View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1922 – Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was jailed for six years by the British authorities for encouraging public disorder. He was released in February 1924 for an appendicitis operation, having served only 2 years of his sentence.
1925 – Two floors of the Madame Tussaud’s waxworks in London were destroyed by fire.
1947 – The Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, (born in Corfu – Greece on 10th June 1921), became a naturalized Briton On This Day.
1960 – The naming ceremony of the steam locomotive Evening Star, at the Swindon Works, where the locomotive was built. Evening Star was the last steam locomotive built for British Rail and holds the distinction of being the only British main line steam locomotive that was earmarked for preservation from the date of its construction.
1967 – The Torrey Canyon oil tanker, with a cargo of 100,000 gallons of crude oil, ran aground on rocks between Land’s End and the Scilly Isles and its cargo discharged into the sea. The RAF and the Royal Navy were called in to napalm bomb the slick in an attempt to reduce the risk of pollution. In the weeks that followed the accident, oil escaped and spread along the shores of the south coast of England and the Normandy coast of France. Worst hit were the Cornish beaches of Marazion and Prah Sands, where sludge was up to a foot deep.
1982 – Moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse brought a charge of gross indecency against a National Theatre director under the Sexual Offences Act 1956. The play, Romans in Britain featured male rape scenes. The trial was halted after intervention by the Attorney-General.
1992 – White South Africans backed a motion to end apartheid and create a multi-racial government.
2003 – The UK government recognized British Sign Language (BSL) as an official language.
2012 – Wayne Rooney apologized to a 9-year-old fan after accidentally breaking his wrist.
2014 – Rhossili Bay near Swansea plummeted in the TripAdvisor rankings of the world’s best beaches after some visitors grumbled about dark sand, cloudy water and bad weather.
2015 – Two Polish men were rescued after trying to paddle from Britain to Calais in a rowing boat, after failing to find jobs in Britain. Last year 28 illegal immigrants were caught trying to smuggle themselves out of Britain.
Did you know that on this day in 1965, cosmonaut Alexey Leonov made the first spacewalk? He was outside the Voskhod 2 spacecraft for 12 minutes.
I stopped to put air in my tires today. The pump cost £1.50! I remember when those things used to only cost 20p. I guess the price has adjusted for inflation.
TV Quotes… “Suit up!” (Barney Stinson) on “How I Met Your Mother”
Michael Jackson did actually voice the Simpsons character Leon Kompowsky (mental patient who pretended to be Michael Jackson).
If there are an infinite amount of numbers, then there has to be an infinite number of names for these numbers. I guess a blabillion is a number then.
The “Bong” sound/musical cue in “Inception” is actually the song Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien by Edith Piaf slowed down.
One meter (metre) was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the North Pole through Paris.
The average American adult spends 93% of their life indoors.
FOR SALE: The entire planet Mars. This fourth planet from the Sun has everything a planetary warlord would need! Comfortable gravity. Cool temperatures. Majestic, rusty terrain. Just add water to see it spring to life!
The Capital of Oman is Muscat
Cavemen had tattoos. Ötzi the Iceman from 3250 B.C. had 61 tattoos across his body.
Sea Otters have the densest hair in the world, ranging from about 26,000 to 165,000 hairs per square centimeter.
The biggest film of 1965: The Sound of Music (Musical).
The colour you see in total darkness is not black, but a dark gray called “eigengrau”.
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.
2015 – Archaeologists began excavating up to 3,000 skeletons from a burial ground under London’s Liverpool Street station.