View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1933 – The birth, in Sacriston (County Durham), of Sir Robert William “Bobby” Robson CBE, English footballer and football manager. Appointed (in 1999) as Newcastle’s manager at the age of 66 he was the oldest manager in the league. His first home game in charge was particularly memorable and impressive: an 8–0 victory over Sheffield Wednesday.
1946 – Sailors of the Royal Indian Navy mutinied in Mumbai harbour, from where it spread throughout British India. The mutiny involved 78 ships, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 sailors.
1949 – Opportunity Knocks was presented for the first time (on BBC radio) by its creator, Hughie Greene. It later transferred to Radio Luxembourg then went on to become a popular television programme on ITV.
1965 – The Beatles record You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away and Tell Me What You See for the Help! Album at EMI Studios in Abbey Road, St John’s Wood. On the same day, Gambia becomes independent from the UK.
1969 – Hundreds of people clamoured to see the marriage of pop stars Lulu and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees in a Buckinghamshire church.
1981 – Mrs. Thatcher’s Conservative Government withdrew plans to close 23 pits in its first major U-turn since coming to power two years previously.
1981 – Oxford University announced that Sue Brown would become the first woman cox in the history of the University Boat Race.
1990 – Freddie Mercury makes his final public appearance on stage when he joins the rest of Queen to collect the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. People are shocked by his gaunt appearance.
1991 – One man was killed and 43 people injured by an IRA bomb at Victoria Station.
1996 – An IRA bomb detonated prematurely on a bus travelling in central London, killing Edward O’Brien, the IRA member who was transporting the device. Eight others were injured.
2003 – The Hutton inquiry heard that No.10 Downing Street authorised a substantial rewrite of its Iraq arms dossier before publication.
2012 – Bill Cooper (83) and his wife Laurel (82), who had spent the previous 36 years sailing round the world and clocked up 100,000 nautical miles returned to the UK to retire, because their health was starting to fail. They had sold their home in Chatham, Kent, and set off from Lowestoft, Suffolk, in June 1976 on their 50ft. vessel Fare Well.
2015 – It was announced that RBS and NatWest banks were to allow their customers to access accounts on their smartphones using Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint recognition technology.
Astronaut John Glenn ate the first meal in space when he ate pureed applesauce squeezed from a tube aboard Friendship 7 in 1962.
Pope John Paul II – Real Name: Carol Wojtila
The word “mesmerize” comes from the name of a German physician and hypnotist named Franz Mesmer who developed the theory of animal magnetism and used it as a healing practice.
Each frame of the CGI scenes in James Cameron’s, “Avatar” (1/24 of a second) took an average of 47 hours to render.
Daniel Radcliffe went through 160 pairs of prop glasses by the end of the Harry Potter series.
The ‘Hamster Dance’ song is a sped up version of ‘The Walking Song’ from Disney’s 1973 film, Robin Hood.
I’m Pet Sitting for Schrodinger. His cat is currently hiding behind all couches in existence and won’t come out. Do I just have to coax just one of them out or am I in big trouble?
‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ never killed anyone.
“Musicogenic Epilepsy” is a rare disease that makes you have a seizure whenever you hear your favourite music
Garfield the Cat is named after Jim Davis’s grandfather, who in turn was named after US President James A. Garfield.
Meat Loaf’s album “Bat Out of Hell” has sold more than 43 million copies worldwide and continues to sell an estimated 200,000 copies annually nearly 40 years after it was released.
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.