On This Day

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

959AD Edgar, first King of All England, was crowned on Whit Sunday by Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the Saxon abbey on the site of the present Bath Abbey.

1098 The Crusaders took Antioch.

1597 Shane the Proud, Shane O'Neill, Ulster Chieftain, murdered by the McDonnells.

1836 Barry O'Meara, Cork-born surgeon to Napoleon Bonaparte, died.

He accompanied Napoleon to St Helena, and joined with the Frenchman in his battles against the Governor of the island, Hudson Lowe, a native of Galway.

In 1818, Lowe dismissed O'Meara for not reporting Napoleon's private conversations.

1878 Sineád Flanagan, later Wife of E'amon de Valera, born in BALBRIGGAN, Co Dublin.

1899 Johann Strauss the younger, Austrian composer, violinist and conductor who wrote The Blue Danube waltz, died.

1937 The Duke of Windsor, the abdicated King Edward VIII, married Mrs Wallis Warfield Simpson in France.

1946 The first bikini bathing suit was unveiled in Paris, invented by Louis Reard, a former motor engineer.

1965 The Gemini 4 spaceship was launched, with James McDivitt and Edward White on board.

During the flight White became the first American to walk in space.

1978 The Guinness Book of Records went into the Guinness Book of Records as the most stolen book from libraries.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1039 Gruffyd ap Llewelyn, King of Gwynned and Powys, defeated an English attack.

1210 King John embarked on an expedition to Ireland to enforce his authority.

1798 Giovanni Casanova, Italian adventurer, lover and romancer, died at his Castle of Waldstein, Bohemia.

On the same day, 34-year-old Lord Edward FitzGerald, United Irishman, died.

1820 Poet and orator Henry Grattan died.

1878 A secret Anglo-Turkish agreement was made to check Russian advance in Asia Minor: Britain promised to defend Turkey against further attack and Britain was to occupy Cyprus.

1886 Sectarian rioting broke out between dockworkers in Belfast.

1913 Suffragette martyr Emily Wilding Davison was trampled to death at Tattenham Corner, Epsom, during the English Derby.

She flung herself in front of the King of England's horse Anmer.

1937 The world's first supermarket trolleys trundled down the grocery aisles.

Sylvan Goldman of Oklahoma built his push-baskets by fixing baskets and wheels to children's chairs.

1940 The evacuation of Dunkirk which had begun on May 27 was completed.

Thousands of little ships, under heavy German attack, returned to the English south coast with 338,226 soldiers.

1944 Rome was liberated by the Fifth Army.

1946 Juan Peron elected president of Argentina.

1956 Egypt declared it would not extend the Suez Canal Company's licence after it expired in 1968.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

755 Missionary Boniface and 53 companions were murdered in Germany by unbelievers.

1646 The Battle of Benburb — in which Owen Roe O'Neill's troops crushed the parliamentarian forces of Robert Monroe — took place in Co Tyrone.

1798 Insurgents under Bagenal Harvey routed at New Ross, and 100 to 200 Protestant prisoners massacred at Scullabogue, Co Wexford.

1868 James Connolly, socialist and republican, born of Irish parents in Scotland.

1878 Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary, born.

1898 Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish playwright and poet, born.

1912 US marines landed in Cuba.

1916 Horatio, Lord Kitchener, British general and conqueror of the Sudan, was lost at sea when his ship HMS Hampshire struck a mine off Orkney.

1920 Cornelius Ryan, war correspondent and best-selling author, born in Dublin.

Author of The Longest Day, his birthday was just one day before the D-Day landings.

1944 The Cafe Gondree was the first place to be liberated from the Germans on the eve of the D-Day landings when paratroopers from the 6th Brigade dropped on the town on Benouville to seize the vital canal bridge.

1945 The Allied Control Commission assumed control throughout Germany, which was divided into four occupation zones.

1947 US Secretary of State George Marshall called for a European Recovery Program (Marshall Aid).

1963 British War Minister John Profumo resigned, admitting he misled the House of Commons about his relationship with Christine Keeler.

1967 The Six Day War between Israel and the Arab States began.

1968 Robert Kennedy, American senator and younger brother of the late President John F Kennedy, was shot in the Hotel Ambassador in Los Angeles by a Jordanian Arab, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, and died the following day.

