HISTORY
What happened in... March 1994? Average cost of a house was about £70,000 Petrol cost about 49p per litre
©Eurofighter Geoffrey Lee
During joint operations between the US Army and Air Force on the 24th March, two planes collided over a military airfield. A twoseater Fighting Falcon struck a Hercules transporter at an altitude of about 300 feet. The damaged Hercules managed to land safely and the fighter pilots ejected from their doomed aircraft, which crashed onto the runway causing massive damage, including the destruction of another transport plane. Twenty four men on the ground were killed and over eighty were injured. 4th: Nearly eight years before the Twin Towers were destroyed, four Muslim terrorists were convicted of bombing the World Trade Center. A truck bomb was detonated beneath the North Tower, with the intention of causing it to fall into the South Tower. This failed to happen but six people were killed and over 1,000 injured.
Three of the bestselling singles this year were: The Sign - Ace Of Base Bump N’ Grind - R. Kelly Without You/Never Forget You - Mariah Carey 12
9th: The IRA fired five mortar bombs from a car in the car park of the Excelsior Hotel at Heathrow. Two of them landed on the northern runway, which was closed for ninety minutes. None of the bombs exploded. 12th: A photograph claimed by Marmaduke Wetherell to be proof of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster was proved to be a hoax. 23rd: Whilst flying a Russian Airbus over Siberia, pilot Yoroslav Kudrinsky thought it would be
a good idea to let his twelveyear-old daughter have a drive, according to taped conversations on the flight deck. He then handed over the controls to his sixteen-year-old son, who accidentally turned off the automatic pilot and the plane crashed, killing all 75 people on board. 27th: The Eurofighter, named Typhoon, made its first flight in Manching, Germany. Development of this aircraft began in 1983 and it was designed to be in service until the mid-twenty-first century. Initially a collaboration between the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy production was delayed by political issues and eventually France withdrew from the project. It was not used in combat until the intervention in the Libyan conflict in 2011. Controversial TV tycoon Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition won the Italian general election and he began the first of four terms as Prime Minister. 28th: A church in Alabama was hit by a tornado, killing 22 people. BBC Radio Five Live made its first broadcast. Patrick D Cousins is the author of Rainbows, Dreams and Angels, available from Amazon. This is a double novella with both stories set in east London, mainly during the 50s and 60s.