View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1901 – Queen Victoria died, aged 81 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. At the time, her reign was the longest in British history, spanning 63 years.
1920 – The birth of Sir Alf Ramsey, football manager of England when they won the 1966 World Cup. He was knighted in 1967 in recognition of England’s World Cup win the previous year.
1924 – Stanley Baldwin resigned as British Prime Minister at the end of an unsuccessful election and the new Labour Party had their first Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald.
1927 – The first live radio commentary of a football match anywhere in the world, between Arsenal F.C. and Sheffield United, at Highbury.
1941 – World War II: British and Commonwealth troops captured Tobruk from Italian forces during Operation Compass.
1955 – Joe Davis recorded the first official maximum snooker break of 147 in an exhibition match at Leicester Square Hall
1959 – Mike Hawthorn, English race car driver and one-time F1 world champion died, aged 29, in a road accident on the A3 bypass near Guildford driving his British Racing Green Jaguar 3.4-litre car. What happened on that day is still unknown.
1962 – The ‘A6 Murder’ trial began, the longest murder trial in British legal history. James Hanratty was accused of murdering Michael Gregston at a lay-by near Bedford. The trial finally ended on 17th February 1962 with Hanratty sentenced to hang, despite his protests of innocence and disquiet amongst some observers of the trial.
1972 – The United Kingdom, the Irish Republic and Denmark joined the Common Market.
1992 – Rebecca Ridgway became the first woman to row around Cape Horn in a canoe. The expedition began on 8th January in Chile & the 200 mile expedition, through the Beagle Channel to Cape Horn Island, was directed by her father, ex -transatlantic rower John Ridgway.
2015 – Mothers invited to a Scottish Government-backed breastfeeding conference were left angry and bemused after being told that they would not be allowed to breastfeed their babies.
2015 – Survival expert Ray Mears, who was due to make at least £10,000 as a speaker at the Caravan, Camping and Motorhome Show was sacked after he chose caravans as one of his pet hates on the TV show ‘Room 101’.
2017 – Peter Maddox’s bright yellow Corsa car was targeted in the Cotswold village of Bibury by vandals who broke the rear window and scratched ‘move’ on the paintwork. In 2015 people had started to complain on social media that the car was constantly ‘photobombing’ their photographs of the quintessentially English cottages on Arlington Row, Bibury. The cottages appear inside millions of UK passports. In April 2017 a convoy of 100 yellow cars drove through Bibury in an act of solidarity.
2020 – China locks down the city of Wuhan and its 11 million people, in an effort to control COVID-19.
Useless Pronunciation: D, as in Djinn
When my dad shouts at a sport on TV, he/s showing his passion for the sport. When I shout at a video game, I’m an ‘angry nerd’.
Cole’s Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.
Richard Dawson (original host of Family Feud) was asked by producers to quit kissing women. He asked the audience to mail in what they wanted, 704 were against the kissing, and 14,600 wanted him to continue.
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
2000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton
The word “alphabet” comes from the first two letters, alpha and beta.
GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) is where the clocks start from, kept accurate by UT (Universal Time)
Insurance must be crazy expensive in Metropolis and Gotham City. #SupertownProblems
Blackberries and strawberries are not berries, but tomatoes and avocados are.
In Star Wars, if Luke turned off his targeting computer and then missed the Death Star’s exhaust port he would have looked like the biggest fool ever.
The Capital of Rwanda is Kigali
If you listen, you learn; if you talk, you don’t. – John Hurt
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. – Robert E. Howard
Its difficult to understand why people don’t realize that pets are gifts to mankind. – Linda Blair
I can see now that I should have been strong enough to conquer myself. – Author: – Conrad Veidt
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them. – Francis Bacon
We’re takin’ you on a road rockin’ trip down to Flavourtown, where the gravitational force of bacon warps the laws of space and time. – Guy Feiri
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.