100 GREATEST DAILY MIRROR MOMENTS.

For the last 100 years, the Daily Mirror has led the way with the greatest scoops, ground-breaking campaigns, and the most talked-about stunts.

The Mirror was the first newspaper to carry a photograph on the front page, the first to reveal the true nature of King Edward's relationship with Wallis Simpson, and first to hold a wedding in its offices.

Over the years we have also proved pigs can fly, hired racing drivers to get the story first, and discovered the Rolling Stones.

Here are the hundred greatest moments from the Daily Mirror's illustrious history.

SCOOPS

1. We whipped up the first Royal tabloid scandal by publishing a front page photograph of the late King Edward VII on his death-bed on May 10, 1910. The Mirror was accused of stealing the picture and of insensitivity towards the Royal Family. In fact Queen Alexandra had asked for the photograph to be given to the Mirror because it was her favourite newspaper.

2. In 1936 we were the only newspaper gutsy enough to reveal the true relationship between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Other newspapers colluded with a government cover-up, denying ordinary people knowledge of the crisis facing their monarchy. The Daily Mirror, however, broke the most sensational royal stories of the century - publishing a front page picture of Mrs Simpson. It also backed the King against the government and church.

4. Only one newspaper had a photo of a tearful Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street for the last time as Prime Minister. The photographers lining the street put down their cameras and applauded as she drove past. Only the Mirror's Ken Lennox kept working to secure a historic shot, published on November 29, 1990.

7. On November 19, 1999, we revealed how Cherie Blair was expecting her fourth child at the age of 45.

8. After a riot broke out at Dartmoor Prison in October, 1932, we hired an aeroplane to get exclusive aerial and internal shots. The Mirror's coverage of the riot, which ended when wardens opened fire on inmates and injured between 60 and 70 prisoners, was one of the earliest examples of the paper's hungry determination always to be first with the story.

10. We were with Iraqi war victim Ali Abbas as he had two prosthetic arms fitted on October 13 of this year. The brave 12-year-old lost his arms in a missile struck his home near Baghdad, which killed 16 members of his family.

11. On June 27, 1955, The Mirror ran a shock issue on The Robot Revolution which explained how a new industrial revolution was coming which would change life at home, in the office and in the factory. Every forecast came true - except that everyone would have much more leisure time and machines did all the work.

12. A Mirror photographer descended 650ft into Mount Vesuvius to get the first ever pictures taken from inside a volcano in June, 1912.

14. We became the first British paper to print pictures of a failed assassination attempt on King Alfonso of Spain and his new bride in Madrid in 1906. Our snapper hired a French racing driver to drive non-stop through Spain and France to Calais, where a boat was waiting to rush the pictures to England.

16. Our serialisation of Paul Burrell's book, A Royal Duty, was the most talked-about scoop of this year. The former Royal butler revealed last month how Princess Diana predicted she would die in a car crash just 10 months before it happened. He also told how her brother, Earl Spencer, accused her of being mentally ill.

17. We revealed Ulrika Jonsson's astonishing affair with England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson on April 19, 2002.

18. Following the 1911 proclamation of King George V as Emperor of India, pictures of the event were driven overland from India, and developed on the way to Calais before we printed them.

19. Despite being under house arrest by the Israelis, PLO leader Yasser Arafat invited the Mirror's Alex Williams into his bunker for an exclusive interview in which he called for the world to bring peace to the region in February, 2002.

20. On October 1, 1990, The Mirror introduced readers to three politicians we described as "Labour's Young Guns". Their names: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw. The writer? Alastair Campbell, who became Mr Blair's Downing Street spokesman.

21. In 1912 we ran a series of exclusive reports from Captain Robert Falcon Scott as he and his team battled to reach the South Pole. Unfortunately, we ran a "thrilling and exclusive narrative" in April 1912 not knowing that four days earlier Scott and his four companions had perished in the snow. It was 13 months before their deaths were discovered.

22. On October 3, 1994, we revealed how Royal love rat James Hewitt had written a book - Princess In Love - to cash in on his relationship with Princess Diana.

