View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
What : day is it
1918 – The first woman elected to Parliament was Constance, the Countess Markievicz who won for Sinn Fein, contesting a Dublin seat. She was unable to take her seat as she was in Holloway Prison, London. The 1918 General Election was also the first time that women in Britain had the vote.
1920 – The first scheduled airliner disaster in aviation history occurred when an airliner with six passengers and two crew took off from Cricklewood Airport, London, for a flight to Paris. Barely airborne, the plane crashed into a house in neighbouring Golders Green, killing the crew and two passengers. The others escaped from the wreckage.
1922 – The man who would play a significant part in the history of British broadcasting, John Reith, was appointed General Manager of the fledgling BBC.
1932 – Leeds and Wigan competed in the first floodlit rugby league match, at London’s White City Stadium.
1947 – Stanley Baldwin, three times Conservative Prime Minister, died.
1955 – Hugh Gaitskell was elected leader of the Labour Party, following the resignation of Clement Attlee.
1959 – The shortest murder trial in British legal history. In 30 seconds, at Winchester Assizes, Brian Cawley pleaded guilty to the murder of Rupert Steed and was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
1984 – Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill was found guilty of obstruction during a picket at a Yorkshire coal works earlier in the year. He was fined £250 and ordered to pay £750 in costs.
2011 – Thomas Cook, the world’s oldest travel agency announced that it would close 200 UK branches over the next two years as part of its UK business turnaround plan, 125 more than previously announced.
2011 – The UK jobless total reached a 17-year high in the three months to October, hitting 2.64 million. Youth unemployment, which covers 16-24 year olds, hit its highest level since records began in 1992.
2011 – Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen (aged 85) and Duke of Edinburgh (aged 90) would mark their 2012 Diamond Jubilee with a five-month ‘four corners’ tour of the UK.
2012 – Yorkshire, beat off the challenge of bids from Florence and Edinburgh with Leeds set to host the prestigious start of the Tour de France cycle race in 2014. Yorkshire took the Grand Depart to its heart. Day 1 started in Leeds on 5th July 2014.
2013 – The death of the 81 year old actor Peter O’Toole, who starred in Sir David Lean’s 1962 film classic Lawrence of Arabia. The film earned him the first of eight Oscar nominations, with others coming for such films as Becket, The Lion in Winter and Goodbye, Mr Chips.
2017 – A British surgeon admitted to branding his initials on patients’ livers.
Simon Bramhall, an accomplished surgeon, confessed to using an argon beam to etch his initials onto the livers of two transplant receivers. Fortunately, this did not damage either liver; however, he was charged for assault and fined £10,000.
Did you know that Santa Claus has his own army? He keeps it in his sleevie.
“He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy!” – Brian’s mother #moviequotes
The city of Bangkok’s full name is in fact: ‘Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit’
The Capital of Australia is Canberra
“Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.” – Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) in Now, Voyager, 1942
“Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.” – Will Rogers
The Church of Satan won’t give membership to convicted felons.
Pronoia, the opposite of paranoia, is the delusion that everyone is secretly plotting your success.
The 1928 classic The Passion of Joan of Arc was panned by the French government that commissioned it and a fire destroyed the negative, the original cut of the movie was thought to be lost forever, but a copy was found in a closet in an Oslo mental institution in 1981
The dot over a “j” or an “i” is called a “tittle.”
What if Beaker from the Muppets didn’t really speak in beeps, but was just so vulgar that every word he said was censored? Just like R2-D2.
Birthday : quotes
“I had determined to go as far as declaring in abstruse and puzzling utterances the future causes of the “common advent”, even those truly cogent ones that I have foreseen. Yet lest whatever human changes may be to come should scandalize delicate ears, the whole thing is written in nebulous form, rather than as a clear prophecy of any kind.” – Nostradamus
“Those who study the stars have God for a teacher.” – Tycho Brahe
“If people don’t like me for whatever I do, for being me, then that’s too bad. I don’t want to change to be something that I’m not for other people to like me.” – Vanessa Hudgens
“The mouse is wise, but the cat is wiser.” -Tycho Brahe
“Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries.”
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.