View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
1994 – Britain’s first National Lottery draw. It had a jackpot of £7M and was shown live on BBC television.
What : day is it
1911 – Doom Bar (previously known as Dunbar sands or Dune-bar) in Cornwall claimed two ships in a single day, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew, except the captain. There have been over 600 beachings, wrecks and capsizings at Doom Bar since records began early in the 19th century, with about 300 ships being wrecked.
1924 – The birth of the actor William Russell. His big break was the title role in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot on ITV in 1956. The series was sold to American NBC network and became the first UK television series to be shot in colour.
1947 – George VI created Philip Mountbatten the Duke of Edinburgh in preparation for his wedding to George’s elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II), the following day.
1949 – Dennis Taylor, Irish snooker player, was born.
1951 – The white football became official.
1960 – The first VTOL (vertical take off and landing) aircraft P.1127, made by the British Hawker Siddeley Company was flown, untethered, for the first time. It’s first conventional flight, (i.e. a horizontal take off) was on 13th March 1961.
1969 – Pelé, the legendary Brazilian soccer star, scored his 1,000th goal. Known primarily as Pelé, Edson Arantes do Nascimento started playing for the Brazilian national soccer team when he was just 16.
1987 – A 1931 Bugatti Royale was sold for £5.5 million at an auction at the Royal Albert Hall, a record at that time for a car.
1994 – Britain’s first National Lottery draw. It had a jackpot of £7M and was shown live on BBC television. A £1 ticket gave a one in 14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers. The first numbers drawn were 30, 3, 5, 44, 14 and 22, the bonus was 10, and seven jackpot winners shared a prize of £5,874,778.
1996 – A fire broke out in the Channel Tunnel, injuring 34 people and disrupting rail services.
1997 – Police confiscated indecent videos and pictures of children in a series of raids on the homes and offices of British pop star Gary Glitter. Exactly six years later, American pop star Michael Jackson was arrested in California on charges of child molestation.
2009 – Floods in Cumbria brought devastation to towns such as Cockermouth. In just 24-hours the total rainfall at Seathwaite was 31.44cm (12.4 inches); a UK record for a single location in any given 24-hour period. William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, on Main Street and his house was one of many historic houses in the region to be affected by the floods.
2012 – Two snap bags of the class A drug cocaine were identified by the police officer father of children who had been trick-or-treating in the Royton area of Oldham. Magistrates heard that Donald Junior Green, 23, was mortified by his ‘terrible mistake. He was given a 12-month community order and 130 hours community work.
2012 – Father Christmas was left dangling from the ceiling for 30 minutes after his beard became trapped while abseiling inside a Reading shopping centre as part of a Christmas lights switch-on show.
2019 – Spurs sack manager Mauricio Pochettino and replace him with Jose Mourinho.
Did you know that on this day in 1493, Christopher Columbus discovered Puerto Rico on his second voyage? He named the island San Juan Bautista in honor of St John the baptist.
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.
M&M’s chocolate stands for the initials for its inventors Mars and Murrie
The “moral” of the movie Grease is that it’s okay to give in to peer pressure, completely change yourself, and abandon any moral code you stand by in order to get a guy.
Ecuador’s large monument to the Equator is not really on the equator. They marked the wrong spot 200 years ago and didn’t realize it until GPS was invented.
If you forget to return a library book and the fee gets too expensive, you might as well wait 70 years and then return it. Someone will write an article about it and the library will waive the fee.
The Capital of Croatia is Zagreb.
The political phrase “cult of personality” was first used by Karl Marx.
The first movie to gross over $100 million was “Jaws” in 1975.
Both Chicago the city, and the Chicago River were both named after the native name for a species of wild onion that grew profusely in the area, Chicagou.
Dean Martin – Real Name: Dino Crocetti
The shortest scientific paper published, “The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of writer’s block”, was written by Dennis Upper and published in 1974. It contains no text except for the title.
Birthday : quotes
“It’s a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography, but if you write your biography, it’s equally assumed you’re lying your head off.” – Margaret Atwood
“War is what happens when language fails.” – Margaret Atwood
“We’re all puppets, Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings.” – Alan Moore, via Dr. Manhattan, in Watchmen
“I was brought up in an environment to believe that my opinion was important, that I had something to say, and that it was no less powerful because I was young, a girl, at the time really unattractive, definitely not the smartest kid in the class.” – Megyn Kelly
“There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse is often closer to the truth.” – Alan Moore
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.