23. When a major earthquake struck Japan, the Mirror's Far East Correspondent, who was in Shanghai, flew 750 miles to Japan to photograph the disaster. The pictures were then shipped to Vancouver from where they were flown through Seattle and Chicago to Cleveland. Here the plane developed engine trouble and the pictures were transferred to an express train heading for New York where they were collected by a Mirror reporter. He caught a liner to France from where he flew to London, all in September, 1923.

24. The horror of unexploded mines was revealed in our report on the tragic death of 10-year-old Qwadrat in an Afghan hospital. He died shortly after picking up a mine near his home in February, 2002.

27. We were the first newspaper to show a photograph of a "tank", on November 23, 1917. The paper paid pounds 1,000 to the Canadian Record Office for the photos - almost pounds 70,000 in today's money. The cash went to war charities.

28. Mirror photographer Tom Grant may have just abandoned a sinking ship, but that didn't stop him taking some astonishing pictures. Grant was aboard the SS Sontay when it was torpedoed in May 1917, and after leaping into the water, he took 14 shots of the listing craft. He then wrapped his photographic plates in oilskin to keep them dry.

29. On August 7, 1999, we printed an exclusive interview with Doreen Lawrence, whose 18-year-old son, Stephen, was stabbed to death in London six years before.

30. On July 18, 2002, we revealed how a four-year-old girl was left to die outside a mosque in Uttar Pradesh, India, because she was handicapped.

31. We secured an exclusive interview with bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, the only survivor of the Paris car crash which killed Princess Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed. He broke his silence in March, 1998, to speak of his guilt at surviving the accident that killed her.

32. We broke a world record by hiring a pilot to fly photographs to London of the Belgrade wedding of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Princess Marie of Romania. A photo of the wedding appeared on the front page in June 1922 under the headline: Pictures Brought 1,150 miles by Air Across Europe through Thunderstorms and Fog".

33. Four days after 9/11, we revealed that New York firefighter, Mike Kehoe, who was poignantly captured on camera fearlessly heading into the burningWorld Trade Center, was still alive.

34. We were the only English newspaper to reveal that the British Army were being accused of `massacre' on Bloody Sunday after a demonstration in Northern Ireland erupted into violence in 1972.

35. We exposed the true story behind the extraordinary saga of American drama student Joyce McKinney in 1977. She kidnapped ex-boyfriend Kirk Anderson, chained him to a bad and, he claimed, forced him to have sex. We went after Joyce, who pretended to be demure and chaste, and revealed she was a former prostitute.

36. Pictures of a burka-clad woman being executed in an Afghanistan football stadium shocked the world, yet nobody knew her identity. On June 19, 2002, we exclusively revealed the woman was Zarmina, a 35-year-old who was killed after being accused of killing her husband.

37. Crooked Tory MP Jonathan Aitken grew to fear us after we revealed he had lied to his own family to cover his shady business dealings on November 2, 1994. The Treasury Chief Secretary was later jailed for perjury.

38. On December 24, 1997, we revealed how Jack Straw `s son, Will, had sold cannabis to a Mirror reporter.

39. We exposed the real horror of ethnic cleansing when we discovered the Tunnel of Death in Serbia in March 1997. It was the final resting place for more than 500 unidentified people, stacked on top of each other in a hastily-arranged morgue 

STUNTS

40. On January 1, 1973, Britain became a member of the Common Market and the Mirror was edited from Paris for the day.

41. We sent then PM John Major into such a fury that he kidney-punched Mirror reporter Graham Brough - despite the presence of TV cameras. We'd been taunting him with a plug - after his entire Budget was leaked to the Mirror in November 1996.

42. In 1905 we launched Captain Frass, the Mirror's mystery man. He wandered around the country and anyone who spotted him was awarded pounds 50.

43. On July 27, 1999, we reunited Posh and Becks with the18th century thrones on which they sat during their wedding day. We bought the antique chairs and asked the readers what to do with them. Over 70 per cent said they should be handed back to the Beckhams.

44. To mark the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977, we chartered Concorde for a day for readers . The world-famous aircraft carried 80 readers and a group of staff to Washington DC and back the same day. The first, and only, supersonic away day. One of the passengers on board was Richard Branson.

45. Mirror in Alberta, Canada was named after us in 1911 by British emigres who went across the Atlantic in search of work. The Canadian Government advertised in the Daily Mirror for workers to go to Canada to help work on the railroads.

