On This Day

[Raistlin]

Births

1685 Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer

1914 Paul Tortelier, French cellist

1925 Peter Brook, English stage and film director

1933 Michael Heseltine, British politician

1935 Brian Clough, English footballer and manager

1960 Ayrton Senna, Brazilian racing driver

Deaths

1556 Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, burned at the stake

1656 James Ussher, Irish theologian and archbishop of Armagh, who fixed the date of the Creation at 4004 BC

1843 Robert Southey, English poet

1936 Alexander Glazunov, Russian composer

1942 Philip Wilson Steer, English painter

1982 Harry H Corbett, English actor

Events

1933 Germany's first Nazi parliament was officially opened in a ceremony at the garrison church in Potsdam.

1946 British minister Aneurin Bevan announced the Labour government's plans for the National Health Service.

1952 Kwame Nkrumah was elected prime minister of the Gold Coast (later Ghana).

1960 The Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa - a peaceful demonstration against the pass laws - ended with about 70 Deaths when police fired on demonstrators.

1963 Alcatraz, the maximum-security prison in San Francisco Bay, USA, was closed.

1965 In USA, Martin Luther King headed a procession of 4,000 civil rights demonstrators from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to deliver petition on grievances of African-Americans.

1990 A demonstration in London against the poll tax became a riot, in which over 400 people were arrested.

1996 British beef imports were banned in Europe.

1997 A suicide blast in a cafe in Tel Aviv killed three Israeli women and wounded 47 after work started on a new Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

[Raistlin]

Births

1887 Juan Gris, Spanish painter

1904 Joan Crawford, US film actress

1910 Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director

1912 Wernher von Braun, German-born US rocket engineer

1920 Jimmy Edwards, English comedian

1929 Roger Bannister, English neurologist who, as a student, was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes (3 min 59.4 sec)

Deaths

1842 Stendhal, French novelist

1945 Steve Donoghue, English jockey

1953 Raoul Dufy, French painter

1964 Peter Lorre, Hungarian-born US film actor

1981 Claude Auchinleck, British Field Marshal

1981 Mike Hailwood, English champion motor cyclist

1994 Giulietta Masina, Italian actress

Events

1765 The British parliament passed the Stamp Act, imposing a tax on all publications and official documents in America.

1861 London's first trams began operating, in Bayswater.

1891 Goal nets, invented by Liverpudlian J A Brodie, were used for the first time in an FA Cup Final.

1919 The Italian Fascist Party was formed by Benito Mussolini.

1925 Authorities in the state of Tennessee, USA, forbade the teaching of Darwinian theory in schools.

1939 Germany annexed Memel (modern Klaipeda) from Lithuania and forced Lithuania to sign a treaty.

1956 Pakistan was declared an Islamic republic within the Commonwealth.

1983 President Reagan proposed the 'Star Wars'defence system for the USA, using satellites to detect enemy missiles and effect their destruction.

[Raistlin]

Births

1133 Henry II, King of England

1867 Arturo Toscanini, Italian conductor

1881 Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer

1906 A J P Taylor, English historian

1908 David Lean, English film director

1942 Aretha Franklin, US singer

1947 Elton John, English pop singer and songwriter

Deaths

1809 Anna Seward, English novelist who wrote Black Beauty

1836 Nicholas Hawksmoor, English architect

1914 Frédéric Mistral, French poet

1918 Claude Debussy, French composer

1975 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, assassinated by his nephew

Events

1306 Robert I 'the Bruce' was crowned king of Scots.

1609 English explorer Henry Hudson set off from Amsterdam, on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, in search of the North West Passage.

1807 The British parliament abolished the slave trade.

1843 A pedestrian tunnel was opened beneath the Thames in London, linking Wapping with Rotherhithe.

1876 In the first football international between Wales and Scotland, played in Glasgow, Scotland won 4-0.

1957 Six European countries (France, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands) signed the Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Community.

1978 The Cambridge boat sunk in the English University Boat Race.

1995 Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, 28, was released from the Indiana Youth Center prison in Plainfield, Indiana after serving three years on a 1992 rape conviction.

1996 British athlete Diane Modahl cleared her name after having been banned from competition by the International Amateur Athletic Federation for drug abuse.