1975 Egyptian president Sadat re-opened the Suez Canal to all but Israeli shipping, after eight years of closure.

1989 In Poland, Solidarity defeated the Communists in the first free elections since the end of the Second World War.

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Events

1457 Polish forces took Marienburg; the Teutonic Knights then made Königsberg their headquarters.

1523 Gustav Vasa was elected King of Sweden.

1636 Puritan American colonist Roger Williams, banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded Providence, Rhode Island, a colony with complete religious freedom.

1654 Queen Christina of Sweden, abdicated the throne and secretly converted to Catholicism.

1664 War broke out between England and Holland in the colonies and at sea.

1797 Napoleon Bonaparte founded the Ligurian Republic in Genoa, Italy.

1820 Caroline, Princess of Wales, whom George IV wished to divorce, triumphantly entered London, demanding her recognition as queen.

1844 The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) founded in London.

1844 The Factory Act in Britain restricted female workers to a 12-hour day; children between eight and 13 years were limited to six-and-a-half hours.

1925 The Chrysler Corporation founded by Walter Percy Chrysler.

1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy by Allies to liberate W Europe from German occupation.

1967 President Nasser closed the Suez Canal, alleging that US and British forces were aiding Israel.

1984 250 Sikh extremists were killed when Indian troops storm Golden Temple at Amritsar.

1997 Henry Francis Hays became the first white person to be executed in the state of Alabama for the murder of a black person since 1913.

2002 A near-Earth asteroid exploded over the Mediterranean Sea with a force more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.

Births

1599 Diego y Velasquez, Spanish painter

1606 Pierre Corneille, French playwright

1862 Henry Newbolt, English poet

1868 Robert Falcon Scott, English Antarctic explorer

1875 Thomas mann, German novelist

1898 Ninette de Valois, Irish ballet dancer

1956 Björn Borg, Swedish tennis player

1958 Mike Gatting, English cricketer

Deaths

1134 St Norbert of Xanten, archbishop of Magdeburg

1762 George Anson, English sailor and explorer

1832 Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher and jurist

1947 James Agate, English critic and essayist

1961 Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychiatrist

1968 Robert Kennedy, US politician, assassinated

1976 J. Paul Getty, American industrialist

1997 Prudence Napier, English primatologist

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1494 By the Treaty of Tordesillas, Spain and Portugal agreed to divide the New World between themselves.

Portugal would have all lands east of a line north and south, drawn 370 leagues west of Cape Verde; Spain the rest.

1497 English King Henry VII defeats the Cornish rebels under Lord Audley at Blackheath.

1535 John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, is tried for treason (he was executed on June 22).

1614 The Addled Parliament was dissolved.

It earned its name by failing to pass a single Bill since it first sat on April 5.

1778 Beau Brummell was born.

Although he became a leader of fashion and a friend of the Prince Regent, he died destitute in France at 64, through gambling and extravagance.

1929 The Papal State, extinct since 1870, was revived as the State of Vatican City in Rome, as a result of the Lateran Treaty.

1946 Television resumed in England after the war and announcer Leslie Mitchell said: "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted.

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"1967 Dorothy Parker, US writer, died.

1970 The Who's rock opera, Tommy, performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera House.

1989 Peter Shilton made his record 109th appearance for England against Denmark, passing Bobby Moore's long-standing record.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

632 Mohammed, founder of the Islamic religion, died in Mecca.

1924 George Mallory, on his third attempt at conquering Everest, was seen for the last time at a point 800 feet from the summit.

1926 Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, 65, gave her final stage performance at Covent Garden, singing Mimi in La Boheme.

1929 Margaret Bondfield became the first British woman Cabinet Minister when she was appointed Minister of Labour.

1959 Liberace defended himself when he successfully sued William Connor, Cassandra of the Daily Mirror, for libel.

1968 James Earl Ray, wanted for the murder of Martin Luther King, was arrested in London travelling under an assumed name with a Canadian passport.

1969 Spain closed the frontier with Gibraltar, hoping to cripple its economy after Britain’s refusal to hand over the colony to Spain.

1978 Naomi James arrived back at Dartmouth in her Bermuda sloop Express Crusader after 267 days, to become the first woman to sail around the world via Cape Horn1988 Russell Harty, British broadcaster and writer, died aged 53 from hepatitis.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1549 The Church of England adopted The Book of Common Prayer.

