Today in history

[nacho]

Today in 1839 -- the British occupation of Hong Kong.

During the eighteenth century, the demand in Britain for Chinese luxury goods, such as porcelain, silk and tea, created an enormous trade deficit because the British lacked any profitable product that they could export to China. In 1773, the East India Company found a solution by monopolising opium buying in Bengal, north-east India. In spite the Chinese law banning the importation of opium, British traders carried the narcotic to the coast of China where they passed it on to Chinese merchants who smuggled it into the country, bypassing the trade regulations that required all foreign cargo to be unloaded at Canton.

By the beginning of nineteenth-century, the Qing government in China, alarmed by the spread of addiction and the reversal of the trade deficit, attempted to halt the opium trade by making a decree in 1810. Yet, the vastness of the Chinese Empire made it difficult for the government to implement its laws, especially regarding the highly profitable opium trade, which continued to grow. Over the next ten years the amount of Bengali opium imported to China increased to nine hundred tons per annum (in 1773 it was seventy tons).

Finally, the Chinese government began to implement tougher policies - from 1838 native drug smugglers faced the death sentence. That same year the Emperor appointed a commissioner, Lin Zexu, with the moral zeal to stamp out the opium trade. He arrested around 1,700 Chinese opium dealers, demanded that foreign traders hand over their supplies of the drug, and that they promise not to deal in opium again on pain of death. The British trade commissioner Charles Elliot acquiesced to the first of these demands, persuading British traders to hand over about a quarter of a million pounds of opium, but would not accept that British subjects could be tried under Chinese law.

When negotiations between the Chinese and British failed, Elliot ordered the withdrawal of British traders from Canton, prohibited trade with China, and prepared for war. Having been thrown out of Macau by the Portuguese, at the request of the Chinese government, the British needed a new base of operations. On 23rd August 1839, the British occupied the then largely barren island of Hong Kong.

The conflict between Britain and China, known as the First Opium War raged for the next three years resulting in a decisive British victory. As part of the Treaty of Nanking, which marked the end of the war, the Chinese opened up more of their ports to foreign trade, compensated the British government and traders to the tune of over twenty million dollars, and ceded Hong Kong to the British Crown "in perpetuity." In 1898, the two parties signed a new convention that changed the terms of the cessesion to a ninety-nine year lease, which ended in 1997 when sovereignty of the island transferred back to China.

[RottingCorpse]

45 years ago today, the USS Starship Enterprise launched its "five-year mission" when 'Star Trek' debuted on NBC.

[nacho]

It was also a Thursday night in 1966!

Oh-ho!

Also, was reading today (as part of that history) how NBC killed the show -- they were set to cancel it in season two, and then a letter writing campaign saved the show. So here's this massive outpouring that gets the show renewed and...what do they do? They cut the per-episode budget by a third, they move it to the Friday death slot, and they take it off a quarter of their affiliates so half the country couldn't even watch the 3rd season even if they wanted to.

Fuck you consumers! We were going to cancel it and we'll get our way by hook or by crook!

[nacho]

Oh! And there's a cool fact! NBC started airing reruns in March of 1969, two months after the last day of filming, and there hasn't been a 24 hour period since where one of the TOS episodes wasn't airing somewhere in the US. 

[RottingCorpse]

On September 24, 1991, the Seattle-based band Nirvana -- singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and new drummer Dave Grohl -- released their second album, Nevermind, their first for major label DGC Records.

Twenty years man. Only a handful of events have burnt into my mind where I can tell you where I was when it happened, but hearing 'Smells like Teen Spirit' for the first time is one of them.

I was home sick from school with mono and listening to the legendary but now defunct WHFS and the DJ played it. In my room and in my pajamas, I rocked out like there was no tomorrow. Then I proceeded to call all my friends and ask them if they'd heard this awesome song.

[Reginald McGraw]

HFS is back at 97.5.

[RottingCorpse]

In Baltimore? We don't get it down here.

[nacho]

It's 2011, man. You can get it in Zambia.

[RottingCorpse]

It's not the same!!!

[nacho]

That's how I feel about everything.

[monkey!]

Back in my day....

[Reginald McGraw]

Ah yes, in Baltimore.

And Zambia:

http://player.radio.com/player/RadioPlayer.php?station=13987

[nacho]

The BBC launched. 1936.

The first television broadcast in Britain was made on 30th September 1929 using an electromechanical system pioneered by the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird. His Baird Television Development Company Ltd used the British Broadcasting Corporation's London transmitter to send images over the airwaves. The following year, with the introduction of the BBC's Brookmans Park twin transmitter, Baird was able to broadcast sound along with the pictures.

The BBC started their own experimental broadcasts in 1932, using Baird's thirty vertical line system. By 1936 Baird had improved his mechanical system to 240 lines; however, the BBC decided to alternate between it and Marconi-EMI's new completely electronic 405-line system for their regular broadcasts. So, on 2nd November 1936, the BBC television service started broadcasting for the first time from their new studios at Alexandra Palace using the Marconi-EMI system and the new VHF transmitter.

The 405-line broadcast was the first regular high-definition television service in the world. It proved so successful that after a few months of switching between the two systems on a weekly basis, the BBC stopped broadcasting using the Baird electromechanical system. While the official range of the broadcasts was twenty-five miles (40km), in practice they could be picked up much further away (on one occasion as far away as New York when RCA engineers were experimenting with a British TV-set).

[nacho]

John Lennon was killed.

One of those "Where were you when..." moments. I remember it. Mom was devastated.