed to textile factories from working
more than 11 hours a day; they were also to be provided with elementary
education. The Overseer of the Poor and local magistrates were supposed to
monitor compliance with this Act but often failed to do so.
24/1/1800, Sir Edwin Chadwick, physician who promoted the Ten Hour Bill in the UK
Parliament, which restricted children working in factories to a ten-hour day,
was born in Longsight, Lancashire.
Appendix 5 – Clothing and
Cosmetics
15/7/1997, Gianni Versace,
clothes designer, was shot dead at the age of 50. The chief suspect was Andrew Cunanan,
a gay serial killer; the FBI beleived Versace was shot in revenge for infecting
other men with HIV. Cunanan was found dead on a houseboat at Miami
Beach, having committed suicide when the police arrived. However there were
rumours of a mafia money-laundering connection, and that Cunanan had been killed to hide
the true killer’s identity.
17/9/1985, Fashion
designer Laura
Ashley died after falling downstairs at her home.
10/1/1971. Coco Chanel,
French fashion designer and one of the most influential couturiers of the
twentieth century, died aged 87.
25/1/1970. Mary Crosby,
inventor of the bra, died in Rome aged 77.
1967, The first Laura Ashley shop opened in London. Meanwhile Twiggy popularised a ‘waif’ type
look.
23/9/1966.Mr Joe Kagan,
raincoat maker to Mr Harold Wilson, suggested that by the 1980s
men would be wearing something like a mini skirt with a toga over it in cold
weather.
21/8/1964, In London,
three women were found guilty of indecency for wearing ‘topless’ dresses.
8/2/1963, The
Beatles were asked to leave the Carlisle Golf Club because they were wearing
leather jackets.
1962, The first silicone breast implants were carried out in the USA.
1960, Lycra was first produced commercially, foir swimwear. Developed by
Du Pont in 1959, it was used for swimwear, being stretchy and clingy.
1959, The Mayor of Benidorm, Pedro Zaragoza
Orts was excommunicated by the local archbishop after he signed an
order permitting the wearing of bikinis
on the city’s beaches.
30/1/1958, Yves St Laurent
held his first Paris fashion show, aged 22. He was apprenticed to Christian Dior
at 18 and when Dior
died in 1959 he became head designer of the Dior fashion house.
1956, Velcro was patented by the
Swiss inventor, George
de Mestral. Inspired by the way burs attached to clothes, its name
derived from a combination of velour (velvet) and crochet (hook).
1955, Tight jeans were fashionable in
North America and western Europe.
1953, Ultra high stiletto heels were
the main thing in fashion.
1952, Acrilan, a synthetic fibre discovered in the 1940s, began to be
used for clothing manufacture.
4/10/1950, Three generations of the Bowler family
marked the centenary of the bowler hat.
See Science and Technology for the plastics
inventions of the 1930s and 40s which made new fashions, cosmetics and clothes
possible in the 1950s and 60s.
1949, The firsr aerosol hairspray for women was
marketed. Hair could now be kept ‘in place’ all day without the need to visit a
hairdresser; in 1952 25 million aerosol hairspray cans were sold.
1947, False ‘eyelash
strips’ were first used in movies to nehnace the looks of stars such as
Elizabeth taylor and Sophie Loren. Female moviegoers soon demanded a version
for themselves, which was marketed in the 1950s under the name ‘Eyelure’.
5/7/1946. The bikini was officially invented by French engineer Louis
Reard. “It is a two-piece
bathing suit that reveals everything about a girl except her mother’s maiden
name”, said the Americans about the
bikini. Two months earlier the French designer Jacques Heim had created the
Atome, another two-piece bathing suit, so Louis Reard was inspired to create an even
smaller bathing suit. Reard knew he had created an explosive item,
so he called it the bikini, as the US military exploded an atom bomb on the
south Pacific island of Bikini atoll. No Parisian model would wear the bikini
at the time as it was considered indecent,
but Reard hired a nude dancer, Micheline Bernardini, to wear it at his
presentation. The bikini was banned in
several Catholic countries such as Spain and Italy, but Reard
kept promoting the garment, insisting it was not a real bikini unless “it could
be pulled through a wedding ring”. In the 1950s Brigitte Bardot helped promote
the bikini and by the 1970s it was more or less accepted in most countries.
