In 1976 Concorde made its first commercial flights as a passenger turbojet. Concorde was a joint venture between England and France and therefore one took off from Heathrow in London and landed in Bahrain, while another took off from Orly Airport in France and landed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Concorde was one of only two supersonic commercial jets, the first being the Russian Tupol Tu-144 but this aircraft didn’t become a commercial passenger jet until after the concorde. The Tupol was grounded as a passenger jet after several crashes including one that happened on delivery of the new model. The Concorde then became the only commercial passenger supersonic jet and was capable of halving the time for long distance travel. A reduction in air travel and economic pressure caused the firms Aérospatiale and British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) to retire the aircraft on the 26th November 2003. In total twenty were produced and the Concorde only ever had a single crash (Air France flight 4590 in 2000) despite British Airways alone making over 50,000 flights with Concorde.
In 1968 an American B-52 Bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs (H-Bombs) crashes into ice-water in Greenland. An onboard fire caused the crew members to evacuate the plane, six of the crew used ejector seats but one was forced to bail out the plane, dying in the event.
In 1954 the United States of America launched the Worlds first nuclear powered submarine which allowed the vessel to travel further underwater and be submerged longer. The vessel was named the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) partly after the submarine from the Jules Verne Novel ‘2,000 Leagues under the Sea’ and the World War II submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-168).
In 1950 George Orwell, the writer of political novels such as ‘Animal Farm’ and 1984 died on this day in 1950 from a haemorrhage in a London hospital after his three year battle with tuberculosis.
�In 1924 Vladimir Lenin dies of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 54. Lenin was the first leader of the Soviet Union and the founder of the communist revolution in Russia.