1672 Peter the Great, tsar of Russia, born.

1798 The Battle of Arklow, Co Wicklow, took place.

The insurgents, under the command of Fr Michael Murphy (killed in action) were defeated.

1870 Charles Dickens died after a brain haemorrhage the previous evening.

He left only six of the planned 12 parts of his final novel, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, completed.

1874 Cochise, American Apache leader, died.

1888 Sir Basil Brooke, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1943 to 1963, born in Co Fermanagh.

1898 Hong Kong was leased by Britain from China for 99 years.

1904 The London Symphony Orchestra was formed by musicians who had left Henry Wood’s orchestra after a disagreement.

1934 Donald Duck was born in Walt Disney’s cartoon The Wise Little Hen.

1959 America launched the first ballistic missile submarine, the George Washington.

1992 International leaders signed the Biodiversity Treaty at the Rio Earth Summit.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1190 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I died on his way to the Holy Land on the Third Crusade.

1692 Bridget Bishop, the first of 150 women accused of witchcraft by hysterical young girls in the Puritan community of Salem, was hanged.

1836 André Ampère, French physicist, died.

1840 Henry Morton Stanley, US journalist and explorer ("Dr Livingstone, I presume") born.

1891 L Starr Jameson became administrator of the South Africa Company's territories.

1899 US Congress appointed a canal commission to report on routes through Panama.

1909 The SOS Morse signal was first used in an emergency, by Cunard's SS Slavonia which was rescued having been wrecked off the Azores.

The call had replaced the CQD code in 1906.

1922 Actress and singer Judy Garland was born at Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

1942 The Czech village of Lidice was destroyed and every man in it killed in reprisal for the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich.

1943 Ball-point pens, devised by Hungarian Laszlo Biro, were patented in the United States.

1944 Frank Ryan, republican and socialist, died in a sanatorium in Dresden.

In 1936, he led 200 Irishmen to fight in the International Brigade for the republic against Franco.

Captured, he spent his last years in Germany where he was treated as a non-partisan neutral.

1983 Margaret Thatcher won her second term as British Prime Minister.

1986 Bob Geldof and US millionaire John Paul Getty II were made honorary knights by the Queen.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1862 Violet Florence Martin, who wrote under the pen-name Martin Ross, born at Ross House, Co Galway.

1864 Opera composer Richard Strauss was born in Munich.

1910 Jacques Cousteau, French oceanographer, born.

1925 WB Yeats spoke in favour of divorce in Seanad E´ireann, saying: "If you show that this country, Southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Catholic ideas .

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alone, you will never get the North .

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You will put a wedge into the midst of this nation.

" 1955 82 spectators died when a car skidded off the track during the Le Mans 24-hour race.

1955 US President Eisenhower proposed financial and technical aid to all non-communist countries to develop atomic energy.

1963 Constantine Karamanlis, the Greek premier, resigned in protest against King Paul's state visit to Britain.

1975 The first oil was pumped ashore from the North Sea Argyll oil fields.

1979 Tough-guy actor John Wayne, real name Marion Michael Morrison but known as The Duke, died.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1088 William II suppressed a revolt in England led by Odo of Bayeux, Bishop of Rochester, who was supporting Robert Curthose.

1786 George Robert Fighting Fitzgerald, a notorious rogue, was hanged at Castlebar, County Mayo, for many crimes.

1839 Abner Doubleday is credited with inventing baseball in Cooperstown, New York.

1842 Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School, died the day before his 47th birthday.

During his headship, the game of rugby was created by accident when a handball rule was broken by a pupil in a football match.

1889 The worst disaster in Irish railway history took place at Armagh.

A two-train collision at the annual Armagh-Warrenpoint excursion of the Armagh Methodist Sunday School led to 80 deaths and almost 400 injuries.

1929 Anne Frank, Jewish Dutch diarist, born.

1930 Germany's Max Schmelling won the world heavyweight boxing title against jack Sharkey in New York on a disqualification in round four ö the only man to win the title in such a manner.

1964 Nelson Mandela and seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of sabotage in the Rivonia trial, Pretoria.

1973 Six elderly people were killed by a Provisional IRA car bomb in Coleraine, County Derry.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

323BC Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, died after a prolonged period of feasting.

