Chloroform, or trichloromethane, is an organochloride with the formula CHCl3 and a common solvent. It is a very volatile, colorless, strong-smelling, dense liquid produced on a large scale as a precursor to refrigerants and PTFE. Chloroform is a trihalomethane that serves as a powerful general anesthetic, euphoriant, anxiolytic, and sedative when inhaled or ingested, for this reason, Chloroform was used as an inhalational anesthetic between the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. It is miscible with many solvents but it is only very slightly soluble in water.
Operation Spanner was a police investigation into same-sex male sadomasochism across the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. The investigation, led by the Obscene Publications Squad of the Metropolitan Police, began in 1987 and ran for three years, during which approximately 100 gay and bisexual men were questioned by police.
Madeleine Beth McCann is a British missing person who, at the age of 3, disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal, on the evening of 3 May 2007. The Daily Telegraph described her disappearance as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown, although German prosecutors believe she is dead.
The 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt, also known as the Wonga Coup, failed to replace President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo with exiled opposition politician Severo Moto. Mercenaries organised by mainly British financiers were arrested in Zimbabwe on 7 March 2004 before they could carry out the plot. Prosecutors alleged that Moto was to be installed as the new president in return for preferential oil rights to corporations affiliated with those involved in the coup. The incident received international media attention after the reported involvement of Sir Mark Thatcher in funding the coup, for which he was convicted and fined in South Africa.
There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 August 1997. Official investigations in both Britain and France found that Diana died in a manner consistent with media reports following the fatal car crash in Paris. In 1999, a French investigation concluded that Diana died as the result of a crash. The French investigator, Judge Hervé Stephan, concluded that the paparazzi were some distance from the Mercedes S280 when it crashed and were not responsible for manslaughter. After hearing evidence at the British inquest, a jury in 2008 returned a verdict of "unlawful killing" by driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi pursuing the car. The jury's verdict also stated: "In addition, the death of the deceased was caused or contributed to by the fact that the deceased were not wearing a seat belt and by the fact that the Mercedes struck the pillar in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel rather than colliding with something else."
The Vagos Motorcycle Club, also known as the Green Nation, is a one percenter motorcycle club formed in 1964 in San Bernardino, California. The club's insignia is Loki, the Norse god of mischief, riding a motorcycle. Members typically wear green.
The United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal was a major political scandal that emerged in 2009, concerning expense claims made by members of the British Parliament in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords over the previous years. The disclosure of widespread misuse of allowances and expenses permitted to members of Parliament (MPs) aroused widespread anger among the UK public and resulted in a large number of resignations, sackings, de-selections and retirement announcements together with public apologies and the repayment of expenses. Several members, and former members, of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords were prosecuted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
Close to My Heart is a 1951 American drama film directed by William Keighley, written by James R. Webb, and starring Ray Milland and Gene Tierney.
The UDA South East Antrim Brigade was previously one of the six brigades of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and are heavily involved in the drug trade. It is claimed they control "100%" of an illegal drugs network in south-east County Antrim, Northern Ireland. A mural in support of the group lists its areas of activity as being Rathcoole, Rathfern, Monkstown, Glengormley and Whitewell, all of which are part of Newtownabbey, as well as Carrickfergus, the Shore Road, Greenisland, Ballymena, Whitehead, Antrim and Larne. A newer mural in the Cloughfern area of Newtownabbey and flags have updated the areas to include Ballycarry, Ballyclare, the rural hinterland of Ballymena called 'Braidside' and despite not being in County Antrim, the town of Newtownards. The Guardian has identified it as "one of the most dangerous factions". The Irish News described the brigade as 'powerful' and at one time being 'the most bloody and murderous gang operating within the paramilitary organisation'. Since 2007 the South East Antrim Brigade has operated independently of the UDA following a fall-out.
This is a timeline of actions by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group. Most of these actions took place as part of its 1975–1998 campaign during "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. The INLA did not start claiming responsibility for its actions under the INLA name until January 1976 at which point they had already killed 12 people, before then they used the names People's Liberation Army (PLA) and People's Republican Army (PRA) to claim its attacks.