[Raistlin]

Births

1859 A E Housman, English poet

1874 Robert Frost, US poet

1925 Pierre Boulez, French conductor and composer

1939 Leonard Nimoy, US actor who played Mr Spock in the TV series Star Trek; James Caan, US film actor

1944 Diana Ross, US singer

Deaths

1726 John Vanbrugh, English playwright and architect

1827 Ludwig von Beethoven, German composer

1892 Walt Whitman, US poet

1902 Cecil Rhodes, English-born South African politician

1923 Sarah Bernhardt, French actress

1959 Raymond Chandler, US novelist who created private eye Philip Marlowe

1973 Noël Coward, English playwright and entertainer

Events

1839 The annual rowing regatta at Henley-on-Thames was established.

1886 The funeral of the first person to be officially cremated in Britain took place in Woking, Surrey.

1920 The British special constables known as the Black and Tans arrived in Ireland.

1934 Driving tests were introduced in Britain.

1973 The first women were allowed on the floor of the London Stock Exchange.

1979 Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty after two years of negotiations.

1989 In elections for the Congress of People's Deputies in the USSR, Boris Yeltsin - dismissed from the Politburo 17 months before - gained 89% of the vote in his Moscow constituency, while many senior Party officials fail to get elected.

1995 Seven EU nations - Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain - eliminated their internal border controls to adhere to a 1985 open-border pact and also enacted a system of tighter control on their external borders.

[Raistlin]

Events

1794 The United States Navy was formed.

1871 England and Scotland played their first rugby international, in Edinburgh; Scotland won.

1914 The first successful blood transfusion was performed, in a Brussels hospital.

1958 Nikita Khrushchev became leader of the Soviet Union.

1964 The ten 'Great Train Robbers' who were caught were sentenced to a total of 307 years in prison.

1977 Pan Am and KLM jumbo jets collided on the runway at Tenerife airport, in the Canary Islands, killing 574 people.

1994 The Freedom Alliance right-wing coalition won the Italian general election; Silvio Berlusconi of Forza Italia became prime minister.

1995 South African President Mandela dismissed his estranged wife, Winnie Mandela, from her cabinet post as deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology on grounds of insubordination.

1996 Yigal Amir, the murderer of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

1996 US astronauts conducted a six-hour space walk outside the Mir-Atlantis complex.

Births

1863 Henry Royce, English car designer and manufacturer

1886 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, German architect

1899 Gloria Swanson, US film actress

1917 Cyrus Vance, US secretary of state

1924 Sarah Vaughan, US jazz singer

1927 Mstislav Rostropovich, Russian cellist and conductor

1957 Duncan Goodhew, English Olympic swimmer

Deaths

1625 King James I of Great Britain

1770 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Italian painter

1878 George Gilbert Scott, English architect

1923 James Dewar, Scottish physicist and chemist who invented the thermos flask

1931 Arnold Bennett, English novelist

1983 Anthony Blunt, English art historian and Soviet spy

[Bizarra]

Nelson Mandela had the right idea......... Barefoot, Pregnant & in the kitchen :lol2:

Insubordination ?

[Raistlin]

Births

1483 Raphael, Italian painter

1515 St Teresa of Avila, Carmelite nun

1660 George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland

1902 Flora Robson, English actress

1921 Dirk Bogarde, English actor and author

1942 Neil Kinnock, British politician

Deaths

1868 James Thomas Brudenell, 7th earl of Cardigan, leader of the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava

1941 Virginia Woolf, English novelist

1943 Sergei Rachmaninov, Russian composer

1958 W C Handy, US blues composer

1969 Dwight Eisenhower, 34th president of the USA

1985 Marc Chagall, Russian-born French painter

1994 Eugène Ionesco, Romanian-born French dramatist

Events

1910 The first seaplane took off near Marseille, S France.

1912 Both the Oxford and the Cambridge boats sank in the University boat race.

1930 The cities of Angora and Constantinople, in Turkey, changed their names to Ankara and Istanbul respectively.

1939 The Spanish Civil War came to an end as Madrid surrendered to General Franco.

1939 Adolf Hitler denounced Germany's nonaggression pact with Poland (of Jan 1934).

1945 Germany dropped its last V2 bomb on Britain.

1979 The nuclear power station at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, suffered a meltdown in the core of one of its reactors.

1996 Three British soldiers were found guilty in a Cypriot court of the manslaughter of a Danish tour guide.

1997 Dozens of Albanian immigrants drowned in the Adriatic following a collision with an Italian navy corvette that had been trying to stop the boat carrying refugees from entering Italian waters.

