View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1858 – The 14.5 tonne bell, ‘Big Ben’, was cast in Stockton-on-Tees by Warner’s of Cripplegate. However the bell cracked during testing. It was recast into the 13.76 tonne bell by Whitechapel Bell Foundry and is still in use today. It is the largest of the five bells in the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament).
1912 – The British built luxury liner Titanic set sail on its maiden and only voyage, from Berth 44, White Star Line dock, Southampton, bound for New York.
1929 – The birth of Mike Hawthorn, English racing car driver and winner of the 1958 Formula One Championship.
1955 – Ruth Ellis shot her lover David Blakely outside a pub in Hampstead in North London. Following her murder trial she became the last woman to be hanged in Britain.
1970 – Paul McCartney announced that he was to leave The Beatles for personal and professional reasons.
1972 – An agreement, banning the use of biological weapons, was signed by 74 countries.
1973 – A British Vanguard turboprop, flying from Bristol, crashed during a snowstorm at Basel, Switzerland, killing 108 with 37 survivors.
1981 – Imprisoned IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to Westminster as the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
1989 – Nick Faldo became the first Englishman to win the US Masters in a dramatic sudden death play-off.
1997 – The National Trust’s ruling council voted unanimously to ban stag-hunting on its land after a study concluded that the chase caused extreme suffering and exhaustion to the deer.
1998 – The Northern Ireland peace talks ended with a historic agreement called the Good Friday Agreement.
2013 – The death of Prof. Sir Robert Edwards, aged 87. His pioneering work on IVF led to the birth of the world’s first ‘test tube baby’, Louise Brown, at Oldham Hospital in 1978.
2021 – Rachael Blackmore made sporting history by becoming the first female jockey to win the Grand National, with victory on Minella Times at Aintree. Blackmore had already achieved a landmark success at last month’s Cheltenham Festival when she was the first woman to be the meeting’s leading jockey.
Did you know that on this day in 1912, the Titanic departed from Southampton? This was its first, and tragically, only journey.
Useless Pronunciation: M as in mnemonic
“One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know.” – Capt. Geoffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho Marx) in Animal Crackers, 1930
“Oh… wait. I get it. Holy Bartender! Ha, ha, ha! ” – Jay
“Attica! Attica!” – Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino) in Dog Day Afternoon, 1975
Maybe ghosts have sheets over them because they’re people who died thinking hiding under their sheets would save them.
Today a 10-year-old kid with a £100 smartphone has access to more info than any human being on Earth had access to before the 90s.
“Gee, Mrs. Cleaver!” – Eddie Haskell (Leave it to Beaver)
“God bless America, land that I love, Stand beside her, and guide her, Through the night with the light from a bulb” #misunderstoodlyrics
A group of Mosquitoes is called a Scourge.
One of the 7 Wonders of the Middle Ages: The Great Wall of China, constructed 220 BC, through 1600s AD
The biggest film of 1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai
2018 – Xi’an, China, introduced a pedestrian lane for people who walk while looking at their phones.
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.