View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
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1932 – Scottish aviator Jim Mollison made the first westbound solo transatlantic flight in a light aircraft when he arrived in New Brunswick after leaving Portmarnock in Ireland 30 hours earlier.
1941- Britain’s National Fire Service was established.
1948 – Jockey Lester Piggott, aged 12, rode his first winner on only his seventh ride.
1948 – The Australian cricket team completed a 4–0 Ashes series win over England during their undefeated ‘Invincibles’ tour.
1959 – The proposed route of the M1 was altered to save a forest from destruction.
1962 – Ringo Starr joined The Beatles – Lennon, McCartney and Harrison – as drummer, and made his debut with them at the horticultural society dance in Birkenhead.
1966 – The Tay road bridge was opened by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
1969 – Mick Jagger is accidentally shot in the hand during filming of Ned Kelly in Australia.
1971 – The British Army was accused of shooting dead an unarmed, disabled man during disturbances in Northern Ireland. Soldiers said that Eamon McDevitt, 24, was brandishing a pistol when he was shot, but civilian witnesses said that the man, who was born deaf and dumb, was simply waving his arms about, his way of attracting attention.
1982 – The City of Liverpool named four Streets after the fab four, John Lennon Drive, Paul McCartney Way, George Harrison Close and Ringo Starr Drive.
1998 – Pilot Peter Diamond was jailed for 2 years for helping businessman fraudster Azil Nadir (Polly Peck company) escape from Britain in May 1993.
2003 – The death of Tony Jackson, lead singer and bass player with the Searchers on their first two UK hits, ‘Sweets for My Sweet” and ‘Sugar and Spice’. Jackson was inspired by the skiffle sound of Lonnie Donegan, and then by Buddy Holly and other US ‘rollers’.
2012 – The death of Winnie Johnson, mother of Keith Bennett. He was murdered, along with three others, by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in 1964. For decades she had fought tirelessly to find the location of the grave of her son on Saddleworth Moor. Experts suspected that Brady had manipulated her and the media by promising information about the grave location and then withholding it.
2014 – The final piece of an aircraft carrier left BAE Systems at Portsmouth, signalling the end of shipbuilding in the city by the end of 2015, with heavy job losses there and in Scotland.
2016 – Usain Bolt wins his third consecutive Olympic 200m title in Rio. On the same day, Britain’s Alistair Brownlee retains his Olympic men’s triathlon title.
2017 – Civilian researchers discover the USS Indianapolis 18,000 feet below the Pacific surface, 72 years after it was sunk by Japanese torpedoes.
2019 – A funeral was held in Iceland for the loss of the Okjökull glacier.
Did you know that on this day in 1949, Adi Dassler founded Adidas after falling out with his brother? His brother went on to found Puma and they competed bitterly with each other.
The cracking sound you hear from a whip is actually the whip breaking the speed of sound and creating a small sonic boom.
In his 1225 essay on the nature of colour (Du Luce/On Light), the English Bishop Robert Grosseteste described the birth of the Universe in an explosion and the crystallization of matter to form stars and planets in a set of nested spheres around Earth, seven centuries before the Big Bang theory.
The Capital of Malta is Valletta
All gerbils in the US descend from 20 caught in Mongolia in 1935 for research purposes.
Roman citizens who did not have land were deemed unfit for battle since they would not have something to protect.
“I feel the need… the need for speed!” – Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and Lt. Nick “Goose” Bradshaw (Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards) in Top Gun, 1986
Charlie Sheen stayed awake for 48 hours to achieve his wasted look for his cameo as a drugged-up thug in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.
The Ouija board got its name after being asked what is should be called. When asked what it meant, the board allegedly replied, “good luck.”
Muhammad Ali recited, during a speech in 1975 at Harvard University, the “shortest poem ever written on what it’s like to be as great as Ali” by saying: “Me? Whee!”
The Capital of Mali is Bamako
“If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don’t do that, you are wasting your time on this Earth.” – Roberto Clemente
“As I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils, I will believe it a good comfortable road until I am compelled to believe differently.” – Meriwether Lewis
“Like a guide dog, paintings help you see.” – Martin Mull
“I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful, and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be an artistic, tasteful, patriotic and progressive religious experience.” – Shelley Winters
“Write. Write every day. Write honestly. Write something that doesn’t exist, and you wish did. Read. Learn. Study. Watch people. Listen to what they say, listen to how they say it, and listen to what they do not say. Surprise yourself. Scare yourself.” – Brian Michael Bendis
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.