The People's Princess
Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed after her car crashes in a Paris underpass. The driver and herfriend, Dodi Al Fayed, were also killed in the collision in a tunnel under the Place D’Alma in the centre of the city after the Princess’ car was being pursued at high-speed by photographers. Dodi Al Fayed – son of Harrods owner, Mohammed Al Fayed – and the chauffeur were killed at the scene but Princess Diana and her bodyguard were cut from the wreckage and rushed to hospital where they later died.
September 1st 1939: Germany declares war on Poland
German forces attacked Poland across all frontiers as its planes bombed all major cities – including the capital, Warsaw. The attack came without any warning or declaration of war. Britain and France were forced to mobilise their troops and declare war on Germany on the 3rd September 1939 after Hitler ignored their separate ultimatums, demanding the withdrawal of German troops from Poland – World War II had begun.
Lennox Lewis
September 2nd 1965: Birth of Lennox Lewis, English professional boxer and 1988 Olympic Gold medallist
Around 335 people – half of them children – died after a 3-day siege at a Russian school came to a bloody end; the exact number will probably never be known as 100 people are still listed as missing. Many of the bodies were so badly burned that they were deemed unrecognisable. The siege began early on 1st September when a group of masked men and women, wearing bomb belts, stormed into the school, opening fire in the courtyard where students had gathered for a ceremony to mark the beginning of the school year. The attackers demanded the release of fighters seized in neighbouring Ingushetia in June during a raid on the region, threatening to blow up the school if troops stormed the building. An agreement was reached to remove the bodies of the dead yet as the troops drew closer to collect them, there were two loud explosions and then automatic gun-shot as heavily armed soldiers ran towards the building. The shooting went on for several hours as witnesses stated that piles of dead bodies could be seen in front of the gym doors. The only hostage-taker to be captured alive, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, a Chechen carpenter, was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 2006.
September 4th 1985: Titanic wreck captured on film for the first time
The first pictures of the Titanic were released over 73 years after the liner sank with the loss of over 1,500 lives
September 5th 1698: Russia’s Peter the Great imposes a tax on beards
September 6th1915: First Tank is produced
Little Willie
In 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolls off the assembly line in England. Little Willie was far from an overnight success. The British developed the tank in response to the pre-existing trench warfare of World War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named Ernest Swinton and William Hankey, Secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, championed the idea of an armoured vehicle with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory. The men appealed to British navy minister Winston Churchill, who believed in the concept of a “land boat” and organised a Landships Committee to begin developing a prototype. It weighed 14 tonnes, got stuck in trenches and crawled over rough terrain at only two miles per hour. However, improvements were made to the original prototype and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields around the world.
