View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1924 – The first British national airline, Imperial Airways, was founded at Croydon Airport.
1930 – Scottish engineer John Logie Baird installed a TV set at 10 Downing Street.
1938 – The birth, in Kirkcaldy, Fife, of David Steel who served as the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1976 until its merger with the Social Democratic Party in 1988.
1939 – Britain and France agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade.
1949 – Winston Churchill declared that the atomic bomb was the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from taking over Europe.
1953 – More than 1,500 attended the funeral of Queen Mary at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.
1966 – Harold Wilson won a sweeping victory in the general election, with a majority of about 100 seats in the House of Commons.
1972 – The Beatles’ Official Fan Club closed down.
1972 – More than 500 people attended a rally in London ahead of a four-day demonstration against nuclear arms.
1973 – Racehorse Red Rum won the Grand National Steeplechase in a record time of 9 min. 1.9 sec., a record that remained unbroken for 16 years. He is the only horse to have won the Grand National three times.
1986 – Hampton Court Palace was severely damaged by fire.
1986 – Six metropolitan county councils, along with Greater London Council were abolished On This Day. They were… The West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire councils. The disbanding of seven of the largest councils in Europe was ordered by the government to cut bureaucracy and increase efficiency.
1990 – An anti-poll tax rally in London erupted into the worst riots in the city for a 100 years when 200,000 protestors took to the streets.
1993 – Actor Brandon Lee (son of Bruce Lee) dies in an “on-set” firearms accident whist filming The Crow aged 28.
1999 – The Matrix was released in the US and grossed over $460 million worldwide.
2011 – Edward Stobart, who built up the Eddie Stobart lorry empire and ran it for more than 30 years, died at the age of 56.The company has grown to the extent that its iconic green trucks are now a regular sight all over the country, with a fan club of 25,000.
2013 – Easter Sunday was confirmed as the coldest Easter day on record, with the lowest temperature recorded as -12.5C in Braemar, in the Scottish Highlands.
2014 – The Hillsborough inquests began, with a jury of 11 people selected from 1,000 who initially received a summons. The inquests into the deaths of the 96 victims of the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster were ordered in December 2012, after verdicts of accidental death from a previous inquest were quashed by the High Court in London.
2019 – George Clooney and Elton John call to boycott hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei after he plans new anti-gay laws to make homosexual sex punishable by death.
Did you know that on this day in 1889, the iconic Eiffel Tower was officially opened? It remained the tallest man-made tower for 41 years.
The band playing most of the songs on Michael Jackson’s Thriller album was Toto.
Giant Pandas poop up to 40 times per day.
The word Chortle was made by the author of Alice in Wonderland in his poem Jabberwocky, as a nonsense word and blend of the words chuckle and snort
The Who’s “You Better You Bet” was the fourth-ever music video played on MTV, it was also the 54th, being the first to be repeated.
The law of urination states that all mammals take roughly 21 seconds to empty their bladders regardless of size.
After Disney acquired Miramax in 1993, the first film given the green-light was Quentin Tarantino’s R-rated Pulp Fiction.
Gary Larson, the creator of “The Far Side” comics, coined a term that is used by paleontologists – The Thagomizer.
The Beatles had a specific clause in their contract that stated that they would not ever have to play for a segregated audience.
The term ‘dead ringer’ comes from the practice of substituting a thoroughbred horse with a look-a-like to trick bookies.
For the first 40 million years that woody trees were around, wood was not biodegradable…until a fungus figured out how to rot it
Disney’s Ursula The Sea Witch is inspired, in both appearance and demeanor, by drag legend and John Waters’ muse Divine.
The blob of toothpaste they show in toothpaste ads is called a “Nurdle”.
George Washington had his own personal recipe for egg nog that he would serve to guests, which included one-pint brandy, 1/2 pint rye whiskey, 1/2 pint Jamaica rum, and 1/4 pint sherry wine.
Dogs develop bite inhibition, the ability to control the strength of a bite as puppies, learning that harsh bites often interrupt playtime.
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.