47. In 1977 we arranging for the Loch Ness monster to make an appearance to coincide with the Queen's Silver Jubilee.

48. Reporter Alastair Campbell, who later become press chief at Downing Street, persuaded a Devon family to live without television for a week to see how it affected their lives in 1984.

49. We embarassed the spotlight-seeking celebrities who will turn up for anything by inviting them to the hoax opening of London restaurant, "The Paper Bag" on September 13, 1996.

MILESTONES

50. We capped an astonishing year by winning four major gongs at the British Press Awards in March 2003. We walked off with Reporter of the Year, Scoop of the Year and Reporting Team of the Year honours and the Hugh Cudlipp award for excellence in tabloid journalism. And all that on top of four other honours won at the What The Papers' Say Awards.

51. Our front page showing a First World War soldier lying asleep in the snow praised our forces. The headline for the picture, published on December 7, 1914, is "WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS TO OUR BRAVE TROOPS AT THE FRONT".

52. When Charles married Diana, the Archbishop of Canterbury started his sermon with the words: "This is the stuff of which fairy tales are made" - exactly what the Mirror said in its editorial on that morning of July 29, 1981.

53. A cartoon on the government's decision to raise the price of petrol showed a torpedoed sailor with an oil-smeared face lying on a raft. The message was "Don't waste petrol. It costs lives." Prime Minister Winston Churchill believed the 1942 sketch suggested that the sailor's life had been put at stake to enhance the profits of the and considered closing us down.

54. On December 22, 2001, we won Newspaper of the Year in the biggest year for news of modern times.

55. We told Soviet President Nikita Kruschev: `DON'T BE SO BLOODY RUDE!' in a front-page headline after he launched a vicious verbal assault on US President Dwight Eisenhower on May 17, 1960.

56. In 1944, the indomitable Cassandra returned to the paper after the writer came back from service in the Second World War. The opening line was "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted..."

58. We launched the Mirror's 3am girls - the most successful showbiz column ever - on July 3, 2000.

59. We moved the Mirror's headquarters to Paris to mark the importance of the Cold War summit meeting in the French capital in May 1960. Editor Jack Nener wrote: "The Daily Mirror believes in the Summit. That is why I have come to Paris to edit the paper from the city that is today the world's capital."

60. Andy Capp was introduced to the world on August 5, 1957. To begin with, the comic strip only appeared in our Northern editions but proved such a hit was distributed throughout the country. Created by former postal worker Reg Smythe, the comic strip was soon syndicated all over the world.

61. We spoke for the entire nation when we urged the Queen to address the nation after the death of Diana. After we ran the front-page headline "YOUR PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING - SPEAK TO US MA'AM", on September 4, 1997, the Queen addressed the country on a TV broadcast and announced the Buckingham Palace Union Flag would be lowered to half mast.

62. An historic blow for Press freedom was struck when lying supermodel Naomi Campbell lost her Appeal Court privacy action against the Daily Mirror in October last year. The 31-year-old was left with a pounds 750,000 legal bill after three judges overturned the pounds 3,500 damages previously awarded to her. Her complaint followed a Mirror story in February last year which revealed she was a drug addict and had been lying in press and TV interviews about her problem.

63. In December, 1960, Mirror TV critic Jack Bell watched the first episode of Coronation Street and forecast: "I find it hard to believe that viewers will want to put up with continuous slice-of-life domestic drudgery two evenings a week."

64. The Reporting Team of the Year trophy went to us at the Press Gazette Awards in March, 1999. We scooped the gong for our coverage of the Omagh bombing the previous August.

66. On November 21, 2001, we ran a full interview with Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan with the cuts they had demanded highlighted. Their ludicrous demands sparked a Mirror ban on giving copy approval to stars and changed the way the paper dealt with celebrities.

67. Prime Minister Harold Wilson fled to Washington in 1965 carrying a Mirror front page which attacked the "barbarous mess" of the Vietnam war, which he showed to President Johnson.

68. Last year we changed our name back from The Mirror to The Daily Mirror. We also dropped the red-top masthead to recapture the near-century old spirit that has made the newspaper so great.

