In 1986 the Pope visits Mother Teresa at her refuge for the sick and dying in Calcutta, India. The ‘Nirmal Hriday’ or ‘Sacred Heart’ refuge was set up by Mother Teresa in the 1950’s and has help many sufferers of cancer, malnutrition and tuberculosis. Her ‘Missionaries of Charity order’ also started in the 1950’s helps thousands of people in 133 countries through their schools, hospices and homes for the poor. Mother Teresa said that the popes touch was “the touch of God”.

In 1966 Russia has made the first controlled moon landing with their probe, the Lunik 9. It landed softly on the Luna surface before opening up and releasing antennas. It then began sending images from the Moon back to Earth.

In 1959 a Plane carrying rock and roll legends, Buddy Holly (22), Ritchie Valens (17) and the ‘Big Bopper’ (J.P. Richardson - 28) crashed in Iowa, United States. They were on their way to Minnesota when the plane crashed shortly after take off. The song ‘American Pie’ by Don McLean was a tribute to the tragedy and contains the line ‘The day the music died’.

In 1950 Klaus Fuchs, a German born physicist was arrested for passing information to the Russians about the British and American atomic bomb projects.  Fuchs and his father left Germany in 1933 for fear of Nazi persecution. They settled in Great Britain where Klaus studied Physics. His skills led him to be part of the British Atomic Bomb project (code named ‘Tube Alloys’) and later he was invited to the United States, along with many other British physicists, to collaborate on their own atomic bomb project (the Manhattan Project). Klaus Fuchs was a communist sympathiser and had been in contact with Russian agents since the Tube Alloys Project. In 1949 the FBI contacted British authorities with decoded Russian messages that suggested Fuchs was a spy. Fuchs was arrested for breaking the ‘Official Secrets Act’ and sentenced to 16 years, information he supplied led to many more arrests in the United States.