On This Day - 26th February
1564
The birth of Christopher Marlowe, English dramatist and poet of the
Elizabethan era. He was the foremost Elizabethan writer next to William Shakespeare.
1797The Bank of England issued the first ever one pound note. Printed on
watermark paper with a vignette of Britannia on the top left hand corner, the hand-signed white £1 notes were
withdrawn in the 1820s.
1839The first Grand National Steeplechase was run at Aintree near Liverpool. The
winner was ‘Lottery’ ridden by Jem Mason.
1852The British troopship, Birkenhead, sank off Simon’s Bay, near Cape
Town, South Africa, with the loss of 485 lives.
1914The launch of HMHS (Her Majesty's Hospital Ship) Britannic, sister to the
RMS Titanic, at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast. She was the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of
the White Star Line and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. However, she was launched
just before the start of the First World War and was laid up at her builders in Belfast for many months before
being put to use as a hospital ship in 1915. She struck a mine off the Greek island of Keain in November 1916, and
sank with the loss of 30 lives.
1931The birth of Ally MacLeod, professional Scottish football player and manager
of Scotland at the 1978 FIFA World Cup.
1935Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrated RADAR (radio detection and ranging) at
Daventry, Northamptonshire.
1935Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to be re-formed, violating the provisions
of the Treaty of Versailles.
1952Churchill told the House of Commons that Britain now had an atomic bomb
which it intended to test in Australia.
1960A New York bound Alitalia airliner crashed at Shannon, Ireland, shortly
after takeoff, killing 34 of the 52 persons on board.
1962The start of filming of Dr. No, the first film involving English agent 007 -
James Bond.
1968Twenty-one female patients died in a fire which swept through a wing of the
Shelton Mental Hospital near Shrewsbury.
1979Accused of forging old masters, painter Tom Keating’s trial at the Old
Bailey was halted due to Keating’s ill health. Keating, a brilliant technician, went on to present a
television series on painters and became a celebrity in his remaining years.
1987The Church of England's General Synod voted by a huge majority in favour of
the ordination of women priests. It was a further 28 years before the first female bishop, Libby Lane ( 
picture) was consecrated Bishop
of Stockport (26th January 2015) in a ceremony at York Minster. See 
picture.
1995Barings, the country's oldest merchant bank, declared bankruptcy after
discovering that Nicholas Leeson, the firm's chief trader in Singapore, had lost approximately £625 million
of the bank's assets on unauthorized futures and options transactions.
1997Armed Forces Minister, Nicholas Soames, fought off Labour demands for his
resignation over the Ministry of Defence's suppression of information about the still unexplained 'Gulf War
syndrome'.
2002London Mayor Ken Livingstone confirmed that motorists would be charged
£5 per day to drive into London on weekdays.
2014Michael Adebolajo (aged 29) was given a whole-life term and Michael
Adebowale (aged 22) was jailed for a minimum of 45 years for murdering 25 year old Fusilier Lee Rigby. They had
driven into Fusilier Rigby with a car, before hacking him to death in Woolwich, south-east London, on 22nd May
2013. The two men claimed that they were 'soldiers of Allah' and that the killing was a legitimate act because
Britain was at war with Muslim people.
2015 27 year old Lance Corporal Joshua Leakey from the Parachute Regiment was awarded the Victoria Cross, becoming the first living VC recipient of the Afghan war.