The Battle of Red Cliffs was a decisive battle at the end of the Han Dynasty, immediately prior to the period of the Three Kingdoms in China in the northern winter of 208 CE between the allied forces of the southern warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan, and the numerically superior forces of the northern warlord Cao Cao. Liu Bei and Sun Quan successfully frustrated Cao Cao's effort to conquer the land south of the Yangtze River and reunite the territory of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The allied victory at Red Cliffs ensured the survival of Liu Bei and Sun Quan, gave them control of the Yangtze, and provided a line of defence that was the basis for the later creation of the two southern kingdoms of Shu Han and Eastern Wu. For these reasons, it is considered a decisive battle in Chinese history. Descriptions of the battle differ widely on details; in fact, even the location of battle is still fiercely debated. The most detailed account of the battle comes from the biography of Zhou Yu in the 3rd-century historical text Records of Three Kingdoms. An exaggerated and romanticised account is also a central event in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

Most of London's Palace of Whitehall, the main residence of the English monarchs dating from 1530, was destroyed by fire.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Whitehall)

Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang discovered the McDonald Islands, an uninhabited, barren island located in the Southern Ocean about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heard_Island_and_McDonald_Islands)

The Fabian Society, an intellectual movement whose purpose is to advance the socialist cause by gradualist and reformist methods rather than revolutionary means, was founded in London.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society)

Last of the Summer Wine, the longest running sitcom in the world, premiered as an episode of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_of_the_Summer_Wine)

In the Second Gulf of Sidra incident over the Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean Sea, two American F-14A Tomcats shot down two Libyan MiG-23 Flogger Es that appeared to be attempting to engage them.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Sidra_incident_(1989))

affable (adj)     1. Friendly, courteous, sociable; receiving others kindly and conversing with them in a free and friendly manner.
                      2. Mild; benign.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affable)

The main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical.   --Isaac Newton