View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
What : day is it
1950 – A novice U.S. team beat the highly fancied England players 1-0 in the first round of the World Cup in Brazil. The English team included Billy Wright and Tom Finney.
1956 – Sydney Silverman’s bill for the abolition of the death penalty was passed by the House of Commons. It was defeated in the Lords on 10th July.
1960 – 45 men were killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in Monmouthshire, Wales.
1991 – Margaret Thatcher announced that she was to retire from the House of Commons at the next general election. The former prime minister, who held her Finchley seat for more than thirty years, said she intended to remain in politics and wanted to go to the House of Lords …. and she did!
1997 – Mike Tyson is disqualified for biting off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear during their heavyweight title bout in Las Vegas.
2001 – 36,000 people lined the banks of the River Tyne to watch the Millennium Bridge tilt for the first time. The bridge was the world’s first tilting bridge. It spans the River Tyne between Gateshead’s Quays arts quarter on the south bank, and the Quayside of Newcastle upon Tyne on the north bank.
2004 – The US handed sovereignty back to Iraq in a low-key ceremony in Baghdad.
2012 – The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh attended a ceremony in London’s Green Park when the first national memorial dedicated to more than 50,000 fallen personnel from World War 2’s Bomber Command was unveiled. The ceremony culminated in a poppy drop from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
2013 – 75 year old ‘Moors Murderer’ Ian Brady, who, along with Myra Hindley, tortured and murdered five children in the 1960s, lost his legal bid to be transferred from a psychiatric hospital back to prison. He claimed that he hated Ashworth hospital because ‘the regime has changed to a penal warehouse.’
2014 – The death of Eric Whalley, aged 74, former player, manager, chairman and ‘saviour’ of Accrington Stanley, who guided the club back to the Football League. Accrington Stanley folded in 1963, reformed in 1968 and returned to the Football League in 2006 after Whalley took over running the club in 1995.
2015 – The broadcast of the final episode of Top Gear with presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. Clarkson’s contract was not renewed earlier in the year after an ‘unprovoked physical attack’ on producer, Oisin Tymon at a hotel in North Yorkshire in March 2015. His co-hosts refused to present future shows without him.
2020 – The global death toll from COVID-19 passes 500,000, doubling in less than two months.
Did you know that on this day in 1926, three companies merged to form Mercedes-Benz? It got its name from its predecessors and was initially called Daimler-Benz.
Milhouse Van Houten in The Simpsons was inspired by actor Paul Pfeiffer.
A group of Cats (domesticated) is called a Clowder or Clutter or Pounce or Dout or Nuisance or Glorying or Glare.
The human body is roughly 125,822 calories.
A mirror always looks twice as dirty then it actually is.
“Don’t dream it, Be it” #songlyrics
Notice the big letter on the face of the dollar bill? Each letter represents which Federal Reserve Bank printed it! “E” is for Richmond
“We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.” – Harrison Ford
Chili, Fajitas, and Corn Dogs Were All Invented In Texas.
The average of 49 and 50 is 49.50.
Stan Lee has been in more superhero movies than any superhero.
“Every child has the spirit of creation. The rubbish of life often exterminates the spirit through plague and a soul’s own wretchedness.” – Peter Paul Rubens
“I don’t know of any other creature on earth other than man that will sit in a corner and cry because of some painful experience in the past.” – Pat Morita
“Condemn no man for not thinking as you think. Let everyone enjoy the full and free liberty of thinking for himself. Let every man use his own judgment since every man must give an account of himself to God. Abhor every approach, in any kind or degree, to the spirit of persecution, if you cannot reason nor persuade a man into the truth, never attempt to force a man into it. If love will not compel him to come, leave him to God, the judge of all.” – John Wesley
“I want to be defined by my own essence.” – Kathy Bates
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” – Elon Musk
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.
2012 – The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant took place on the Tideway of the River Thames, as part of the celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.