View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1945 – The 617 Dambuster Squadron of the RAF dropped the heaviest bomb of the war (the 22,000-pound “Grand Slam”) on the Bielefeld railway viaduct in Germany. Although known officially as the Bomb, Medium Capacity, 22,000 pound, it was nicknamed ‘Ten Ton Tess’.
1960 – Jodrell Bank’s radio telescope in Cheshire set a new record, making contact with the American Pioneer V satellite at a distance of 407,000 miles. The previous record was 290,000 miles.
1961 – The New English Bible was published.
1963 – Gerry and the Pacemakers released their first British single, “How Do You Do It?” a song the Beatles had rejected. Their biggest hit was “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, from the musical Carousel, which has been the adopted anthem of Liverpool Football Club since the mid 1960s.
1984 – Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, was shot and wounded in an attack in central Belfast when his car was riddled with bullets.
1991 – The ‘Birmingham Six’ were freed from jail after 16 years when their convictions for the murder of 21 people in two pubs were quashed by the Court of Appeal.
1996 – Joseph O’Connor, operator of the Devon trawler Pescado, which sank in 1991 with the loss of 6 lives, was jailed for 3 years.
2014 – The death at the age of 88, of Tony Benn, Labour politician, MP for more than 50 years and former cabinet minister.
2014 – Thieves who had built a 50ft (15m) tunnel to a cash machine on Liverpool Road, Eccles, got away with more than £80,000. The complex nature of its structure could have taken months to excavate and echoes a similar raid in Fallowfield Shopping Precinct in January 2012. Police said they were looking for ‘people acting suspiciously, possibly covered in soil.’
2015 – Britain’s biggest ever cruise ship, the 141,000-ton Britannia, (which was officially named by Her Majesty The Queen in Southampton) set off on its maiden voyage; a 14 night cruise around the Mediterranean.
2018 – The death, aged 76, of the world renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. At the age of 22 Professor Hawking was given only a few years to live, after being diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease.
A group of Mice is called a Mischief.
Relativity: the library is 15 minutes from my house, but closes in 10 minutes. For me then, the library is already closed, even though it is still open.
The first Legend of Zelda game was released on February 21st, 1986.
In Scotland, along with the Loch Ness Monster, we supposedly have a lesser-known monster in Loch Morar called Morag.
The little hole at one end of a grape is its belly button.
“Well, you can’t please everybody.” – Jiminy Cricket
“You cannot write unless you write much.” – W. Somerset Maugham
Singer Tracy Chapman was first drawn to the guitar by the TV show “Hee Haw”.
A group of Emus is called a Mob.
Today in 1912, the US cookie brand “Oreo” trademarked its name.
Colonel Harland Sanders cooked the first batch of Kentucky Fried Chicken at Sanders Cafe in Corbin, Kentucky.
When one door closes another door opens, and now we don’t know where the cat is.
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.