View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
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1840 – The foundation stone for Nelson’s Column was laid in Trafalgar Square.
1888 – Jack the Ripper murdered two more women – Liz Stride, found behind 40 Berner Street, and Kate Eddowes in Mitre Square, both in London’s East End. Unlike murderers of lesser fame, there is no waxwork figure of Jack the Ripper at Madame Tussauds’ Chamber of Horrors, in accordance with their policy of not modelling persons whose likeness is unknown. He is instead depicted as a shadow.
1933 – The birth, in Oldham, Lancashire of Barbara Knox, best known for playing Rita Tanner (née Littlewood, previously Fairclough and Sullivan) in the television soap opera Coronation Street . She has been a ‘regular’ since 1972 and In 1989 she won the TV Times award for best actress following her involvement in the dramatic Alan Bradley storyline.
1936 – Pinewood Film Studios opened near Iver, in Buckinghamshire, to provide Britain with a film studio to compete with America’s Hollywood Studios in California.
1938 – The League of Nations unanimously outlawed ‘the intentional bombings of civilian populations’.
1939 – Identity cards were issued in Britain.
1944 – Calais was reoccupied by the Allies.
1945 – The Bourne End rail crash, in Hertfordshire killed 43 when an overnight sleeping-car express train from Scotland to London Euston derailed due to a driver’s error when he took a turn at nearly 60 mph when the maximum speed was 15 mph. The engine and the first six carriages overturned and fell down an embankment into a field, only the last three coaches remained on the rails.
1951 – Big crowds attended the final ceremonies which marked the official end of the Festival of Britain.
1967 – The BBC Light Programme, Third Programme and Home Service were replaced with BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4 Respectively. BBC Radio 1 was also launched, with Tony Blackburn, a former Radio Caroline DJ, presenting the first show.
1971 – The British Government named Oleg Lyalin as the Soviet defector who, the previous week had exposed dozens of Russians alleged to be spying in the UK.
1987 – Keith Best, MP, was sentenced to four months in prison for trying to obtain British Telecom shares by deception.
1988 – A court in Gibraltar declared that the killing of three unarmed IRA suspects by British soldiers was lawful.
2014 – In the first official study of money spent on ‘illegal’ activities it was found that Britons spend more on drugs and prostitutes than on beer and wine. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) said that spending on illegal drugs and prostitution was worth an estimated £12.3bn to the UK economy in 2013.
2018 – Europe retains the Ryder Cup. Sergio Garcia becomes the biggest point scorer in event history with 25½.
Did you know that on this day in 1960, the American animated sitcom “The Flintstones” debuted on ABC? It was a hit and would later be rated one of the greatest TV cartoons of all time.
The penny will always be going down in value because of inflation, but the copper it’s made out of will always be going up in value, also because of inflation.
Since nobody can see you anyway, they should have windows in the bathrooms on airplanes. Someone had to say it.
It’s crazy to think that in the near future a driverless car will have to make an ethical decision on whether to kill the passenger in a crash or swerve and kill the mother and her two children walking on the sidewalk.
The Capital of Lebanon is Beirut
In 1967 The Monkees sold more records than The Beatles and Rolling Stones combined.
The size of an animal is directly related to how it perceives time, which explains why small bugs can react quickly because everything seems to move in slow motion.
“De plane! De plane!” – Tattoo (Fantasy Island) #TVQuotes
“Tell ’em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper.” – Knute Rockne (Pat O’Brien) in Knute Rockne, All American, 1940
“Gadzooks” dates as far back as the late 1600s as a shortening of “by God’s hooks,” a reference to the nails on Christ’s cross.
“Atuk” – an unfinished film said to be cursed due to the untimely deaths of its four lead actors. These actors were John Belushi, Sam Kinison, John Candy, and Chris Farley.
“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” – Truman Capote
“Sometimes people come into your life for a season and other times for a lifetime.” – Fran Drescher
“I don’t want to see the zipper in the back of the monster suit. Like everybody else who goes to the movies, I want to believe the monster is real.” – Eric Stoltz
“You can’t stop the aging process. There’s only so much oil you can put on your body. I’ve always just tried to go with my age.” – Angie Dickinson
“My whole life has been about changing negatives into positives.” – Fran Drescher
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.” – Truman Capote
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.