Just a typical day in 1997:
Richard Branson, tycoon of the Virgin Group empire, arrived to begin his long -delayed attempt to break the record for a round-the-world balloon trip. He and co-pilots Per Lindstrand and Rory McCarthy hope to set out today or Wednesday in the Virgin Global Challenger and float around the world in 18 days. Richard Branson, 46, postponed the voyage in February, saying the balloon risked being ripped apart by thunderstorms. The balloon picks up the jetstreams needed to cross the Pacific at speeds of up to 240 mph.
And in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate the Orthodox Christmas Eve and to protest against President Slobodan Milosevic. Lingering in the minds of pro-democracy supporters staging more than 50 days of protests against Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s government is the memory of the quick and bloody end to similar protests in NoMarch 1991. Milosevic ended those demonstrations by calling in tanks. Now he seems to have lost that option. Yugoslavia’s top military commander, General Momcilo Perisic, held meetings with pro-democracy supporters Monday. Hinting the army supports the demonstrators, Perisic, chief of the Army, General Staff, told the students he seeks a “democratic solution” to Serbia’s political crisis, one that would permit Yugoslavia to join Europe.
And a French sailor stranded on his capsized yacht in freezing waters off Antarctica managed to climb aboard a life-raft dropped by rescuers Monday. However, there was no sign of an English man who also sent a distress call. After losing hold of a raft dropped by an earlier Australian air force plane, Thierry Dubois, 29, grabbed a second raft carrying food, water and a radio, the air force said. The mission took place at 52 degrees south latitude – closer to Antarctica than Australia – and was the farthest south the Australian air force had ever attempted a rescue. An air force crew spotted the second yacht, Tony Bullimore’s Global Exide Challenger, upright but listing. There was no sign of the 56-year-old Briton.
And that’s just a sample of what went on, this January 7, 1997 as presented by The BBC World Service Newsday Program.
