View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1916 – The birth, in Huddersfield, of Harold Wilson, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, British Labour Prime Minister from 1964-70, and again from 1974-1976 until he resigned, aged 60.
1932 – Birth of Nigel Lawson, former editor of the Spectator turned politician. He was Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983-1989.
1945 – The huge Krupps munitions factory in Germany was destroyed when 1,000 Allied bombers took part in the biggest ever daylight raid.
1955 – The death, aged 73, of Sir Alexander Fleming, the British Nobel Prize winning bacteriologist who discovered penicillin.
1974 – Two self-proclaimed British Government, anti IRA spies, escaped from a top-security prison in Ireland where they were serving sentences for armed robbery.
1988 – The Bank of England pound note, first introduced on 12th March 1797, ceased to be legal tender in Britain at midnight. When the deadline for returning old notes was reached, it was estimated that some 70 million were still outstanding.
1997 – Ann Widdecombe became the first Prisons’ Minister to visit all the 129 jails in Britain.
2013 – Former cabinet minister Chris Huhne and his former wife Vicky Pryce were both jailed for eight months for perverting the course of justice. The pair, sentenced at Southwark Crown Court, were convicted after she took driving licence points for him after he was caught speeding in 2003.
2014 – The death of the Rail Maritime and Transport union leader Bob Crow, at the age of 52. He led the RMT from 2002 and became one of Britain’s most high-profile union leaders.
2014 – Dozens of firefighters were called out to deal with a blaze at a fire station. The retained fire crew at Downham Market in Norfolk could do nothing, because their own fire engine was caught up in the blaze that started in their own building.
2018 – The death (aged 90) of the comedian Ken Dodd, just days after leaving hospital following a long term chest infection. He passed away in his home at Knotty Ash, Liverpool, the home that he was born in and had lived in for his entire life. Two days earlier he had married his long term partner of 40 years, Anne Jones. Ken Dodd made his professional debut on 27th September, 1954.
2020 – The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that the spread of Covid-19 was now at a Pandemic stage.
On this day in 1918, the Spanish flu received its first case. It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus.
PEZ was invented in 1927 by Austrian Edward Haas in the original flavour of peppermint.
“Find out what people want to do, then tell them to do it. They’ll think you’re a genius.” – Connie Brockway
Madonna – Real Name: Madonna Louise Ciccone
A stopped clock is more accurate than a working clock that runs fast or slow.
Around 8% of children and 2% of adults have some kind of food allergy.
“Elementary, my dear Watson.” – Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) #moviequotes #notthebooks
Godzilla officially holds Japanese citizenship.
Wyoming would be one of the best places to be in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Unless the zombie sickness was communicable by rabbits – then it would be one of the worst.
Victoria’s Secret comes from “Victoria” after Queen Victoria (to associate with the refinement of the era) and “Secret” (was what was hidden underneath the clothes).
Does Mr. Snuffleupagus call Big Bird just Bird because he isn’t all that big from Mr. Snuffleupagus’s perspective?
The Capital of Ukraine is Kyiv.
Iceland does not have any mosquitos.
Whoever invented the letter W was an idiot, they created the only multi-syllable, multi-word, based-off-of-another-letter letter, and it’s barely ever used.
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.
2015 – Archaeologists began excavating up to 3,000 skeletons from a burial ground under London’s Liverpool Street station.