View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1868 – The birth of Constance Georgine Markievicz, Irish Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist. In December 1919, whilst in Holloway prison, she became the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons. As a Sinn Féin MP who was in prison at the time, she never took her seat in the House of Commons.
1905 – The birth, in Farnworth near Bolton, Lancashire of Hylda Baker, British comedienne, actress and music hall star. Her most famous role was in the comedy series ‘Nearest and Dearest’ with comedian Jimmy Jewel. They bickered on screen as part of the script, but the insults continued off screen. The two disliked each other intensely and their arguments became showbiz legend.
1920 – Norman Wisdom, actor & star of many comedy films, was born. In 1995 he was given the Freedom of the City of London and also Tirana in Albania where the population were devoted to him and referred to him as ‘Pitkin’. He received an OBE in the same year and was knighted in 2000. He retired from acting at the age of 90 after his health deteriorated and died in October 2010.
1962 – The first colour supplement in Britain was published by The Sunday Times.
1968 – The world’s largest hovercraft, weighing 165 tonnes, was launched at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. The Hovertravel service from the mainland to the Isle of Wight is the world’s longest running commercial hovercraft service and is now the only scheduled passenger hovercraft service in Europe.
1974 – The ‘M62 coach bombing’ when a Provisional IRA bomb exploded in a coach carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members. Twelve people (nine soldiers and three civilians, including children aged 5 and 2) were killed.
1975 – Edward Heath withdrew from the Conservative party leadership after losing the first-round vote to Margaret Thatcher.
2002 – Cancer Research UK was founded. It is the world’s largest independent cancer research charity.
2008 – The London Low Emission Zone (LEZ) scheme began to operate, with hefty fines for the owners of polluting vehicles.
2012 – Fifty four year old Nottingham Forest owner Nigel Doughty was found dead at his home in Skillington, Lincolnshire. The life-long Forest fan was estimated to have invested more than £100m of his personal fortune into the football club.
2012 – The death, aged 110, of Florence Green, the last surviving veteran of the First World War from any country.
2013 – A skeleton found beneath a Leicester car park in August 2012 was confirmed as that of English king Richard III. He was reinterred at Leicester Cathedral on 26th March 2015 after experts from the University of Leicester said that DNA from the bones matched that of descendants of the monarch’s family.
2014 – A new international study showed that British workers have the shortest retirements in any major EU country, despite significant improvements in life expectancy.
2015 – An online fund, launched by Katie Cutler after the mugging of a Tyneside pensioner, was halted with donations totally £330,000. Her ‘Help Alan Barnes’ online donation page was launched after the frail and visually disabled 67-year-old had been attacked outside his Gateshead home. Richard Gatiss (25) was later arrested and given a four-year prison sentence for assault.
The average word length in the English language is 5.1 letters.
The name Scooby-Doo was inspired by Frank Sinatra’s scatting at the end of the song Strangers in the Night.
“I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you?” – Tommy DeVito
Be kinder to rude people. You may be the change they need to see.
When watching a documentary on lions, I root for the lions. When watching a documentary on antelopes, I root for the antelopes. #goteam
A group of Magpies is called a Tiding or Gulp or Murder or Charm.
To calculate the position of the Voyager 1 spacecraft some 12.5 billion miles away, you only need to use the first 15 digits of the value of Pi to be accurate within 1.5 inches.
A full-size Reeses Cup has 66 ridges around the edge.
“Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.” – Conan the Barbarian #moviequotes
“Denny Crane” – Denny Crane, Boston Legal
“Find a penny, pick it up. All day long you’ll have good luck” sounds like something Big Penny made up to keep the penny relevant.
‘Nipper’ is the name of the dog on the RCA label. ‘Chipper’ is the puppy version of the mascot.
“Mistakes are part of the game. It’s how well you recover from them, that’s the mark of a great player.” – Alice Cooper
“Our ideals, laws, and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future.” – Charles Lindbergh
“When people say I can’t or I mustn’t, I always say I can and I will.” – Oscar De La Hoya
“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks
“If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one’s outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed.” – Charles Lindbergh
“Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.” – Betty Frieden
“It isn’t how much time you spend somewhere that makes it memorable: it’s how you spend the time.” – David Brenner
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.