View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
What : day is it
1919 – Nancy Astor became Britain’s first woman MP, holding a safe Plymouth seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election caused by her husband’s elevation to the peerage.
1935 – The Miles quadruplets (Ann, Ernest, Michael and Paul) were born in Cambridgeshire and were the first British quads to survive infancy.
1967 – All horse racing in Britain was suspended ‘indefinitely’ to help prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
1968 – The death of the children’s author Enid Blyton. She wrote more than 800 books over 40 years including Noddy, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven.
1971 – An English farmer uncovered a major immigrant smuggling operation when he rammed a plane which had landed at a disused airfield on his farm in Kimbolton, 10 miles from Huntingdon. The pilot escaped but police officers arrived soon after the incident and detained the five occupants of the plane.
1990 – Margaret Thatcher made her last speech outside 10 Downing Street following her resignation as Prime Minister.
1993 – The Northern Ireland peace process and Prime Minister John Major’s credibility were dealt a blow when secret government contacts with the IRA were publicly disclosed.
1997 – MPs in the House of Commons approved a Private Member’s Bill, introduced by Labour MP Michael Foster, to ban fox hunting.
1999 – Eleven people were injured when a nude swordsman attacked churchgoers at St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church in London.
2006 – A modern spy drama unfolded following the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London when traces of polonium-210 radiation were found at central London addresses.
2011 – British company Captive Media announced details of its urinal mounted, urine-controlled games console for men. They called it the first ‘hands-free’ video gaming console of its kind, with games on offer including a skiing challenge, and a multiple choice pub quiz. A noted side effect was that the toilets became markedly cleaner, as a new premium was set on accuracy.
2013 – A Newport man (James Howells) searched a landfill site in South Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away, worth over £4m. The drive contained 7,500 bitcoins, a virtual form of currency for use online. The drive was not found.
2013 – The grand unveiling of TV’s Coronation Street (Weatherfield) at its new home on Salford Quays, across the water from the BBC. In January 2014 the soap left its long established Quay Street site in Manchester city centre, which was sold for £26.5m.
2014 – Jordan Winn was jailed for 13 months after he was caught driving at nearly 100mph in a 30mph zone. Winn blamed his Staffordshire bull terrier, who he said was in the footwell of his Volvo S60, for sitting on the accelerator pedal.
2019 – The EU declares a climate emergency.
It’s actually quite amazing that we all have a standardized unit of time. We can’t seem to agree on units of distance or speed but time, we got that.
“Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.” – President Snow #moviequotes
TV Ratings: In 1951, the first year Nielsen released television ratings, the most-watched series was Texaco Star Theater with a 61.6 rating. The 2017 winner (Sunday Night Football) scored only a 12.2.
“Like a game show contestant with a parting gift, I could not believe my eyes!” #songlyrics
In the Curious George book series, the Man with the Yellow Hat remained unnamed for six decades. In the 2006 movie adaptation, he was named Ted Shackleford.
A group of Quotations is called a Rosary.
In Disney’s Frontierland you can see a wooden leg with “Smith” written on it in the lost and found. This is a tribute to “Mary Poppins” when Bert says, “I knew a man with a wooden leg named Smith.”
A group of Impalas is called a Herd.
One of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World: Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Ephesus, Turkey was constructed ~550-540 BC. It was burned down by Herostratus in 356 BC because he wanted to be famous.
The longest named place on Earth is “Taumatawhakatangi hangakoauauotamatea turipukakapikimaunga horonukupokaiwhen uakitanatahu” (no spaces) containing 85 letters and located in New Zealand.
The Capital of Cape Verde is Praia
TV Quotes… “…if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” (The bad guy) on “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?”
Things I Learned At The Movies: All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they are going to go off.
Birthday : quotes
“You can get awful famous in this country in seven days.” – Gary Hart
“A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.” – William Blake
“Editing is where movies are made or broken. Many a film has been saved and many a film has been ruined in the editing room.” – Joe Dante
“One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation.” – Claude Lévi-Strauss
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.