View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1812 – John Bellingham was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval seven days earlier. To date, Perceval is the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated.
1919 – Margot Fonteyn, English ballet dancer was born.
1944 – Monte Cassino, Italy, was taken by Allied forces during World War II. The ancient Italian monastery had been a symbol of German resistance since the beginning of the year.
1951 – Britain’s first four-engined jet bomber, the Vickers Valiant, made its maiden flight.
1954 – The European Convention on Human Rights came into force.
1964 – Scores of youths were given prison sentences following violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers at a number of resorts on the south coast of England.
1969 – Britain’s champion motor racing driver, Graham Hill, won his fifth and record-breaking Monaco Grand Prix.
1970 – England captain Bobby Moore is arrested in Bogota, Colombia, on a trumped up theft charge as the England squad prepare for the World Cup finals in Mexico. All charges are eventually dropped.
1991 – Helen Sharman, 27, from Sheffield, becomes Britain’s first astronaut aboard a Soviet Soyuz capsule. On the same day, Paul Gascoigne is carried off with a torn cruciate ligament after a wild tackle on Forest’s Gary Charles at the Spurs v Nottingham Forest FA Cup Final. Spurs win 2-1.
1998 – High Society burglar Peter Scott was jailed for 3 years after being involved in a plot to sell a stolen Picasso painting worth £750,000.
2011 – John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics for the Beatles song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds – the single sheet also included the opening words for She’s Leaving Home – sells for $237,132 (£145,644) at an auction in the US.
2014 – AstraZeneca, a British multinational pharmaceutical and biologics company with operations in over 100 countries, rejected America company Pfizer’s final offer of £63bn.
2019 – Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling each score twice as Manchester City thrash Watford, 6-0 to win the FA Cup, completing an unprecedented domestic treble.
“Rope a dope” is a boxing technique where you allow your opponent to punch you heavily against the ropes, tiring them out. The ropes absorb most of the impact of the punches.
Jack Nicholson made $35 million from Batman Returns – and he doesn`t appear in the film at all!
Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only two actors to win an Oscar for playing the same character. The first played Vito Corleone in The Godfather; the second played Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II.
The Capital of Sri Lanka is Colombo; Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte (legislative)
“I brought you flours.” – Harold Crick in Stranger Than Fiction
A doctor tells his patient he’s got only six months to live… but the patient doesn’t pay his bill on time, so the doctor gives him another six months. (ta-tish!)
17 out of the 20 tallest statues in the world are Buddhist.
“What a dump.” – Rosa Moline (Bette Davis) in Beyond the Forest, 1949
The first porn film was A’Ecu d’Or in 1908.
In James Bond, when in Dr. No’s cave in the 1962 film, stops to notice a painting found on an easel next to the stairs. It is a copy of a Francisco de Goya painting of Duke Wellington that was stolen in 1961. It was recovered in 1965.
1993 – The Holbeck Hall Hotel in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, fell into the sea following a landslide, making news around the world.
1805 – The first Trooping of the Colour took place on Horse Guards Parade. It was Edward VII who moved Trooping the Colour to its June date, because of the vagaries of British weather.
2012 – The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant took place on the Tideway of the River Thames, as part of the celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.