3/2/1946, The
Hosiery Designers of America chose actress Jane Russell’s legs as the ‘perfect pair’.
18/11/1945, Dr W N Leek,
in Cheshire, claimed that the falling UK birth-rate was due to people wearing
pyjamas in bed instead of nightshirts.
11/2/1943, Mary Quant,
Welsh fashion designer, was boirn.
1942, The US Navy issued
specifications for a new type of undershort, called the ‘T-shirt’, made of white cotton with a round neck and short sleeves
at right angles to the body making a ‘T’. The new garment, eminently suited to
bearing printed slogans or symbols, began to be worn as a shirt on its own by
the end of World War Two.
15/5/1940. Nylon stockings went on sale for the
first time, in America. In New York. Alone, 72,000 pairs were sold in the first
eight hours. The name was reputedly inspired by the cities with the greatest
fashion potential for this new product – New York and London. Rising hemlines
from the 1920s had created a need for some sort of covering to smooth out
colour imperfections and bumps on women’s legs, now exposed for the first time
in centuries.
1/8/1936. The
French designer Yves
St Laurent was born in Oran, Algeria.
16/5/1934, Officials at Wimbledon first allowed women
competitors to wear shorts.
7/9/1925. Laura Ashley,
clothes designer, was born (died 1985).
8/4/1925. Italian Catholic
bishops banned scantily clad or bare legged women from churches.
1922, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) banned
the Fez hat in Turkey as he westernised the
country.
22/5/1921. The US
city of Chicago planned to fine women
for wearing short skirts and exposed arms.
5/5/1921, Coco
Chanel’s Chanel no. 5 Perfume was launched.
1917, The need for women to cut their
hair short for work in the factories led to the fashion for the ‘bob’ hairstyle.
1916, False eyelashes were invented by US film director DW Griffith
for his 1916 film, Intolerance. The
film was critically acclaimed, but was a
financial failure, however the eyelashes caugh on. Also around this time, nail
polish and bright red lipstick began to be employed by Hollywood for
glamourising its actresses, cfreating new fashions in the widre world.
13/11/1914. The brassiere was patented in the USA by
heiress Mary
Phelps Jacob.
4/11/1914. At the Ritz-Carlton hotel, New York, Edna Chase of Vogue magazine organised the first
catwalk fashion show.
15/7/1913. In Richmond Park, near London, a woman was
arrested for wearing a split skirt.
9/3/1913, Andre Courreges,
French couturier who invented the mini
skirt in 1964, was born.
23/7/1912, In the USA, the ‘Modesty League’ protested against
tight dresses.
1908, In the US, electric irons went on sale.
21/1/1904, Christian Dior,
French fashion designer, was born.
8/1/1904, Pope Pius X
banned women from wearing low-cut dresses in the presence of Church
dignitaries.
10/10/1886. The dinner jacket made its
first appearance in public when it was worn by its creator at a ball in the
Tuxedo Park Country Club, New York.
Hence it was later known as the Tuxedo.
19/8/1883, ‘Coco’ Chanel, French fashion designer, was born
near Issoire as Gabrielle Chanel.
1860, Artificial
dyes now made clothes brighter-coloured.
1855, The first
artificial fibre, rayon, was invented.
1853, A Bavarian
migrant called Levi Strauss arrived in the US, and set up a
clothing company to make heavy duty clothing for the miners digging in the California
Gold Rush. He added copper rivets to the jeans in 1873.
4/10/1850, The bowler hat went on
general sale in London.
17/12/1849,
Landowner Edward
Coke tested a new type of hat he had ordered to protect his head
from low-hanging branches whilst out hunting; top hats were too easily knocked
off. This day he visited the Lockes hatters shop in St James, London, to test
the new bowler hat, named after its
designer, by jumping on it twice. It withstood the test and he bought it.
27/10/1811, Isaac Singer,
inventor of the sewing machine, was born in New York.
1807, Tsar Alexander I of Russia
banned trousers, probably because the French Revolutionaries had
worn them in preference to the hitherto fashionable knee-breches worn by men in
the 1700s. He ordered Russian troops to stop and inspect carriages, and any
trousers found would be cut off at the knee.
