View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
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1938 – The birth of Oliver Reed, English actor. His films included Oliver, Women in Love and The Three Musketeers. His final role was as the elderly slave dealer Proximo in Gladiator, in which he played alongside Richard Harris, an actor whom Reed admired greatly.
1945 – 1400 RAF and 450 US Airforce planes bombed Dresden in three waves over a 14-hour period, devastating one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Over a three-day period, 3,900 tons of explosives and incendiaries reduced much of the city to smouldering rubble and killed between 35,000 and 135,000 civilians.
1948 – The Science Museum in London announced that it would return the Wright Brothers’ biplane, Kitty Hawk, the first to fly, to the Smithsonian Institution. It had been sent to England in 1928 by Orville Wright when he found that the Smithsonian had labelled another plane as the first capable of sustained flight.
1969 – An announcement stated that eggs removed from a woman volunteer had been fertilized in a test tube as a result of work done at Cambridge University in collaboration with Dr. P. Steptoe at Oldham General Hospital.
1974 – The birth of Robbie Williams, former member of the pop group Take That. After many disagreements, Williams left the group in 1995 to launch his solo career but he re-joined Take That in 2009 and left again in 2012. The group released a new album in November 2010 which became the second fastest selling album of all time in UK chart history and the fastest-selling record of the century.
1975 – British mineworkers’ leaders agreed to accept the coal board’s latest pay offer of up to 35%.
1975 – The birth of Ben Collins, British racing driver. On 1st September 2010 the BBC was refused a court injunction to prevent the revelation that ‘Stig’, Top Gear’s ‘tame racing driver’ was, in fact Ben Collins. In future Top Gear programmes the team regularly referred to him as ‘sacked Stig’.
1978 – Tomorrow’s World presenter Anna Ford was officially announced as ITN’s first female newsreader.
1987 – London’s property boom resulted in a 5ft 6in x 11ft broom cupboard opposite Harrods being offered for sale at £36,500 – over £600 per square foot.
1988 – The Winter Olympics opened in Calgary, Canada. English ski-jumper and plasterer Eddie Edwards, became the surprise sensation of the Games. The fearless contestant came last, but won all the headlines and the nickname The Eagle. His life story was made into a film, Eddie the Eagle, in 2016
2001 – Stephen Kelly, aged 33, went on trial in Glasgow for knowingly infecting a woman with the HIV virus in a case believed to be the first of its kind in Scotland. He was found guilty of ‘culpable and reckless conduct’ and was sentenced to five years in prison.
2015 – PC Robert Brown, who joined the Metropolitan Police in the era of ‘Dixon of Dock Green’, retired after 47-years service. He was the country’s longest serving policeman. In recognition of his service, he was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal at Buckingham Palace, one of the highest honours bestowed on police officers.
Leather armor is the best for stealth because it is made of hide.
PD James – Real Name: PD White
From my Idea Book: Bring back Nahuatl, Latin, and Aramaic back as languages taught for credit in schools.
The Capital of Vanuatu is Port-Vila
Alliumphobia is the fear of garlic.
The highest-grossing film never to reach number one on the U.S. charts was “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” (2002)
Stir-fry cooks come from all woks of life.
“Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” – Margo Channing (Bette Davis)
If I can make a few people smile or laugh by saying some dumb stuff on the Internet, then that’s good enough for me.
‘Piloerection’ is the medical term for Goosebumps.
“I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me. It was a battle cry.” – Jim Butcher
“Life is what it is, and you take what’s handed, and you work as hard as you can, and hopefully you’ll be successful, but I just don’t spend too much time worrying about that.” – Jerry Springer
“Let them think what they think. Nobody doesn’t get stereotyped. Nobody doesn’t get scorned. Everybody’s bad news in somebody’s life.” – Peter Tork
“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.” – Henry Rollins
“I’ve liked lots of people ’til I went on a picnic jaunt with them.” – Bess Truman
“You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.” – Chuck Yeager
“In love, there are no penalties and no payments, and what is given is indistinguishable from what is received.” – Eleanor Farjeon
“One thing that really appeals to me is this idea of music being a living thing that has an evolution that, in a way, enables the artist to sell a process rather than a piece of product.” – Peter Gabriel
“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.” – Henry Rollins
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.