FIRSTS

69. The Daily Mirror was launched as the first ever daily newspaper for gentlewomen in Edward VII's Britain on November 2, 1903. The fledgling Daily Mirror also had the first-ever British female newspaper editor, Mary Howarth.

71. The Daily Mirror was the first national newspaper to register its newsroom as a licensed marriage venue in 2003. On Valentine's Day, Clare Voysey and Mike Turner, the winners of the Marry At The Mirror competition, tied the knot at the newspaper's HQ at Canary Wharf, East London.

73. A photograph of the funeral procession of the Duke of Cambridge was the first to be carried on the front page of a newspaper, on March 23, 1904, cementing the reputation of the newly-named Daily Illustrated Mirror as the pioneer of photo-journalism.

74. An unemployment scheme offering to pay out-of-work men 3s 6d (17 1/2p) a day for sweeping the streets was launched by the Mirror in 1905. Local councils rushed to become involved in the scheme to help ease Britain's chronic unemployment problems, and pounds 2,600 was raised and spent in wages and 15,000 unemployed men given brooms.

75. Mirror photographers were the first to be assigned to cover the

the King on trips in this country and abroad, in 1906.

76. Always at the forefront of technology, in 1906 the Mirror installed an Electrophone at its London headquarters to report directly the words of Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman as he called a General Election.

77. The first newspaper photograph to be cabled from Paris to London was sent by the Mirror on November 8, 1907.

78. The Mirror sent seven photographers to cover the Balkans war in October 1912 - the first time a newspaper had sent photographers to cover a war. It had to set up a team of relay stations across Europe to get their pictures back to London.

79. A reporter wired a message from a car on Wandsworth Common to receiving equipment on the roof of the Mirror offices in Bouverie Street, Central London in 1913. It was the first time this has been done in England, and the Mirror had invented the technology.

80. The Mirror gave the full tabloid treatment to the royal wedding of the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, mother to Queen Elizabeth II, in April 1923. It was the first time that page upon page of photographs, reports, comment and debate on every aspect of the marriage. It was a rare moment of colour to brighten up the gloom of the post-war years.

82. In 1964, the Mirror topped 5,000,000 circulation and became the biggest- selling newspaper on earth.

83. Showbiz reporter Patrick Donovan was the first journalist to write about a new band he saw in the Station Hotel, Richmond, Surrey, on May 19, 1964. It was The Rolling Stones.

84. Maudie Barrett became the first newspaper bingo millionaire in 1984 when she scooped our Who Dares Wins game.

CAMPAIGNS

85. The Mirror proved itself ahead of its time by backing the suffragettes' movement on April 27, 1906.

86. The only newspaper to demand an inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was the Mirror. On April 19, the paper ran the headline: "WHY WERE THERE ONLY TWENTY LIFEBOATS FOR 2,207 PEOPLE ON BOARD THE ILL-FATED TITANIC". It ran a vociferous campaign into the issue which dominated the Board of Trade inquiry into the disaster.

87. Standing alone, the Mirror supported Churchill's demands for a tougher line to be taken against Hitler and his Nazi regime from 1936 onwards. It continually called for Prime Minister Baldwin to be replaced by Churchill.

88. Taking up the cause of the ordinary soldier after being inspired by a letter from Mrs C Gardiner of Ilford in Essex about her hopes for the future following her husband's return from war in 1944. Her letter ended with the promise - I shall vote for him. With so many men abroad, The Mirror took up the theme and turned to women voters: "you know what the fighting man wants. You know which party is likely to give him what he wants. You know the only way to make his future safe. Go then and do your duty. Vote for him."

89. Philip Zec's famous VE Day cartoon of a bloodied and bandaged soldier thrusting a victory laurel wreath forward and exclaiming: "Here you are! Don't lose it again!" was republished on election day 1945. Two days later, the Mirror adopted a new slogan beneath its masthead - "FORWARD WITH THE PEOPLE".

90. Speaking out against the cruelty of executing a woman before Ruth Ellis was hanged in 1955 for shooting her racing driver husband, the Mirror ran an impassioned front page, entitled, "THE WOMAN WHO HANGS THIS MORNING", written by Cassandra.

92. The Mirror spearheaded the "Don't Drink and Drive" Christmas campaign with a front page picture of a skeleton at the wheel of a car on December 19, 1960. The headline read: "To every wife, mother and sweetheart the Mirror today urges: See that the man in your life is there to carve the turkey on Sunday."