1800, European fashion now began to
favour shorter
hair for both men and women. Men started wearing trousers instead of knee-breeches.
15/1/1797, The top hat first appeared in London, worn by James Hetherington. He was fined £50 for wearing this attire,
and causing a breach of the peace.
11/2/1765. English wig-makers
petitioned George
III for financial relief as the male fashion of wearing wigs came to
an end.
1640, Men now ceased to wear the
heavy gold and silver neck chains, often with pendants, which had earlier been
in fashion in western Europe.
1624, Philip IV of Spain reduced his
household staff and banned the wearing of ruffs. This symbol of extravagance
was passing out of fashion across Europe, as austerity replaced luxury.
1600, The average age oif marriage
for women in Japan had risen to 24, from 21 a century earlier. This was a
result of the growth in the silk
industry; households needed their daughters toi stay at home for longer to
help with spinning and weaving.
1503, Pocket handkerchiefs came into use in Europe.
1200, In Europe, engagement rings came into fashion.
410, Huns, invading the Roman Empire, introduced trousers which began to replace togas. They also introduced the
stirrup, which made horse riding easier.
1,500 BCE, Silk was being woven in China.
3,000 BCE, Cotton fabrics were first produced in the Indus Valley region.
Appendix 6
– Drugs
1/1/2018, The US State of California
legalised
the sale and consumption of cannabis
for personal use.
1/1/2014, The US State of Colorado legalised
the sale and consumption of cannabis
for personal use.
22/4/1979, Keith Richard of the Rolling Stones escaped a drugs conviction in return for performing
a benefit concert for the Canadian National institute for the Blind.
2/2/1979, Sid Vicious (born as John Ritchie), former band
member of the Sex Pistols, died of a
heroin overdose at a party in New York, aged 21.
31/8/1973. The growing drugs menace in Britain was
investigated by the TV programme Midweek
on Drugs.
1/3/1972, A 14-year-old boy, Timothy Davey, from London was
convicted of conspiring to sell cannabis
in Turkey.
25/1/1970. Mick Jagger was fined £200 plus 50 guineas
costs for possessing cannabis resin.
23/1/1969, The British Government rejected proposals to cut
penalties for smoking cannabis.
31/12/1967, Hippies
embraced love, flower power, LSD and the Rolling Stones as a cure for the
world’s ills.
30/10/1967. Statistics showed that the number of Britain’s
drug addicts under 20 rose from 145 in 1965 to 329 in 1966.
24/7/1967, Graham Greene, Francis Crick, and The Beatles were among those who signed
a full-page advertisement in The Times,
saying the law against marijuana was
‘immoral in principle and unworkable in practice’.
6/10/1966, California made possession of LSD illegal.
16/7/1966. The Home Secretary Roy Jenkins decided that the
drug LSD-25 should be controlled
under the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act, following a rise in use of the drug
by young people.
1/2/1964. The Pharmaceutical Society
of Great Britain called for unauthorised possession of amphetamines to be made an offence.
26/1/1956. The UK banned the import and export of heroin.
28/8/1928, In Britain the Dangerous Drugs Act (1925) was
amended to make the use of cannabis illegal.
Apendix 7
–Family relations. See also Women’s Rights for
Divorce (dates of legalisation of)
14/7/1997. In California a Bill was signed
allowing women to breast feed in public.
12/1/1993. London’s
first refuge for battered husbands
opened.
14/4/1992, In
Florida, an 11-year old boy successfully ‘divorced’ his parents in court.
10/12/1991, The marriage rate in England and Wales was less
than half what it was 20 years ago, as nearly a third of couples in their 20s
chose to cohabit, not marry. At least
10% of marriages ended in divorce within 5 years.
1975, A survey in the USA found
that 30% of women thought extramarital sex was wrong; in 1963 80% of women
thought it was wrong.
1960, In the US, the percentage
of married women who were employed had risen to 32%, up from 25% in 1950.
19/11/1959, The Archbishop of Canterbury said adultery should be a criminal offence.
16/3/1958. Mothers who worked full-time were
condemned as enemies of family life by the Bishop
of Woolwich.
