View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1902 – 25 football fans were killed at Ibrox Park, Glasgow, when a stand collapsed during a Scotland / England international match. At least another 200 were injured.
1904 – The first international rugby league match was played between England and an ‘Other Nationalities team’ (consisting of Welsh & Scottish players) in Central Park, Wigan.
1922 – The birth, in Preston, Lancashire of former footballer Sir Tom Finney. He was famous for his loyalty to his league club, Preston North End and for his performances in the English national side. He played his entire career for his local club, appearing 433 times and scoring 187 goals.
1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy launched a carrier-based air attack on Colombo, Ceylon during the Indian Ocean Raid. The port was damaged, civilians were injured and the Royal Navy cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire were sunk south-west of the island.
1955 – Sir Winston Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain through the crisis of World War II, retired as Prime Minister, aged 81, handing over to Anthony Eden.
1964 – Automatic, driverless trains began operating on the London Underground.
1976 – Harold Wilson resigned as Prime Minister and was succeeded by James Callaghan.
1982 – A British Task Force set sail from Southampton to recapture the Falkland Islands after the invasion by Argentina.
1994 – Nirvana singer-songwriter/guitarist Kurt Cobain commits suicide by shooting himself in the head with a shotgun at his home in Seattle. The body is not discovered until April 8.
1997 – The 150th running of the Grand National at Aintree, Liverpool was cancelled because of an IRA bomb scare.
1999 – Richard Dunwoody became the most successful jump jockey of all time, when he clocked up his 1,679th win at Wincanton. (The record is now held by Tony McCoy with over 2,000 winners.)
2001 – Perry Wacker, a Dutch lorry driver was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in the deaths of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants. They were found suffocated in the back of his lorry when it was searched at Dover in June 2000.
2002 – People queued for miles beside the Thames to pay their last respects to the Queen Mother, whose body was lying in state in Westminster Hall, London.
2020 – Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s chief medical officer, resigned after the Scottish Sun newspaper published photographs of her and her family visiting their second home during the coronavirus lockdown. The home was more than an hour’s drive from her main family home in Edinburgh and it was her second such visit. Calderwood had fronted TV and radio adverts urging the public to stay at home to save lives and protect the NHS, during the coronavirus epidemic and had taken part in daily televised media briefings alongside Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
Did you know that on this day in 1776, President George Washington received an honorary law degree from Harvard College? This was the first law degree Harvard had awarded.
On this day in 1722, Jacob Roggeveen discovered Easter Island? This ended 1,400 years of isolation for the island.
Thanks to action movies, I am unnecessarily suspicious of black or white unmarked vans.
Income tax was first introduced in England in 1799 by British Prime Minister, William Pitt.
TV Quotes… “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” (Arnold Drummond) on “Diff’rent Strokes”
The Olympics should have a ‘For Fun’ section at the end of all the games so all the athletes can try different sports.
Tall people are expected to use their reach to help shorter people, but if a tall person were to ask a short person to hand them something they dropped on the floor it’d be insulting.
A group of Camels is called a Caravan or Train or Flock.
Instead of colorizing photos, in 50 years we will be removing filters.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” – Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) #moviequotes
“Either” can be pronounced either way.
When a company offers me a better price after I cancel their subscription, they’re just admitting they were overcharging me.
Vehicles today can surf the web, link to your phone, stream music and videos, etc.. but they still can’t perform a simple database lookup to tell you what the check engine light is on for.
I am tied for the world record for the fewest summit attempts of Mt. Everest.
Nothing is on fire, fire is on things.
The average secretary’s left-hand does 56% of the typing.office.
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.