Besides its historical significance as a break with the centuries-old tradition of British insularity, Britain's move, if successful, will constitute an historic landmark of the first importance in the movement toward the unification of Europe and the Western world.

The New Testament offered to the public today is the first result of the work of a joint committee made up of representatives of the Church of England, Church of Scotland, Methodist Church, Congregational Union, Baptist Union, Presbyterian Church of England, Churches in Wales, Churches in Ireland, Society of Friends, British and Foreign Bible Society and National Society of Scotland.

After the first two were blacked out, the third light was abandoned by a terrified Italian crew, who left their light to shine for nine minutes like an unerring homing beacon until British MP's shot it out.

The trial will be held, probably the first week of March, in the famous Old Bailey central criminal court where Klaus Fuchs, the naturalized British German born scientist who succeeded in giving American and British atomic bomb secrets to Russia and thereby changed world history during the 1950s, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

`` Much of the navy's future depends upon her '', an American naval announcement said on the Skipjack's first arrival in British waters in August, 1959, for exhibition to selected high officers at Portland underwater research station.

She is just home from a sojourn in London where she has become the sweetheart of a young fellow named Ronnie ( we never do see him ) and has been subjected to a first course in thinking and appreciating, including a dose of good British socialism.

His British colleague Hugh McGregor Ross helped to popularize this work — according to Bemer, " so much so that the code that was to become ASCII was first called the Bemer-Ross Code in Europe ".

* Later in 1919, a British aeroplane piloted by Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight, from Newfoundland to Ireland.

* In 1921, the British were the first to cross the North Atlantic in an airship.

Hastings, a former British Army officer, first meets Poirot during Poirot's years as a police officer in Belgium and almost immediately after they both arrive in England.

Murder, She Said ( 1961, directed by George Pollock ) was the first of four British MGM productions starring Rutherford.

American TV was the setting for the first dramatic portrayal of Miss Marple with Gracie Fields, the legendary British actress, playing her in a 1956 episode of Goodyear TV Playhouse based on A Murder Is Announced, the 1950 Christie novel.

The series is named after a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, in 1882 after a match at The Oval in which Australia beat England on an English ground for the first time.

* 1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People's Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public.

* 1930 – The first British Empire Games were opened in Hamilton, Ontario by the Governor General of Canada, the Viscount Willingdon.

* 1806 – Santiago de Liniers, 1st Count of Buenos Aires re-takes the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina after the first British invasion.

* 1808 – Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.

In 1906, the Aga Khan was a founding member and first president of the All India Muslim League, a political party which pushed for the creation of an independent Muslim nation in the north west regions of South Asia, then under British colonial rule, and later established the country of Pakistan in 1947.

* 1969 – British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston wins the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race and completes the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.

As the numbers of settlers from the mainland increased ( at first mostly prisoners and involuntary indentured labourers, later purposely recruited farmers ), these indigenous people lost territory and numbers in the face of punitive expeditions by British troops, land encroachment and the effects of various epidemic diseases.

* 1991 – Rita Johnston becomes the first female Premier of a Canadian province when she succeeds William Vander Zalm ( who had resigned ) as Premier of British Columbia.

British explorer David Thompson was the first European to navigate the entire length of the Columbia River in 1811.

The English language was first introduced to the Americas by British colonization, beginning in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia.

At the same time, French lookouts on Heureux, the ninth ship in the French line, sighted the British fleet approximately off the mouth of Aboukir Bay.

While the island has probably been sighted by navigators since at least the 16th century, it takes its name from the British ship Europa, which visited it in December 1774.

* On 12 September 1942, Werner Hartenstein commanding the German Navy U-156 sighted and sank the British Cunard White Star passenger liner Laconia, which was serving as a troopship.

* December 25 – Christmas Island is first sighted, by Captain William Mynors of the British East India Company.

De Grasse had detached a few of his ships to blockade the York and James Rivers farther up the bay, and many of the ships at anchor were missing officers, men, and boats when the British fleet was sighted.

It was about 4: 00 pm, over 6 hours since the two fleets had first sighted each other, when the British — who had the weather gage, and therefore the initiative — opened their attack.

According to various sources, three men all sighted Antarctica within days or months of each other: Fabian von Bellingshausen, a captain in the Russian Imperial Navy ; Edward Bransfield, a captain in the British navy ; and Nathaniel Palmer, an American sealer out of Stonington, Connecticut.

Competition with the British Hudson's Bay Company had brought the sea otter to nearst sighted the Alaskan coast line in 1732.

In May 1819, Captain Arent de Peyster ( or Peyter ) of New York, as captain of the armed brigantine or privateer Rebecca, sailing under British colours, while on a voyage from Valparaíso to India, passed through the southern Tuvalu waters ; de Peyster sighted Nukufetau and Funafuti, which he named Ellice's Island after an English Politician, Edward Ellice, the Member of Parliament for Coventry and the owner of the Rebecca's cargo.

The lake was first sighted by a European in 1858 when the British explorer John Hanning Speke reached its southern shore while on his journey with Richard Francis Burton to explore central Africa and locate the Great Lakes.

Before they could complete the turn, they were sighted by British destroyers who commenced firing.

On the 12th Admiral Kempenfelt, who had been sent out by the British Government with an unduly weak force to intercept him, sighted the French admiral in the Bay of Biscay through a temporary clearance in a fog, at a moment when Guichen's warships were to leeward of the convoy, and attacked the transports at once.

Funafuti was named Ellice's Island after Edward Ellice, a British politician and merchant, by Captain Arent de Peyster, who sighted the islands in 1819 sailing on the ship Rebecca.

Although Bobolinks migrate long distances, they have rarely been sighted in Europe — like many vagrants from the Americas, the overwhelming majority of records are from the British Isles.

In the action, just two U-boats had sighted the British forces, and neither was able to attack.

* January 30-Antarctica is sighted for the second time by British Royal Navy captain Edward Bransfield.

Later in the night the officers on duty sighted the British trawlers, interpreted their signals incorrectly and classified them as Japanese torpedo boats, and consequently opened fire on the British fishermen.

The island was first sighted by James Cook in 1775, and named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich and the First Lord of the British Admiralty at the time of its discovery.

The British squadron of 13 ships of the line, commanded by Rear Admiral Richard Kempenfelt in HMS Victory, which had been ordered to sea to intercept the expected convoy, sighted the French on 12 December, discovering only then that the protective escort had been strengthened.

When other British ships sighted the E-boats earlier in the night and told the corvette, its commander failed to inform the LST convoy, assuming incorrectly that they had already been told.

Starbuck Island was first sighted in 1823 by Valentine Starbuck, American-born master of the British whaling ship L ' Aigle.

On May 16, 1811, he sighted and followed the British sloop off the coast of North Carolina, commanded by Arthur Bingham, thinking it to be HMS Gurreiere.

As the Danish squadron approached from the north, it sighted the British frigate Aurora at about 10 a. m. and soon afterwards five more ships to the Southwest.