27/3/1947, To stem the rising tide of
divorce, the |British Government
pledged more funding for the Marriage Guidance Council.
28/11/1946, In Britain the House of
Lords was told of a ‘tidal wave of divorce
sweeping Britain’.
445 BCE, In Rome the Lex Canuleia permitted intermarriage between patricians and
plebeians in Rome.
Appendix 8
– Gambling
7/5/1995. UK betting shops opened on Sundays for the first
time.
1/5/1961. Off-course betting
shops became legal in Britain. They were legalised under the Betting and
Gaming Act, 1960. 10,000 of them opened within the first 6 months thereafter.
1/6/1957. The Church condemned the £1 Premium Bonds as a
’squalid raffle’.
25/4/1938, Postal
workers, tradesmen and Baptists joined forces against the growing popularity of
football pools. Baptists disapproved of them on moral grounds, as a form of
gambling. Post offices wanted extra payments for handling the rapidly growing
volume of pools traffic. Meanwhile a butcher in Worthing claimed his customers
were buying cheaper cuts of meat to save up for the pools.
3/7/1902. In Britain, a House of
Lords ruling restricted betting to the sites of sporting events.
Appendix 9 – Homosexuality and attitudes
towards
7/12/2017, The
Australian Parliament legalised same-sex marriage, a month after a referendum
showed strong support for the move.
24/5/2017, Taiwan
became the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage. At this time
Isreal recognised gay marriages conducted elsewhere but they could not be
performed in Israel. Homosexuality could be punished by death in Saudi Arabia
and the UAE. The taboos against homosexuality were slowly vanishing in Vietnam
and Nepal. In Africa, South Africa
was the only African country where same sex marriage was legal. In Suda, Somalia
and Mauretania, gay people faced the death penalty. A small number of African
countries, including Congo (DR), Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mali and Mozambique, did
not have laws against homosexuality.
11/2016, A planned freferendum on whether same sex marriage
should be allowed in Australia was blocked by the upper house of Parliament.
6/2015, With same sex marriages still illegal in 14 States
of the US, a Supreme Court decision legalised same sex marriages in all parts
of the USA.
23/5/2015, Ireland
voted by a margin of 2:1 to legalise gay marriage. The result, 1,201,607 UES
votes against 734,300 NO, was remarkable in a strongly Catholic country. The
Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said the Church may have
become disconnected with young people, and ruled out gay marriages in Catholic
churches.
10/2014, Estonia became the first former Soviet
republic to legalise civil partnerships.
29/3/2014, Same-sex
marriages became legal in England and Wales.
2013, 2% of British Catholics believed homosexuality was wrong,
compared to 68% in 1983. However in 2013 52% of British Muslims said
homosexuality was wrong.
24/12/2013, Alan Turing,
the mathematician who broke the Nazi codes during World War Two but who was
convicted of gross indecency for a homosexual act with a man in 1952, was posthumously
pardoned by Queen
Elizabeth II. He was given chemical castration but his criminal
record meant he could no longer work for GCHQ and he committed suicide by
cyanide poisoning in 1954, aged 41. Prominent figures including Stephen Hawking
and Peter
Tatchell had been campaigning for a pardon for several years.
17/4/2013, Same sex
marriage was legalised in New Zealand.
2/4/2013, Uruguay
legalised same-sex
marriages.
7/11/2012, Voters
in Maryland,
Maine
and Washington
approved same
sex marriages.
17/8/2012, Moscow
banned any Gay Pride events for the next 100 years.
7/3/2012, The UN
presented its report on violations of the human rights of gay people worldwide.
Representatives of several African and Arab States walked out.
2009, Mexico legalised same-sex marriages. Civil unions between same-sex couples had been
legalised there in 2007.
5/12/2005, In the
UK, the Civil Partnership Act came into force; this gave same sex partnerships
the same legal status as heterosexual marriages.
1/12/2005, South Africa
became the fifth country in the world to recognise same-sex marriages.
24/8/2005, A Hong Kong Judge, Michael Hartmann, ruled that
sodomy laws were unconstitutional.
20/7/2005, Canada’s
Civil Marriage Act, legalising same-sex marriages, received Royal Assent.