1381 Wat Tyler led the first popular rebellion - against unpopular taxes - in English history.

It has become known as the Peasants’ Revolt.

1842 Queen Victoria travelled by train for the first time, from Slough to Paddington, accompanied by Prince Albert.

She became the first British monarch to use such transport.

1893 Dorothy L Sayers, writer of detective stories (Lord Peter Wimsey) was born in Oxford.

1900 The Boxer Rebellion began in China with the intention to end the domination and exploitation of the country by foreigners.

The Boxers were a secret society, originally formed to promote boxing.

1944 The first V1 flying bomb, or ‘‘doodlebug’’, landed in England.

Adolf Hitler’s ‘‘secret weapon’’ destroyed a house in Southampton, killing three people.

1956 Real Madrid won the first European Cup, beating Stade de Reims 4-3 in Paris.

1981 Blanks were fired at the Queen during the Trooping the Colour ceremony.

1989 The wreck of the German ship Bismarck, which was sunk in 1941, was found 600 miles west of Brest.

1990 The official demolition of the Berlin Wall began.

[Raistlin]

Births

1736 Charles Augustin Coulomb, French physicist

1809 Henry Keppel, British admiral

1848 Bernard Bosanquet, English philosopher

1928 Che Guevara, Argentinian communist revolutionary

1969 Steffi Graf, German tennis player

Deaths

1662 Henry Vane the younger, English politician, executed after the Restoration for his parliamentarian activities

1883 Edward Fitzgerald, English poet and translator

1927 Jerome K Jerome, English novelist

1936 Gilbert Keith Chesterton, English author

1946 John Logie Baird, Scottish inventor who developed television

1986 Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian author

1993 Vincent Hamlin, US cartoonist

1994 Henry Mancini, US composer

Events

1380 In the Peasants' Revolt, the rebels occupying London killed Archbishop Sudbury, the chancellor, and Robert Hales, the treasurer.

1404 Glendower, having won control of Wales, assumed the title of Prince of Wales and held a parliament.

1645 In the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell defeated the Royalists at the Battle of Naseby, Northamptonshire.

1800 Napoleon Bonaparte defeated an Austrian army at the Battle of Marengo and reconquered Italy.

1940 In the Second World War, German forces entered Paris.

1960 French president General de Gaulle renewed his offer to the Algerian provisional government to negotiate a cease-fire, to which Front de la Libération Nationale agreed, but rejected subsequent French conditions.

1962 The European Space Research Organization was established at Paris.

1982 Argentine forces surrendered at Port Stanley, ending the Falklands War; 255 Britons and 652 Argentines died in the Falklands conflict.

1985 Two Shi'ite Muslim gunmen hijacked a TWA jet with 145 passengers and crew of eight, demanding release of 700 prisoners held by Israel. One passenger, a US Navy diver, was shot dead.

1995 Pauline Clare, 47, became the first woman to be appointed chief constable in Britain.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1215 King John put the Royal Seal on the Magna Carta at Runnymede, near Windsor.

1381 Wat Tyler, first poll tax protester, was executed at Smithfield.

1520 Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther.

1658 The Mogul emperor Aurangzeb imprisoned his father the Shah, after winning a battle at Samgarh.

1836 Arkansas became the 25th state of the US.

1844 Charles Goodyear patented his vulcanised rubber process.

1846 The 49th parallel was established as the border between Canada and the USA.

1860 Florence Nightingale started her School for Nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital, London.

1869 Celluloid was patented in the US.

1919 The first non-stop transatlantic flight ended, when John Alcock and Arthur Brown landed near Clifden, Co Galway, having flown from Newfoundland, in 15 hours, 57 minutes.

1977 Spain had its first general election since 1936.

1988 In Northern Ireland, six British soldiers were killed by a Provisional IRA bomb planted under a minibus in Lisburn, Co Antrim.

[Raistlin]

Births

1514 John Cheke, English classical scholar

1858 King Gustav V of Sweden

1890 Stan Laurel, English-born US film comedian

1912 Enoch Powell, British politician

1942 Giacomo Agostini, Italian motorcycle champion

Deaths

1464 Roger van der Weyden, Flemish painter

1722 John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, English general

1752 Guilio Alberoni, Italian-born Spanish politician and cardinal

1930 Elmer Ambrose Sperry, US inventor

1953 Margaret Bondfield, British politician and trade-unionist

Events

1586 Mary Queen of Scots recognized Philip II of Spain as her heir.

1745 British troops took Cape Breton Island and subsequently Louisburg, at the mouth of the St Lawrence river.

1779 Spain declared war on Britain (after France had undertaken to assist in the recovery of Gibraltar and Florida), and the siege of Gibraltar began.

