On this day in history: Belgrade student revolt, 1968

In the late 1960s, student dissatisfaction was not solely confined to capitalist countries. Many students in Yugoslavia shared similar concerns with their fellows at universities in France, the United States, and other countries that had seen campus revolts. The students of the New Belgrade campus resented the privileges of the party élite, and this resentments boiled over on the night of 2nd June 1968.

A popular theatre company were booked to play the university. The students requested that they perform at the university's large open-air amphitheatre but instead authorities arranged for them to play a smaller venue and only make seats available to youth members of the ruling Communist party. On the night of the show, a large group students gathered outside the theatre and attempted to force their way in. When the police drove them out again they reacted by throwing stones at the theatre windows and smashing its doors.

The police responded by sending in a fire-engine to clear the streets, but the students managed to turn it over and set fire to it. They also started turning cars over to form barricades, as they had seen done by Parisian students on the television news. As the police pressed forward the retreated to the university campus where they discussed how to proceed.

The next day, around four thousand students decide to march on the centre of Belgrade to air their grievances: their disgust with the inequalities of the socialist state; their concerns about unemployment; their demand for establishment of real democracy. Halfway along the route, they find their way blocked by thousands of armed police, who fire into the crowd. The ensuing battle creates around seventy casualties.


That afternoon about ten thousand students occupy the Philosophy and Sociology Faculty on the New Belgrade campus and draw up a list of demands. Meanwhile, the streets of Belgrade fill with riot police instructed to squash any further demonstrations. Over the following days many of professors and other faculty staff join with the students in their occupation. Tensions rise - the press demands swift and merciless action against the students and on the 9th June police surround the university. But then, to widespread surprise, President Tito intervenes.

In a television address, he welcomes the students' criticism of the state and endorses their programme of reform. His words defuse the situation, the media performs a volte-face and the riot police disappear. The majority of students are jubilant, but a small hardcore of student activists continue to express their concerns and following another speech Tito, in which he denounced extremism, riot police moved in and cleared the Philosophy and Sociology Faculty on the 20th June. Slowly and surely the status quo was restored.

On this day in history: First expedition reaches the North Magnetic Pole, 1831

In the seventeenth century, an Elizabethan courtier called Sir William Gilbert proposed that the Earth acted like a giant magnet, prior to that accepted wisdom suggested that there was a body - such as an island or mountain - that attracted compass magnets, located somewhere in the far north. Gilbert was also the first to define the North Magnetic Pole as the point where the planet's magnetic field pointed downwards: a definition still used today.

In May 1829, a Liverpool steamship called Victory sailed from London to explore the Arctic captained by a Scottish Royal Navy officer, John Ross. His nephew, James Clark Ross, was second-in-command and would later find fame exploring the Antarctic. The expedition was made possible by funds obtained from the Gin distiller Felix Booth, who was a friend of Ross'. The main purpose of the expedition was to find the Northwest Passage - a route to the Bering Strait through the Arctic pack ice - which Ross had sought on previous expeditions. After a brief stop in Scotland and with enough provisions to last one thousand days the Victory set off across the North Atlantic before heading up the west coast of Greenland into the Arctic Circle.

Later that year, Ross located the HMS Fury, which had been abandoned by William Edward Parry four years earlier in 1825. The crew of the Victory took on extra provisions from the Fury and sailed on in search of the Northwest Passage. The Victory found a body of water to the east of Baffin Island, which became known as the Gulf of Boothia (in honour of the expedition's patron). While sailing through this gulf, on 1st June 1831, James Clark Ross located the North Magnetic Pole for the first time with the instruments he had taken aboard his uncle's ship.

The following winter disaster struck the expedition. The Victory became ice-bound and had to be abandoned. In the spring of 1832, Ross led his crew north to the Fury repaired her boats and in the summer they rowed south in an attempt to meet up with the whaling fleet. Unable to do so they returned to the Fury and saw out the winter in the building they had previously constructed there, Somerset House. In August 1833, a route opened finally through the ice and the set off again. After 12 days of rowing Ross' crew caught sight of the whaler, the Isabella, which rescued them and returned them to Stromness in Scotland in October.

In spite of the discovery of the North Magnetic Pole, the expedition had not achieved its main goal and had cost the lives of three men and the eyesight of another. Nevertheless, John Ross received a hero's welcome back in London where he became a celebrity. He received many honours: the freedom of the cities of London, Liverpool and Bristol; a £5000 award from Parliament, and in 1834, a knighthood. He went on to become British consul in Stockholm. King William IV also received James Clark Cook at the same time as his uncle, and in 1843 he received his own knighthood after leading an expedition to the Antarctic.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography includes a page dedicated to 'Sir John Ross' and another to his nephew 'Sir James Clark Ross'.

On this day in history: Samuel Pepys` last diary entry, 1669

From 1660 to 1669 the Naval administrator, Samuel Pepys, kept a diary that provides historians with an insight into Restoration London. Pepys was born on Fleet Street, London, in February 1633 to John Pepys, a tailor, and his wife Margaret, the daughter of a butcher. He attended Huntingdon Grammar School while staying with Huntingdonshire relations. He returned to London to continue his education at St Paul's School before enrolling at Magdalene College, Cambridge from which he graduated in 1654.

Pepys first job was as secretary to Edward Montagu, councillor of state for Oliver Cromwell's protectorate. In 1655 he married Elizabeth St Michel, the fourteen-year-old daughter of an impoverished Frenchman. A few years later Pepys began working part-time as a teller in the Exchequer while still working for Montagu who had become a general-at-sea.

Following the restoration of the monarchy, Montagu became the Earl of Sandwich and a Knight of the Garter. With this influence he secured a post for Pepys at the Navy Board as clerk of the acts. By this time Pepys eyesight was failing and as a result he had to stop writing the diary that was to secure his place in posterity. He wrote his last entry on 31st May 1669:

And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be any thing, which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb. are past, and my eyes hindering me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in short-hand with my own hand.

And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!

In spite of his inability to see, Pepys' administrative ability secured him the promotion to Secretary to the Admiralty Commission in 1673. By then he had also become a member of the Royal Society, received the freedom of the city of Portsmouth, and that same year he became Member of Parliament for Castle Rising in Norfolk. Three years later he was elected as a Master of Trinity House (the body that administered England's lighthouses) and in 1679 he became M.P. for Harwich in Essex.

A loyal supporter of King James II, he resigned his posts at the Admiralty following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Over the next two years he was twice jailed in the Tower of London on suspicion of conducting treasonable correspondance with the exiled court in France. Following his release he retired from public life, and lived the last few years of his life outside the city in Clapham before his death on 26th May 1703.

Project Gutenberg includes the complete text of the Diary of Samuel Pepys.