View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
What : day is it
1947 – Princess Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth II) married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten (Duke of Edinburgh) at Westminster Abbey. The BBC made the first tele-recording of the event, which was broadcast in the US 32 hours later.
1951 – Snowdonia in Wales was designated a National Park.
1970 – The ten-shilling note (50p) was officially withdrawn by the Bank of England. The note was issued by the Bank of England for the first time in 1928 and continued to be printed until 1969. The note ceased to be legal tender in 1970 and was removed in favour of the fifty pence coin.
1979 – Anthony Blunt, the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was stripped of his knighthood after admitting to being a spy for Russia, thereby exposed as the Fourth Man in the Burgess, Maclean and Philby spy scandal.
1990 – Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, fails to win outright victory in her battle for the leadership of the Conservative Party, finishing four votes short of the 56 required after 16 MPs abstain.
1992 – Fire severely damaged the ‘Brunswick Tower’, at Windsor Castle when a spotlight ignited a curtain. The castle is the largest inhabited castle in the world and one of the official residences of Queen Elizabeth II. The question of how the funds required should be found raised important issues about the financing of the monarchy, and led to Buckingham Palace being opened to the public for the first time to help to pay for the restoration.
2007 – Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 went missing. The Child Benefit data on them included the name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25 million people. Chancellor Alistair Darling said there was no evidence the data had gone to criminals – but urged people to monitor bank accounts “for unusual activity”.
2012 – 32 year old Kweku Adoboli, a City trader who lost £1.4bn of Swiss bank UBS’s money was jailed for seven years after being found guilty of two counts of fraud. It was Britain’s biggest banking fraud and a ‘a gamble or two away from destroying Switzerland’s largest bank’.
2013 – Hull was chosen to be the UK’s city of culture for 2017. Hull’s bid, which promises £15m programme of cultural events, was chosen ahead of Dundee, Swansea Bay and Leicester.
2014 – Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine was stopped on his way to work at the BBC by a police officer holding a speed radar gun. The device showed that he had been cycling at 16mph through Hyde Park, where the limit is 5mph.
2014 – The UK’s first bus powered entirely by human and food waste went into service between Bristol and Bath. The 40-seat ‘Bio-Bus’ runs on biomethane gas generated through the treatment of sewage and food waste.
2019 – Snake fossils found in Rio Negro Province, Argentina, showed snakes with hind legs that lived over 70 million years ago.
Did you know, apples are more effective at waking you up in the morning than coffee.
“In Switzerland, they had brotherly love – and 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” – Harry Lime (Orson Welles) #moviequotes
Krispy Kreme’s Original Glazed Donut is Only 190 Calories.
A NASCAR driver maintains the same heart rate – 120 to 150 beats per minute for 3-plus hours – as a serious marathon runner for about the same length of time.
In 1972, Canada had a contest to complete the saying “As Canadian as…”. The winner was “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances.”
1986’s Top Gun had a production budget of only 15 million dollars.
The world record for most Rubik’s Cubes solved while blindfolded is held by Marcin Kowalczyk, who solved 41 out of 41 cubes in 54 minutes.
“You eeeediot!” – Ren (Ren & Stimpy)
US President #31 Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) His inaction to rebound the economy during the Great Depression led to shanties inhabited by the homeless to be referred to as “Hoovervilles.”
The tool used to cut diamonds, a scaif, was invented in the 1400s and uses olive oil and diamond dust to uniformly polish and cut diamonds. It is still in use today.
The Capital of Cote d’Ivoire is Yamoussoukro (official); Abidjan (de facto)
Birthday : quotes
“The pathways of crime are clearly marked. There’s a double-cross on every corner. I usually start with a repulsive character and go on from there. I decided that if the police couldn’t catch the gangsters, I’d create a fellow who could.” – Chester Gould, creator of Dick Tracy
“One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.” – Robert F. Kennedy
“You can’t be a legend in your parent’s basement.” – Joe Walsh
“Many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. “Give me a place to stand,” said Archimedes, “and I will move the world.” These men moved the world, and so can we all.” – Robert F. Kennedy
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.