1836 The formation of the London Working Men's Association began the Chartist Movement.

1871 The University Test Acts allowed students to enter Oxford and Cambridge without religious tests.

1972 Burglars were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Building, Washington DC, USA.

1977 Leonid Brezhnev became president of the USSR.

1996 The first round of voting for a new president took place in Russia. 107 million Russians were eligible to vote for the first time in the country's history.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1349 Friar John Clyn, Franciscan analyst, made his last entry in his diary as the Black Death swept through Ireland.

Believing the world could be coming to an end, he said: "I leave parchment to carry on the work, if perchance any may survive or any of the race of Adam may be able to escape this pestilence and continue the work I have begun".

The plague arrived in Ireland in the autumn of 1348, probably via Drogheda, and very nearly wiped that town and Dublin out.

1579 Sir Francis Drake anchored the Golden Hind just north of what would one day be San Francisco Bay and named the area New Albion.

1823 Charles Macintosh patented the waterproof cloth he was to use in making raincoats.

1867 Joseph Lister performed a mastectomy on his sister Isabella using carbolic acid as an antiseptic.

It was the first operation under antiseptic conditions.

1929 Hitchcock's Blackmail was premiered in London.

The first reel was shot before the studio was equipped for sound and has only sound effects and music; the dialogue begins in reel two.

1940 Russian troops occupied the Baltic states.

1958 Imre Nagy, Hungarian Prime Minister, executed.

1970 Edwin Land patented his Polaroid camera.

1982 Italian banker Roberto Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London.

1991 In South Africa, the repeal of the Population Registration Act of 1950 officially ended apartheid.

1997 The UN General Assembly approved President Mary Robinson as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights but left open her starting date.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1429 The French, led by Joan of Arc, defeated the English at the Battle of Patay.

1769 Robert Stewart, later Viscount Castlereagh, Irish politician, born.

He is most famous for securing the passage of the Act of Union through a mixture of persuasion, bribery and intimidation.

1815 The Battle of Waterloo was fought, at which combined forces led by the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blucher defeated Napoleon.

Wellington was Irish, though he hated being told so, and many of those who fought on both sides were also.

Marshal Ney, the fighting commander on the French side, was of Irish decent.

1901 Jeanette MacDonald, star of countless 1930s musicals with Nelson Eddy, was born in Philadelphia.

In Dublin, Denis Johnson, actor and dramatist, was born.

1928 US aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.

On the same day, Roald Amundsen, Norwegian polar explorer, was lost in the Artic.

1963 Cassius clay (later Muhammad Ali) defeated Henry Cooper in their world title clash at Wembley Stadium.

1978 Garfield, the world's favourite fat cat created by Jim Davis, was born.

The name came from Davis's grandfather, James A Garfield Davis.

1979 US President Jimmy Carter and USSR President Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT-2 arms limitation treaty in Vienna.

1992 The Referendum on the Maastricht Treaty on European Union was passed by 69% to 31%.

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Births

1566 King James VI of Scotland and I of England

1608 Thomas Fuller, English antiquarian and clergyman

1623 Blaise Pascal, French mathematician

1783 Félicité Robert de Lamennais, French writer

1861 Douglas Haig, British field-marshal

1906 Ernst Chain, German-born British bacteriologist who developed penicillin

1947 Salman Rushdie, British novelist

Deaths

1608 Alberico Gentili, Italian political writer

1707 William Sherlock, English prelate

1749 Ambrose Philips, English poet

1820 Joseph Banks, English botanist

1902 John Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton, English historian

1937 J M Barrie, Scottish author of Peter Pan

1993 William Golding, English novelist

Events

1464 An ordinance of Louis XI in France created the poste, organizing relays of horses on the main roads for the king's business.

1754 The Anglo-French war broke out in North America when a force under George Washington skirmished with French troops near Fort Duquesne.

