View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1881 – Rioting took place in Basingstoke in protest against the daily promotion of rigid alcohol abstinence by the Salvation Army.
1899 – Italian inventor Marconi achieved the first international radio transmission (a Morse Code message) between England and France.
1912 – Birth of (Leonard) James Callaghan, former Labour Party leader and Prime Minister from 1976-1979.
1923 – The death of Sir James Dewar, Scottish chemist and physicist and the inventor of the vacuum flask.
1963 – The Beeching Report on Britain’s railways was published. The report concluded that only half the network’s routes carried enough traffic to cover the cost of operating them. Many lines and stations were subsequently closed.
1964 – Six months after the ‘Great Train Robbery’ in Buckinghamshire, 20 of the gang were still at large, but the ten who were arrested were found guilty of stealing more than £2.6m from mailbags. They included Ronnie Biggs. Sentences totalled 307 years in jail.
1966 – The stolen football world cup was found in south London by a dog called Pickles, whilst it was out for a walk with its owner.
1980 – The oilrig platform Alexander Keiland, located 235 miles east of Dundee, overturned in the North Sea killing 123.
1991 – David Icke, former footballer, BBC sports presenter and member of the Green Party, announced that he had been “chosen” to save the world.
1994 – The future warplane, Eurofighter, made its inaugural flight two years later than expected, at Manching in Germany. Eurofighter is the most expensive combat aircraft built in Europe, and was developed by a consortium of European companies, including British Aerospace.
2004 – HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander class frigate, was sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, about 40 minutes by boat from Plymouth. It was the first of its kind in Europe and the ship soon became a very popular dive site and a source of study for marine life.
2008 – The Gordon Ramsay Plane Food restaurant opened within terminal 5 at London Heathrow Airport.
2020 – Prime Minister Boris Johnson tested positive for coronavirus, also the Health Secretary Matt Hancock and England’s Chief Medical Officer, Prof. Chris Whitty, has shown symptoms. Figures showed that another 181 people died with the virus in the past day alone.
Beethoven composed the famous “Ninth Symphony” after he had gone totally deaf.
“getting the hang of it” comes from attaching the head of an axe to the shaft just right.
I feel like I spent a lot of time as a child being taught the difference between stalactites and stalagmites and zero time needing to know that information.
Half of infinity would be infinity.
“Stella! Hey, Stella!” – Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) in A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951
Before alarm clocks, there were ‘knocker-ups’ in Britain and Ireland who went knocking door to door with a large stick.
Under UN protocol, the President of the United States is to be addressed as “His Excellency.”
In the 1850s, baseball had different rules in Massachusetts than it did in New York. Under the Massachusetts rules, you could throw the ball at a runner, and if you hit them, they were out.
A standard 3×3 Rubik’s Cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different possible configurations.
Why do Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bother wearing masks?
Michael Buffer the “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble” guy had the phrase trademarked and as of 2009, it has generated $400 million dollars in revenue.
“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” – Arthur “Cody” Jarrett (James Cagney) in White Heat, 1949
Tom Cruise – Real Name: Tom Cruise Mapother
Over 15,000 forms of life have been found in the New York Subway system
Robot B9 – the official name for the robot on Lost In Space
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.