View todays celebrity birthdays and find out what happened in history today.
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1895 – The first game of what would become known as rugby league football, was played in England, starting the 1895–96 Northern Rugby Football Union season.
1907 – The Lusitania set sail from Liverpool for New York on her maiden voyage. She set a record, crossing the Atlantic in five days at an average speed of 23 knots.
1917 – The birth of Group Captain (Geoffrey) Leonard Cheshire, British airman. He was awarded the Victoria Cross during the Second World War and he and his wife Sue Ryder founded the Cheshire Foundation Home for the Incurably Sick in 1948.
1929 – Britain won the prestigious Schneider Trophy for air speed. The winner was Flying Officer Waghorn.
1931 – King George V announced he would be taking a £50,000 a year pay cut while the economic crisis continued.
1940 – Germany began regular bombing of London – commonly known as ‘The Blitz’. The bombing continued nightly until 2nd November.
1943 – World War II. Italy surrendered to the Allies.
1973 – Jackie Stewart became world champion racing driver for the third consecutive year.
1978 – Keith Moon, drummer with ‘The Who’, died of a drugs overdose.
1978 – While walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a Bulgarian secret police agent using a ricin pellet fired from a specially-designed umbrella.
1984 – Three more people died in the food poisoning epidemic at hospitals in Yorkshire, bringing the total number of deaths to 22.
1996 – Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot four times in Las Vegas, Nevada, US. Tupac was just 25 years old at the time and was shot twice in the chest, once in the arm, and once in the thigh. He died in hospital from his wounds on September 13.
2001 – The Government suffered a shock legal defeat predicted to result in the release of hundreds of asylum seekers from an immigration centre.
2009 – Sir Terry Wogan announced that he was to step down as presenter of BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show. The veteran broadcaster first hosted the breakfast show in 1972, returning to the role in 1993. Wake Up to Wogan was the UK’s most popular breakfast radio show with 7.93 million listeners each week.
2014 – Asteroid 2014 RC passed safely by Earth at a distance of 24,800 miles away. The 72 feet (22 meters) wide asteroid was one of the closest asteroids to pass by earth.
2019 – ‘Joker’, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix, wins the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Did you know that on this day in 1995, NASA launched the STS-69 from the Kennedy Space Center? This was the 100th successful crewed NASA spaceflight.
In “The Wizard of Oz” Toto was played by a dog named Terry, who earned $125 a week doing the film.
Depending on how long ago and how far away, we could theoretically view the events of STAR WARS through a large enough telescope.
Rule number one after getting shot while wearing a bulletproof vest is to rip your shirt open and expose your vest. #moviecliches
If sharks watched TV I bet they’d have “Human Week” and it’d be scary, I think.
The average person’s left-hand does 56% of the typing.
I don’t think I would know that the plastic tip of my shoelace is called an aglet if it wasn’t for Phineas and Ferb.
“When I needed sunshine on my brain” #misunderstoodlyrics
“Men are quick to believe what they wish were true.” – Julius Caesar
A group of crows should be called a crowd.
A selfie with three or more people should be called a groupie.
“Do-you-think-he-saurus rex.” (a blind dinosaur’s dog) – Jurassic Park #moviequotes
Victorian street urchins don’t own shoes, but they all have a hat. #moviecliches
“If we stop exploring space, we’re going to lose the same part of us that found vaccines and penicillin, the part that searches for cures to cancer and AIDS.” – Corbin Bernsen
“I’ve come to believe that everything worth achieving is beyond one’s capacity – or seems so at first. The thing is to persist, not back off, fight your fight, pay your dues, and carry on. The effort is all; continue and you may get there despite everything.” – Elia Kazan
“I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.” – Grandma Moses
“Well, we all know that self-esteem comes from what you think of you, not what other people think of you.” – Gloria Gaynor
“Grief never ends, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness nor a lack of faith: it is the price of love.” – Elizabeth I
“The only person stopping you from doing something is yourself and looking for excuses all the time just gets in the way of obtaining your own goals. It’s like the writer who keeps getting up and straightening the pictures in the room.” – Chrissie Hynde
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.