[Raistlin]

Events

1461 Over 28,000 people are said to have been killed in the Battle of Towton, N Yorkshire; the Lancastrians under Henry VI were defeated.

1871 The Albert Hall, London, was opened by Queen Victoria.

1886 Coca Cola went on sale in the USA; it was marketed as a 'Brain Tonic' and claimed to relieve exhaustion.

1971 In the USA, Lt William Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of the murder of civilians in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1969.

1973 The last US troops left Vietnam.

1974 US spacecraft Mariner 10 took close-up photographs of the planet Mercury.

1979 A major accident occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania, USA.

1981 The first London Marathon was held, with 7,055 competitors.

1993 Edouard Balladur became prime minister of France after victory for a right-wing RPR-UDF alliance in elections; the ruling Socialist Party retained only 54 of their 252 seats.

1994 The European Union agreed to admit four new members: Austria, Sweden, Norway, and Finland from 1 Jan 1995, subject to national referendum.

1998 A series of F5 tornados hit southern Minnesota, leaving three dead.

2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.

2004 The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants.

Births

1853 Elihu Thomson, US inventor

1869 Edwin Lutyens, English architect

1902 William Walton, English composer

1918 Pearl Bailey, US singer

1931 Norman Tebbit, British politician

1943 John Major, British prime minister

1943 Comic actor Eric Idle, a member of the internationally acclaimed comedy team : Monty Python's Flying Circus.

1943 Composer Vangelis.

Deaths

1788 Charles Wesley, English evangelist and hymn-writer

1837 Maria Fitzherbert, mistress of King George IV of Great Britain

1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat, French painter

1912 Robert Falcon Scott, Antarctic explorer

1957 Joyce Cary, Irish novelist

1959 Barthelemy Boganda, first President of the Central African Republic

1970 Vera Brittain, English socialist writer

1981 Dr Eric Williams, aged 69, Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago.

1992 Paul Henreid, Austrian actor

2001 Helge Ingstad, Norwegian explorer

[Raistlin]

Events

1282 The Sicilian Vespers, a massacre of the French in Sicily, begun the previous evening, ended.

1889 In Paris, the Eiffel Tower, built for the Universal Exhibition, was inaugurated.

1896 The first zip fastener was patented in the USA by its inventor, Whitcomb Judson.

1959 Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama fled from Chinese-occupied Tibet.

1968 President Johnson announced his decision not to seek re-election and restricted US bombing of North Vietnam.

1973 Racehorse Red Rum set a record of 9 min 1.9 sec for the Grand National Steeplechase.

1986 Hampton Court Palace, near Richmond, SW London, was severely damaged by a fire which broke out in the south wing.

1990 Huge anti-poll tax demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, ended in confrontations with the police, and rioting and looting in the West End.

1991 Military structure of Warsaw Pact was dissolved.

1996 In the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin announced a Chechen cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops.

2004 Sandton Square in Johannesburg, South Africa, is renamed Nelson Mandela Square.

Births

1596 René Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician

1621 Andrew Marvell, English poet

1651 Karl II, Elector Palatine (d. 1685)

1675 Pope Benedict XIV (d. 1758)

1718 Marianne Victoria of Borbón, queen regent of Portugal (d. 1781)

1723 King Frederick V of Denmark

1732 Franz Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer

1809 Nikolai Gogol, Russian novelist

1811 Robert Bunsen, German chemist

1927 John Fowles, English novelist

1935 Mexican musician and band leader Herb Albert.

1935 British politician David Steel

1948 American politician Al Gore.

Deaths

1547 King Francis I of France

1621 King Philip III of Spain

1631 John Donne, English poet

1837 John Constable, English painter

1855 Charlotte Brontë, English novelist

1980 Jesse Owens, US athlete

1981 Enid Bagnold, English novelist

2003 H.S.M. Coxeter, English born geometer and author

[Raistlin]

Events

1789 In New York City, the United States House of Representatives holds its first quorum and elects Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first House Speaker.

1826 Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.

1854 Hard Times begins serialisation in Charles Dickens magazine, Household Words.

1908 The British Territorial Army was founded.

1918 In Britain, the Royal Air Force was formed when the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps were merged.

1924 Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the "Beer Hall Putsch." However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes the book Mein Kampf.