30/6/2005, Spain
joined Belgium
and The
Netherlands in permitting same-sex marriages.
18/11/2004, In the UK,
the Civil Partnership Bill, allowing registered unions
for same-sex couples, received Royal Assent.
17/5/2004, Massachusetts
legalised same-sex
marriages, in compliance with a ruling from the state’s Supreme
Court.(Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health).
2/3/2002, The 24th Sydney Gay and Lesbian
Mardi Gras was held in Australia.
2001, The British Virgin Islands legalised gay sex.
1/4/2001, In The Netherlands,
same-sex
marriages were made legal.
This was the first time such marriages had been legal there since the
time of Nero.
3/3/2001, The 23rd Sydney Gay and Lesbian
Mardi Gras was held in Australia.
25/4/2000, The State of Vermont passed the HB847 law legalising
civil unions for same-sex couples
10/2/1998, Voters in Maine repealed a
gay rights law made in 1997, becoming the first US State to abandon such a
law.
1/5/1997. Tasmania became the last Australian State to decriminalise
homosexuality.
19/12/1994, Civil unions between homosexuals were made
legal in Sweden.
21/2/1994, In
Britain, Parliament voted to lower the age of consent for homosexuals from 21
to 18.
19/1/1994, Jane Brown,
headmistress of a school in Hackney, London, barred pupils from seeing Romeo
and Juliet because it was ‘too heterosexual’.
1991, The Bahamas legalised gay sex.
24/5/1988, In the
UK, the controversial Section 28 law
was passed. This made the promotion of
homosexuality in schools illegal.
1979, Cuba legalised gay sex.
11/7/1977. British
magazine Gay News was fined £1,000
for publishing a poem about a homosexual Jesus.
27/11/1970. The Gay Liberation Front marched in London
for the first time.
6/1969, A riot began when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a venue frequented by
homosexuals, in Greenwich Village, New York City.
27/71967, In the
UK, the Sexual Offences Act
partially decriminalised homosexuality. Two men could have sex together if they
were above the age of 21.
18/11/1962. Bishop Ambrose
Reeves encouraged Oxford students to write to their MPs urging them
to repeal the laws on homosexuality.
4/9/1957. In the
UK, the Wolfenden Report recommended
decriminalising homosexual acts between consenting adults. This would remove a
significant cause of blackmail. ‘Adult’ meant aged 21 or over; some feared this
would be a licence for child abuse. On 14/11/1957 the Church of England backed
the Wolfenden reforms. However the UK government shied away from this
controversial change to the law. It was only in June 1967 when the Sexual Offences Bill legalised such homosexual
acts as Wolfenden recommended.
1952, In the UK, Alan Turing was convicted of
gross indecency and chemically castrated.
31/10/1940, Craig Rodwell,
gay rights activist, was born in Chicago, Illinois (died 1993)
1897, The first organisation to
promote homosexual rights was set up, in Germany.
It lasted until the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.
19/5/1897, Oscar Wilde was
released from Reading gaol.
25/5/1895, Oscar Wilde’s
second trial ended, and he was sentenced to two year’s hard labour.
26/4/1895. At the
Old Bailey, the trial of Oscar Wilde
for homosexuality, then a crime, began.
5/4/1895, Oscar Wilde
sued the Marquess
of Queensberry for libel at the Old Bailey. The Marquess was alleged to have
left a note at Mr
Wilde’s club accusing him of sodomy. The Marquess, keen on boxing, was
annoyed that his son, Alfred, had an intimate relationship with Mr Wilde.
Oscar Wilde
lost his case.
1861, In the UK, the Offences Against the Person Act
repealed the death penalty for sodomy.
1804, Haiti became an independent
state; it has never had laws against gay sex.
1533, In England, the Buggery Act was passed by Parliament,
making sodomy and bestiality criminal offences.
590 BC, The female Greek poet Sappho
was writing about love on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Appendix 10 – Pornography and intimacy
9/8/1979. Brighton established Britain’s first nudist beach.
17/7/1970, The sex comedy Oh! Calcutta! opened in London.
27/9/1968, The Rock musical Hair with 13 naked actors opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre,
London, the day after the Theatres Act lifted censorship of it.