1769 Hyder Ali of Mysore compelled the British at Madras to sign a treaty of mutual assistance.

1809 Curwen's Act was passed in Britain, to prevent the sale of parliamentary seats, thus decreasing the number of seats which the British government can manipulate for its regular supporters.

1829 Robert Peel's Act was passed, to establish a new police force in London and its suburbs.

1867 Emperor Maximilian was executed in Mexico.

1917 The British royal family renounced German names and titles, having adopted the name of Windsor.

1963 US President Kennedy gave the address to Congress on civil rights.

1965 Ben Bella, president of Algeria, was deposed; Houari Boumédienne headed a revolutionary council.

1970 Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister.

1996 Britain offered to slaughter up to 67,000 more cattle in an effort to end the ban on British beef.

1996 A vast freshwater lake 4 km/2.5 mi under the ice of Antarctica was discovered. The lake covers 14,000 sq km/5,000 sq mi, and is kept from freezing by the friction of the ice and by heat radiating from the earth's core.

1997 The US fast-food chain McDonalds won a two-year libel case in Britain against two environmental campaigners who claimed that the company caused environmental damage and exploited workers in the Third World.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1789 The seeds of the French Revolution were sown when a National Assembly was formed to oppose the domination of the aristocracy1837 William IV (the Sailor King) died at Windsor, and his niece Alexandrine Victoria, aged 18, came to the throne.

When she was handed documents at her first Privy Council meeting, she instructed officials to delete Alexandrine and name her Queen Victoria.

1909 Errol Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania, and was swashbuckling long before he got to Hollywood, as a deck hand, prospector, tropical bird hunter and policeman.

1927 Greyhound racing at London’s White City stadium began.

1949 ‘‘Gorgeous Gussie’’ Moran, US tennis player, caused a sensation at Wimbledon by wearing lace-trimmed panties under her short skirt, designed by Teddy Tinling.

1960 Nan Winton became the first woman to read the national news on BBCtelevision.

1977 Eight thousand miles of pipeline were opened, carrying oil across Alaska.

1990 The Agra diamond was sold for a record £4,070,000 at Christie’s.

[Raistlin]

Births

1639 Increase Mather, American clergyman and president of Harvard

1825 William Stubbs, English historian

1884 Claude Auchinleck, British field-marshal

1905 Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, novelist, and playwright

1920 Jane Russell, US film actress

1935 Françoise Sagan, French novelist

Deaths

1377 Edward III, King of England

1529 John Skelton, English poet

1547 Sebastiano del Piombo, Italian painter

1631 John Smith, Virginian colonist

1652 Inigo Jones, English architect and stage designer

1683 Lord William Russell, English politician

1718 Alexius Petrovich, son of Peter the Great, died in prison

1738 Charles, Viscount Townshend, English politician

1786 George Hepplewhite, English cabinet-maker

1852 Friedrich Froebel, German educationalist

1940 Jean-Edouard Vuillard, French painter

Events

1661 The Peace of Kardis was signed between Russia and Sweden, ending the northern war; Russia abandoned all claims to Livonia.

1788 The US constitution came into force, when ratified by the 9th state, New Hampshire.

1798 British General Gerard Lake defeated Irish rebels at Vinegar Hill and entered Wexford, ending the Irish Rebellion.

1813 The Duke of Wellington completely routed the French at Vittoria, forcing the Spanish king, Napoleon's brother Joseph, to return to France.

1827 Robert Peel reformed English criminal law, by reducing the number of capital offences, abolishing the immunity of the clergy from arrest in cases of felony, and by defining the law of offences against property in a simplified form.

1887 In Britain, Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee was celebrated.

1887 Britain annexed Zululand, blocking the attempt of Transvaal to gain communication with the coast.

1919 The German fleet was scuttled in Scapa Flow, in the Orkneys.

1942 German forces under Field-Marshal Rommel captured Tobruk.

1963 Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was elected Pope, taking the name Paul VI.

1970 Tony Jacklin won the US Open at Hazeltine Golf Club, Minnesota; he was the first Briton to win since Ted Ray in 1920.

1977 Menachem Begin became Israeli prime minister.

1996 Britain and other members of the EU reached an agreement for the phased lifting of the ban on British beef. French farmers, however, blockaded two channel ports.

1996 A new species of monkey, Callithrip saterei, was discovered in the rainforests of Brazil. The monkey is orange-haired and about the size of a squirrel.