93. In June 1961, we launched a successful campaign in favour of Britain joining a Common Market.

94. The Mirror helped set up the World Wildlife Fund by running a shock issue on October 9, 1961, warning of the threat to hundreds of species of animals and birds. Over eight pages, the paper placed the blame for the threat to animals such as the rhino on "the thoughtless foolishness, greed and neglect of the most superior animal on earth - Man himself."

95. One iconic photograph published on March 26, 1968 forced the the Canadian government to stop killing seal pups. Kent Gavin's world-famous picture of a seal hunter clubbing a baby pup to death was published on the front page, above the headline "THE PRICE OF A SEALSKIN COAT".

96. Cecil King, chairman of the Mirror, used the paper to start a coup against Prime Minister Harold Wilson with a front-paged editorial headlined: "Enough Is Enough." on May 10, 1968. Wilson survived, King was sacked.

97. Marje Proops' no-holds-barred attack on sexual ignorance, The Mirror Guide to Sexual Knowledge was the first ever "no-nonsense guide to sex", published by the Mirror on August 12, 1975 in a bid to combat some of the 600,000 unwanted babies conceived every year.

98. In August 1975, the Mirror welcomed the introduction of equal pay laws with a front-page pin-up of a man and the headline: Girls, It's Your Turn Now.

99. After the Dunblane massacre in 1996, in which 16 children and their teacher died, the Mirror took a 50,000 signature petition to Downing Street calling on the Government to ban handguns. MPs voted for a ban soon after.

3. Princess Diana's butler Paul Burrell chose the Mirror to tell his story after the collapse of his theft trial. Burrell lifted the lid on her troubled marriage to Prince Charles and accused the Spencers of cashing in on her death. The series, which started on November 5 last year, also revealed the Queen warned him of "dark forces" at work in the country.

6. The Mirror helped to catch one of Britain's most notorious killers, the chilling Dr Crippen after the headless body of his wife was found in the coal cellar at their home. The Mirror scooped its rivals by publishing only known photograph of Crippen's lover, Ethel Le Neve, in August, 1910. It led to tip-offs from the public and eventually the pair's capture.

9. Our sensational pictures of the Duchess of York's toes being sucked by her "financial advisor" John Bryan was one of the greatest Royal scoops of all time. The Mirror sold an extra 1.9 million copies in four days in 1992.

13. A shock edition on July 2, 1974, asked: Is Britain Really Going Broke? as the nation was plagued by strikes and economic chaos.

15. We got the first-ever interview with Monica Lewinsky. Bill Clinton's mistress spoke exclusively to the Mirror about her affair with the US President in a story that ran on March 4, 1999.

46. We proved pigs could fly in 1909 when the paper persuaded aviator Colonel Moore-Brabazon to take a porker for a short trip in his flying machine.

57. We had the guts to say what the entire British public was thinking as Princess Margaret agonised on how to choose between the divorced Group Captain Peter Townshend or follow the church's urging and put duty before love. Our 1955 headline read: "COME ON MARGARET! Please make up your mind!" She decided to choose duty.

65. In 1963, the first Mirror dinghies went on display at the Boat Show. The radical design was dreamt up by BBC DIY expert Barry Bucknell with help from our publicity department to make sailing accessible to the masses.

70. The first Pride of Britain Awards were held in 1999, recognising the remarkable achievements of ordinary people across Britain and redefining the Mirror's role as a caring newspaper.

72. The Mirror was the first British newspaper to put a picture on the front page on January 28, 1904 - a drawing of the infamous financier Whitaker Wright lighting the cigar with which he had poisoned himself after being found guilty of fraud.

81. Jane, the nation's first pin-up girl, was introduced in 1932. he daily cartoon strip, originally called The Diary of a Bright Young Thing, was so popular that Jane became the morale booster of Second World War troops and was painted on to planes, tanks and jeeps. In the war years, she was described as Britain's secret weapon. "Worth two armoured divisions to us," commented some wit. "Three if she lost her bra or pants."

91. A shock issue with the NSPCC to fight cruelty against children in British homes and expose the appalling neglect of some of Britain's youngsters on March 14, 1960.