View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
What : day is it
1808 – Birth of Thomas Cook, the English travel agent. He began his pioneering tour business, Thomas Cook & Son, when he organized the first publicly advertised railway excursion from Leicester to a temperance meeting at Loughborough (11 miles away) on 5th July 1841.
1819 – The birth, in Nuneaton, of Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot. She was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.
1869 – The clipper Cutty Sark was launched In Dumbarton, Scotland. She was one of the last clippers ever built, and is the only one still surviving today. She is preserved as a museum ship, located near the centre of Greenwich, in south-east London.
1943 – World War II: Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek met in Cairo, to discuss ways to defeat Japan.
1946 – The first Biro ballpoint pen went on sale, invented by Hungarian Laszlo Biro and manufactured by a British company.
1963 – President John F Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Vice president Lyndon B Johnson is sworn in as President aboard Air Force One. On the same day, author Aldous Huxley dies aged 69. Also, author C.S. Lewis dies aged 64.
1971 – Five teenagers, all from Ainslie Park School in Edinburgh, and their female instructor died in one of Scotland’s worst mountaineering accidents.
1977 – The world’s first supersonic airliner, Concorde, was given permission to fly into New York’s Kennedy Airport following an agreement over noise levels.
1990 – Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdrew from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her premiership that had begun in 1979
1995 – Britain’s most prolific female serial killer, Rosemary West, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 10 young women and girls.
1997 – Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of Australian rock band INXS and partner of British television star Paula Yates, was found dead in a hotel in Sydney.
2003 – England’s rugby team won the World Cup, beating Australia 20-17 in a nail biting final in Sydney.
2004 – Ozzy Osbourne struggled with a burglar who escaped with jewellery worth about £2m from his Buckinghamshire mansion.
2013 – Police arrested 63 year old Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-operative Bank, in connection with an ongoing drugs supply investigation that plunged the group into crisis.
2018 – After 20 years of work, the Leaning Tower of Pisa had its lean corrected by 17.7 inches (45 cm).
Did you know that on this day in 1995, the first of Disney’s “Toy Story” movies were released. It was the first entirely computer-animated feature film to be released.
For large frozen pizzas, fold the box inside out to use it as a plate for when you pull it out of the oven. Larger pizzas are hard to find dishes for, and the box is always the right size.
The Capital of Costa Rica is San Jose.
A group of Porcupines is called a Prickle.
When reading comments online and I see “Astronomer here” or “Engineer here” I just assume it’s some college kid who’s taken an intro class on the subject.
It’s called The Breakfast Club, but they don’t actually eat breakfast. It should be called The Lunch Club.
Everyone has their own secret system of how to shake the box of lucky charms to get more marshmallows to fall out into their bowl.
Anna Jarvis, the woman who founded Mother’s Day, tried to get the holiday revoked when companies began to commercialize it for profits.
The term ‘leotard’ was named for the first person to complete the Flying Trapeze Act in 1859, Jules Leotard.
French and German soldiers suffered more causalities fighting each other in a single battle in WW1 (Verdun; 1,250,000) than they did while fighting each other in the whole of WW2.
Birthday : quotes
“It should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.” – John F. Kennedy
“The more I like me, the less I want to pretend to be other people.” – Jamie Lee Curtis
“I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous – everyone hasn’t met me yet.” – Rodney Dangerfield
“I did all sorts of jobs after drama school – working in a bar, as a teaching assistant. I probably learned as much from them as I did at drama school.” – Hoagy Carmichael
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.