1996 The California Supreme Court ruled that the law passed in 1992, under which violent offenders were automatically sentenced to 25 years to life for third convictions, was unconstitutional

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1101 Roger I, king of Sicily, died.

Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian politician and diplomat, died on the same day in 1527.

1377 At the age of 10, Richard II inherited the English throne.

1826 The Pan-American Congress met in Panama under the influence of Simon Bolivar in an effort to unite the American Republics.

1896 Marconi patented his invention of wireless.

1921 King George V opened the Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont.

1937 Joe Louis won the world heavyweight boxing title by knocking out James J Braddock in Chicago.

He successfully defended the crown 25 times before retiring on March 1, 1949.

1940 France capitulated and accepted the armistice terms of Germany.

1941 The German army invaded Russia.

1969 Singer Judy Garland was found dead in her mews flat in London, aged 47.

1987 Fred Astaire, American actor and dancer in many films, died aged 88

[Bizarra]

1683 - William Penn signed a friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.

1700 - Russia gave up its Black Sea fleet as part of a truce with the Ottoman Empire.

1758 - British and Hanoverian armies defeated the French at Krefeld in Germany.

1760 - The Austrians defeated the Prussians at Landshut, Germany.

1757 - Robert Clive defeated the Indians at Plassey and won control of Bengal.

1836 - The U.S. Congress approved the Deposit Act, which contained a provision for turning over surplus federal revenue to the states.

1848 - A bloody insurrection of workers in Paris erupted.

1860 - The U.S. Secret Service was created to arrest counterfeiters.

1865 - Confederate General Stand Watie, who was also a Cherokee chief, surrendered the last sizable Confederate army at Fort Towson, in the Oklahoma Territory.

1868 - Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention that he called a "Type-Writer."

1884 - A Chinese Army defeated the French at Bacle, Indochina.

1902 - Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy renewed the Triple Alliance for a 12 year duration.

1904 - The first American motorboat race got underway on the Hudson River in New York.

1926 - The first lip reading tournament in America was held in Philadelphia, PA.

1931 - Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from New York on the first round-the-world flight in a single-engine plane.

1934 - Italy gained the right to colonize Albania after defeating the country.

1938 - The Civil Aeronautics Authority was established.

1938 - Marineland opened near St. Augustine, Florida.

1947 - The U.S. Senate joined the House in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.

1951 - Soviet U.N. delegate Jacob Malik proposed cease-fire discussions in the Korean War.

1952 - The U.S. Air Force bombed power plants on Yalu River, Korea.

1956 - Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected president of Egypt.

1964 - Henry Cabot Lodge resigned as the U.S. envoy to Vietnam and was succeeded by Maxwell Taylor.

1964 - The burned car of three civil rights workers was found prompting the FBI to begin a search. The men had been missing since June 21, 1964. Their bodies were found on August 4, 1964.

1966 - Civil Rights marchers in Mississippi were dispersed by tear gas.

1972 - U.S. President Nixon and White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman discussed a plan to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI's Watergate investigation.

1985 - All 329 people aboard an Air-India Boeing 747 were killed when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland. The cause was thought to be a bomb.

1989 - The movie "Batman" was released nationwide.

1992 - John Gotti was sentenced in New York to life in prison after being convicted of racketeering charges.

1993 - Lorena Bobbitt of Prince William County, VA, sexually mutilated her husband, John, after he allegedly raped her.

1997 - Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, died in New York of burns suffered in a fire set by her 12-year old grandson. She was 61.

2003 - Apple Computer Inc. unveiled the new Power Mac desktop computer.

2004 - The U.S. proposed that North Korea agree to a series of nuclear disarmament measures over a three-month period in exchange for economic benefits.

[Bizarra]

Feast Days

MIDSUMMER'S DAY A Quarter Day and Feast of St John the Baptist.

On This Day Over The Years

1314 The Battle of Bannockburn took place near Stirling Castle.

Robert the Bruce (of spider fame) inflicted a crushing defeat on Edward II of England.

1717 The Grand Lodge of English Freemasons was formed in London.

1825 William Henry Smith, English newsagent and bookseller, was born.

He joined his father's newsagent business and took full control in 1846, building the biggest chain of newsagents in Britain before going into politics.