Sidney Charles Cooke is an English convicted child molester and suspected serial killer serving two life sentences. He was the leader of a paedophile ring suspected of up to twenty child murders of young boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Cooke and other members of the ring were convicted of three killings in total, although he was only convicted of one himself.
Joanna Clare Yeates was a landscape architect from Ampfield, Hampshire, England, who went missing from the flat she shared with her partner, in a large house in Clifton, Bristol, on 17 December 2010 after an evening out with colleagues. Following a highly publicised appeal for information on her whereabouts and intensive police enquiries, her body was discovered on 25 December 2010 in Failand, North Somerset. A post-mortem examination determined that she had been strangled.
The dissident Irish republican campaign began at the end of the Troubles, a 30-year political conflict in Northern Ireland. Since the Provisional Irish Republican Army called a ceasefire and ended its campaign in 1997, breakaway groups opposed to the ceasefire and to the peace agreements have continued a low-level armed campaign against the security forces in Northern Ireland. The main paramilitaries involved are the Real IRA, Continuity IRA and formerly Óglaigh na hÉireann. They have targeted the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the British Army in gun and bomb attacks as well as with mortars and rockets. They have also carried out bombings that are meant to cause disruption. However, their campaign has not been as intensive as the Provisional IRA's, and political support for groups such as the Real IRA is "tending towards zero".
Christopher John Hanna, was a prison officer who held a senior position inside the Maze Prison, Northern Ireland. In June 1990 he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Maghaberry for helping the Provisional IRA kill colleague Brian Armour two years previously. He was also accused by former Ulster Defence Association (UDA) leader Andy Tyrie of complicity in UDA South Belfast brigadier John McMichael's death in 1987. McMichael was blown up by a bomb placed underneath his car. According to Tyrie, Hanna gathered information about McMichael when the latter visited loyalist inmates. Hanna in his turn passed on the information to local Belfast actress Rosena Brown, with whom Hanna was infatuated. Brown, dubbed the "IRA Mata Hari", served as an intelligence officer of the IRA. Hanna also passed on information about Armour to Brown, who was named at Hanna's trial.
It emerged in late 2012 that Jimmy Savile, a British media personality who had died the previous year, had sexually abused hundreds of people throughout his life, mostly children but some as old as 75, and mostly female. He had been well known in the United Kingdom for his eccentric image and was generally respected for his charitable work, which associated him with the British monarchy and other individuals of personal power.
The Derby child sex abuse ring was a group of men who sexually abused up to a hundred girls in Derby, England. In 2010, after an undercover investigation by Derbyshire police, members of the ring were charged with 75 offences relating to 26 girls. Nine of the 13 accused were convicted of grooming and raping girls between 12 and 18 years old. The attacks provoked fierce discussion about race and sexual exploitation.
On 21 September 2013, four masked gunmen attacked the Westgate shopping mall, an upmarket mall in Nairobi, Kenya. There are conflicting reports about the number killed in the attack, since part of the mall collapsed due to a fire that started during the siege. The attack resulted in 71 total deaths, including 62 civilians, five Kenyan soldiers, and all four gunmen. Approximately 200 people were wounded in the massacre.
A dossier on paedophiles allegedly associated with the British government was assembled by the British Member of Parliament Geoffrey Dickens, who handed it to the then-Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, in 1984. The whereabouts of the dossier is unknown, along with other files on organised child abuse that had been held by the Home Office.
Dr Robert Mortimer Glover FRSE (1815-1859) was an English physician. In 1838 he co-founded the Paris Medical Society and served as its first Vice President. He won the Medical Society of London’s Fothergill Gold Medal in 1846 for his lecture "On the Pathology and Treatment of Scrofula". Some 5 years prior to James Young Simpson’s use of chloroform on human patients in 1842 Glover discovered its anaesthetic qualities on laboratory animals. He is sometimes called "the true discoverer of chloroform". In an ironic twist of fate he died from a chloroform overdose.
On March 12, 2020, Duncan Socrates Lemp was fatally shot at his home in Potomac, Maryland during a no-knock search by the Montgomery County Police Department's SWAT team. The police believed Lemp possessed firearms illegally, which were recovered at the scene.
