View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1875 – The death of Charles Kingsley, the English clergyman who wrote The Water Babies.
1900 – Second Boer War: The defeat of the British at the Battle of Spion Kop, 24 miles west-south-west of Ladysmith on a steep terraced hilltop. Many football grounds in the English Premier League and Football League, have one terrace or stand ‘Spion Kop’ or ‘Kop’ because of the steep nature of their terracing.
1901 – Marconi carried out his first radio transmission experiments, receiving a Morse code signal across the water from St. Catherine’s on the Isle of Wight to the Lizard in Cornwall.
1943 – The British captured Tripoli. The Germans retreated, and the Eighth Army crossed into Tunisia in pursuit.
1955 – Fourteen people died and dozens were injured when an express train travelling from York to Bristol derailed at Sutton Coldfield station.
1963 – At 7.30 pm in Beirut, the American Eleanor Philby was waiting for her husband Kim, a Middle East correspondent for two London journals, to collect her. Instead, he was on his way to Moscow – ‘the most damaging double agent in British history’.
1985 – PC George Hammond was viciously stabbed while on the beat in London, and it took more than 120 pints of blood to save his life. He had continual nightmares and never recovered from the injuries suffered in the attack. His right kidney was removed and his left kidney never functioned properly again. This had led to chronic heart problems, culminating in a heart attack and kidney failure shortly before his death in Kings College Hospital on 13th December 1995.
1985 – A House of Lords debate was televised for the first time.
1986 – Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, Ray Charles, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers and Elvis Presley are the first inductees to the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame.
1989 – Legislation came into force which permitted garages to display fuel prices by litre only, not by the gallon.
2005 – Happy Mondays dancer Bez, wins the £50,000 Celebrity Big Brother prize after receiving 54% of the final viewer vote.
2013 – Chelsea’s Eden Hazard is sent off in the Capital One Cup semi final against Swansea for kicking a ballboy. On the same day, the US armed forces overturn a 1994 ban on women serving in combat.
2015 – The owner of the mobile network ‘Three’ confirmed that it was in exclusive negotiations to acquire O2 UK from Spanish telco Telefonica for £10.25bn. It would have made the combined Three and O2 operator the biggest in the UK, with a 41% share of the market but the deal was blocked in May 2016 by the European Commission.
2018 – Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond retires after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. On the same day, 12 camels are disqualified from the King Abdulaziz Camel beauty contest in Saudi Arabia after their owners used botox on their lips.
The biggest film of 2001: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Action/Adventure) earned ~ $318,000,000
The local density of mosquitos is inversely proportional to your remaining repellent.
SCOTTY’S RULE: When doing work for someone and giving a completion date, make it later than you expect so when you get it done early you look golden!
R2D2 must swear a lot considering they bleep out every single word he says.
TV Quotes… “I’m Larry, this is my brother Darryl …” (Larry) on “Newhart”
A bunch of Information is called a Wealth.
“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.” – Charlie Chaplin
Useless Pronunciation: W as in wrest
Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” – Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) in Gone with the Wind, 1939
The biggest film of 2000: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Comedy/Adventure) earned ~ $260,000,000
It must be really embarrassing to be the guy who shouts “It’s a bird!” when it turns out to be Superman.
Describing yourself as someone smarter than most people is not socially acceptable. Saying that people are stupid is. The only difference is the wording.
Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely is, therefore, a great step towards happiness. – Stendhal
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Being fearless means busting down those walls of fear and being who you are, not who someone else thinks you are. – Mariska Hargitay
One can acquire everything in solitude, except character. – Stendhal
People who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue. – John Hancock
There’s a standard formula for success in the entertainment medium, and that is: Beat it to death if it succeeds. – Ernie Kovacs
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.