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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Heathrow
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(24km/15m W of London) The capital city's main airport and the world's busiest for international flights – with some 43 million passengers a year in the 1990s, about 80% of them on non-domestic routes. It is situated on Hounslow Heath, first used as an aerodrome by the Royal Flying Corps in World War I. Their primitive strip became London's civilian international airport in 1919, but it lost that role to Croydon in the early 1920s. It was not until 1944 that Heathrow was selected, from several other candidates around the city, as the site for London's postwar airport.
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Its first flight took off on New Year's Day 1946, carrying ten passengers and a crew of six to Portugal. Its subsequent growth, intimately connected with the stories of *BOAC and BEA, required three terminals by 1961 and a fourth in 1986. At the turn of the century there are controversial plans for a fifth. Terminal 5, if built, will increase Heathrow's annual capacity to 70 million passengers and 400,000 aircraft movements.
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