10/11/1960, The initial
print run of Lady Chatterley’s Lover,
200,000 copies at 3s 6d each, sold out on the first day.
2/11/1960, The publisher of Lady Chatterley’s :Lover was found not guilty on 2/11/1960. On
10/11/1960, the first day of publication, 200,000 copies were sold in Britain.
20/10/1960. D H Lawrence’s book Lady Chatterley’s Lover put Penguin Books in the dock at the Old
Bailey, under the Obscene Publications
Act.
19/8/1960, In London, Penguin Books was prosecuted for obscenity over its plans to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
29/2/1960, Hugh Hefner opened the first Playboy Club in Chicago. Brought up in
a strict Methodist home, Hefner started the Playboy Magazine with US$
10,000 in 1953.
27/2/1960. The magazine
‘Playboy’ was banned in Connecticut.
16/6/1930. Mixed
bathing allowed for the first time in the Serpentine, Hyde Park.
19/4/1927, The US
actress Mae
West was convicted of obscenity for writing, producing and directing
a Broadway musical called Sex.
9/1/1927. Greta Garbo and John Gilbert - real life lovers – shocked cinemagoers in
New York by their uninhibited kissing in the silent film Flesh and the Devil.
25/12/1913, In New York, a couple were arrested for kissing in
the street.
5/4/1910. France banned kissing on its railways, because it caused delays.
1/11/1905. Police closed George Bernard
Shaw’s play, Mrs Warren’s Profession, because of its portrayal of prostitution.
9/1/1902. New York State introduced a bill to outlaw
flirting in public.
13/3/1894. The world’s first professional striptease performance took
place at the Divan Fayanou Music Hall, Paris. It consisted of a woman getting
ready for bed.
9/2/1893. The world’s first public
striptease took place at the Moulin
Rouge, Paris.
6/10/1889, The Moulin
Rouge cabaret opened in Paris.
9/3/1562. Kissing in public was banned in
Naples, contravention being punishable by death. This was an attempt to halt the spread of the
plague.
801, Emperor Charlemagne banned
prostitution.
Appendix 11 – Religion. See also Christianity
15/2/1981. Football
League games were played on a Sunday for the first time.
25/9/1976. A Danish film director was planning a film on
Jesus’ sex life.
8/1/1974. In Rome, youths protested against the film Jesus Christ Superstar. The film’s
makers protested that this film should not be confused with the Danish film Jesus Christ Superstud.
4/8/1966, John Lennon suggested that The
Beatles were ‘more popular than Jesus’. Within days US radio stations had
banned their music and there were public bonfires of their records.
9/2/1958, A play by Irish-born Samuel
Beckett was banned from London stages due to blasphemy.
25/2/1930, In the UK, a
Bill to abolish blasphemy as a criminal offence was dropped.
14/8/1870. John
Galsworthy, English author, was born in Combe, Surrey. When his Forsyte Saga was dramatised on BBC TV
on Sundays in the 1960s, clergymen had to change times of their evening service
to get a congregation.
1/7/1559, Missing Church in Britain incurred a fine of one shilling (5p).
However by 1581 this penalty had been raised to a swingeing £20 a month.
Appendix 12 - Temperance &
Prohibition (of alcohol)
"I
can't think of anything worse after a night of drinking than waking up next to
someone and not being able to remember their name, or how you met, or why they're
dead." - Laura Kightlinger, US
actress
1/6/2008, Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, introduced a ban
on drinking alcohol on the London Underground.
21/8/1988, British licencing laws were relaxed to allow pubs
to open for 12 hours a day.
1/4/1985, The UK
Government imposed an alcohol ban on selected football grounds.
15/7/1948. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in
London, having been in existence in America since 1935.
12/5/1935, A
chance meeting between two alcoholics, Dr Robert Smith and William Wilson, which led to the
founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.
5/12/1933. Prohibition Laws repealed in the USA, by the 21st Amendment, after over
13 dry years, leaving individual States free to determine their known drinks
laws. See 16/1/1920. Utah was the
last state to ratify the 21st Amendment, which nullified the 19th
Amendment of 1919 prohibiting the manufacture sale or transportation of
intoxicating liquors. Prohibition had not stopped alcohol consumption, but
merely driven it underground into the criminal world. America celebrated so
much that 1.5 million barrels of beer were drunk the first night. Towns ran
dry, and were drunk dry again the next night too. Prohibition had simply created enormous opportunities for organised
crime.