1840 The Birmingham and Gloucester Railway between Cheltenham and Bromsgrove was opened, a stretch that includes the Lickey incline, one of the severest gradients on a British main line.

1859 Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman travelling through Italy, saw the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino and was inspired to found the International Red Cross.

1878 St John Ambulance was formed, as the St John Ambulance Association.

1895 jack Dempsey, US world heavyweight boxing champion from 1919 to 1926, was born.

Known as the Manassa Mauler, he was the most popular boxer of his time.

1947 A series of flying saucer stories started when a pilot, Kenneth Arnold, reported seeing nine disc-shaped objects over Mount Rainier, Washington.

1948 The Berlin Airlift began when the USSR blockaded Berlin, requiring the Allies to fly in food and other essential supplies.

1981 The bridge over the Humber estuary opened to traffic.

Its official opening by Queen Elizabeth II took place on July 17.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1797 Admiral Nelson was wounded in the right arm by grapeshot.

He had it amputated that day.

1867 The first patent for barbed wire was taken out by Lucien Smith of Kent, Ohio.

1870 Robert Erskine Childers, Irish author and nationalist, was born — in London.

He wrote the classic spy yarn The Riddle Of The Sands.

1876 Custer's last stand took place at Little Big Horn, Montana.

1891 Charles Stewart Parnell married Katherine O'Shea in England.

1937 The Duke of Windsor married Mrs Wallis Simpson in France.

1938 Douglas Hyde became first President of Ireland.

Seán T O'Ceallaigh, Eamon de Valera and Erskine Childers were all installed on the same day in 1945, 1959 and 1973 respectively.

1945 The United Nations was founded.

1953 John Christie was sentenced to death for murdering four women including his wife.

1962 The Portuguese in Mozambique required Indian nationals to leave within three months of release from internment camps.

1963 President Kennedy visited West Berlin and declared 'Ich bin ein Berliner', which can mean 'I'm a Berlin man' or 'I am a jam doughnut'.

1968 Comedian Tony Hancock killed himself in a hotel bedroom in Sydney, Australia.

1969 Pancho Gonzalez and Charlie Pasarelli played a record 112-game singles match on Wimbledon's centre court, lasting 5 hours 12 minutes.

Gonzalez, aged 41, won.

1990 7,000 King Penguins killed themselves on uninhabited sub-Antarctic Macquaine Island.

Bodies were piled four deep in this bizarre mass suicide and the reason remains a complete mystery.

[Bizarra]

On This Day Over The Years

1788 Virginia became the 10th state of the US.

1824 William Thomson Kelvin, Lord Kelvin, inventor and scientist, born in Belfast.

1830 King George IV ö England's fattest king ö died aged 67.

His favourite breakfast was two pigeons, three beefsteaks, a bottle of Moselle, a glass of champagne, two of port and one of brandy.

1906 The first Grand Prix took place at Le Mans and was won by Hungarian Ference Szisz, driving a Renault at an average speed of 63mph.

1909 The Victoria and Albert Museum opened its doors to the public.

1917 King George V dropped the German titles from the Royal Family and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became Windsor.

The name Battenberg was changed to Mountbatten.

1962 A young American tennis player, Billie Jean Moffit, 18, knocked out top seed Margaret Smith ö the match that began Billie Jean King's long reign at Wimbledon.

1863 US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, arrived in Ireland on a four-day official visit.

His was the first visit of a US President to Ireland, and during his stay he visited his ancestral homeland of Dunganstown, Co Wexford.

1975 Mozambique achieved independence from Portugal.

1981 Garret FitzGerald became Taoiseach in a Fine Gael/Labour coalition as Dáil E´ireann assembled for the 22nd time.

1991 After battling for 15 years to prove their innocence, the Maguire Seven were cleared of running an IRA bomb factory in England.

[Danny K]

On This Day Over The Years

... 1981 Garret FitzGerald became Taoiseach in a Fine Gael/Labour coalition as Dáil E´ireann assembled for the 22nd time...

Wondered what was in this thread.

I'm glad I read that interesting little factlet Bizarra. Because I hadn't realised how empty, dull, and barren my life had become. In fact, now I know who the Taoiseach was in 1981 - I can honestly say, without fear of contradiction or favour, that everything has become an oasis of light and gaiety filled with laughter and happiness. And I owe it all to you.

- Wish I'd read this thread sooner. :P