11/8/1932, US President
Hoover said it was time to scrap
Prohibition.
30/1/1932. Finland ended prohibition of alcohol.
12/6/1931. Al Capone
and 68 henchmen were charged with 5,000 offences regarding breaching the USA Prohibition laws.
31/10/1929, Nova Scotia
voted to repeal Prohibition. This left Prince Edward Island as the only ‘dry’
region in Canada.
1928. Under Prohibition, over 1,500 Americans
went blind each year through drinking bad liquor, and bootlegger wars killed
hundreds more. Enforcing Prohibition was costly, and had by no means halted
alcohol consumption.
13/7/1923, Britain
made sales of alcohol to under-18s illegal.
30/4/1923. The US
only permitted alcohol consumption on ships 3 miles or more out at sea.
6/10/1922. Alcohol
was banned on all US ships in port.
23/11/1921, In the
US, President
Harding banned doctors from prescribing beer.
4/12/1920. An attempt to introduce Prohibition to
Scotland failed.
16/1/1920. Prohibition began in the USA (18th
Amendment), and the sale, manufacture, or involvement with alcohol was banned.
See also USA for more dates.
6/10/1919. Norway
adopted alcohol Prohibition.
11/4/1919, In a
referendum, New
Zealand rejected Prohibition.
16/1/1919, The US
ratified the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale of intoxicating
liquors after one year. See 16/1/1920.
18/12/1917, The
United States Congress submitted Prohibition legislation to the states. The 18th
Amendment was known as the Volstead Act, after its chief sponsor, Andrew
Volstead of Minnesota. It took a further 13 months for the necessary three
quarters of US states to ratify the Act for it to become law, see 16/1/1919.
2/7/1916. The US
States of Michigan,
Montana,
Nebraska,
and South
Dakota brought in Prohibition, bringing the number of states banning
alcohol to 24.
9/6/1911, Carry Amelia
Nation, US campaigner for abstention from alcohol, died aged 64.
21/1/1909. Tennessee adopted
alcohol prohibition.
18/1/1909. New Zealand brewers
abolished barmaids and banned women from buying alcohol in bars.
26/5/1908. The US
State of North
Carolina introduced Prohibition,
banning alcohol.
1/1/1908. The US state
of Georgia
introduced prohibition, banning
alcohol.
12/5/1902, The Court of Appeal reversed the legal
decision of 22/4/1902, and allowed barmaids to work in pubs, following protests
by pub landlords, barmaids and the public.
22/4/1902,
Magistrates in Glasgow ruled that female barmaids must be replaced by men,
because of the moral hazards of pubs. Pubs employing female staff would not
have their licences renewed. See 12/5/1902.
24/10/1900, In London,
the National Union of Women Workers held a meeting about drunkenness and
illness.
1893, The Anti-Saloon Leauge was established
in the USA, to promote the end of alcohol use through legislation. The Leauge
continued to exist during and after Prohibition, and became part of the National Temperance League in 1950.
30/12/1887, A petition signed by over one million women was presented to Queen Victoria, asking for pubs to be closed on
Sundays. The petition failed.
18/11/1874. In the
USA, the National Women’s Christian
Temperance Union was founded. Women would invade saloons and sing hymns and
pray; the point being that drunkenness
and ill-treatment of women often went together.
4/7/1855. New York became the 13th state to ban the
production or sale of alcoholic beverages.
1852, The US States of Massachusetts,
Vermoint
and Louisiana
brought in Prohibition.
1851, Maine became the first US State
to ban the sale of alcohol.
2/2/1830, The
first Temperance Society in Britain was formed, in Bradford, Yorkshire, by Mr Henry Forbes.
13/2/1826, The American
Temperance Society was formed.
1735, In England, distillers were producing
5.4 million gallons of gin annually – 1 gallon per man, woman and child.
1400 BC, An Egyptian papyrus of this date warns “Do not get drunk in the taverns in which
they drink ale, for fear that people repeat words that may have gone out of
your mouth without you being aware of having uttered them”.