1947 Britain's school-leaving age was raised to 15.

1948 The USSR began its blockade of Berlin.

1960 The USA launched the world's first weather satellite, Tiros I.

1973 In Britain, Value Added Tax (VAT) replaced Purchase Tax and Selective Employment Tax.

1979 Ayatollah Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic Republic.

1990 In Britain, 1,000 inmates rioted in Strangeways Prison, Manchester, taking over large parts of the prison.

1996 Douglass Hogg, the UK minister of agriculture, fisheries and food, announced a programme to destroy all cattle older than 30 months.

1997 Palestinian suicide bombers struck twice in one day, killing themselves but not destroying their targets, which in both cases appear to be buses taking Jewish children to school.

2001 Former president of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Miloševiæ surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes.

2002 The Netherlands legalizes euthanasia, becoming the only nation in the world to do so.

Births

1578 William Harvey, English physician who explained the circulation of the blood

1732 Franz Josef Haydn, Austrian composer

1815 Otto von Bismarck, first chancellor of the German Empire

1868 Edmond Rostand, French playwright, author of Cyrano de Bergerac

1883 Lon Chaney, US silent-film actor

1938; David Gower, English cricketer

1957 Ali McGraw, US film actress,

1958 Jim Bruce, Friend, sadly missed

Deaths

1204 Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of England and France

1406 King Robert III of Scotland

1917 Scott Joplin, US composer

1922 Karl Franz Josef, emperor of Austria

1976 Max Ernst, German Surrealist painter

1984 Marvin Gaye, US singer

1993 Solly Zuckerman, South-African born British zoologist

1994 Robert Doisneau, French photographer

[Raistlin]

Events

1721 Robert Walpole became the first prime minister of Britain.

1860 In the USA, the Pony Express came into operation, with despatch riders regularly making the 3,000-km/2,000-mi trip from St Joseph, Missouri to San Francisco, California.

1922 In the USSR, Stalin was appointed as general secretary of the Communist Party.

1930 Haile Selassie became emperor of Ethiopia.

1987 At an auction in Geneva, jewellery belonging to the late Duchess of Windsor raised over £31 million.

1993 In horse racing, the Grand National (held at the Aintree course in NW England) was declared void after two false starts. Over half the runners failed to respond to the second red (cancellation) flag and completed the course. The void race was won by Esha Ness, ridden by John White.

1996 The International Labour Organization reported that a quarter of all children between 5 and 15 were routinely employed for 9 hours a day, 6-7 days a week in some areas of Ghana, India, Indonesia, and Senegal.

1996 Theodore J Kacynski, the suspected 'Unabomber' who had waged a 17-year bombing campaign in the USA, was arrested in Montana.

1997 Thalit massacrebegins in Algeria; all but 1 of the 53 inhabitants of Thalitare killed by guerrillas

Births

1367 King Henry IV, first Lancastrian king of England

1783 Washington Irving, US historian and short-story writer

1866 James Hertzog, Boer War leader & Prime Minister of South Africa

1924 Doris Day, US film actress and singer

1924 Marlon Brando, USactor

1930 Helmut Kohl, German politician

1934 Jane Goodall, English zoologist

1961 Eddie Murphy, US film actor

Deaths

1682 Bartolomé Murillo, Spanish painter

1792 John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, English statesman

1862 James Clark Ross, English explorer

1882 Jesse James, US outlaw

1897 Johannes Brahms, German composer

1901 Richard D'Oyly Carte, founder of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

1991 Graham Greene, English novelist

1991 Martha Graham, US dancer and choreographer

1993 Dieter Plage, German wildlife photographer

1994 Jérôme Lejeune, French medical geneticist

[Raistlin]

Events

1580 An earth tremor damaged several London churches, including the old St Paul's Cathedral.

1652 Dutch sailor Jan van Rieeck establishes a resupply camp at the Cape of Good Hope, which will eventually develop into Cape Town.

1814 Napoleon abdicates. He is then exiled to Elba

1830 Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church in New York State.

1896 The first modern Olympic Games began in Athens.

1909 US explorer Robert Peary became the first person to reach the North Pole.

1917 The USA declared war on Germany.

1943 In N Africa, Axis forces under Rommel retreated north from Gabes Gap in Tunisia, enabling US and British armies to link up (8th).

1963 Britain and the USA signed the Polaris missile agreement.

1965 Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite, was launched by the USA.

1994 Burundian president Ntaryamira and Rwandan President Habarimana were killed in a plane crash. Their Deaths sparked a wave of violence in Rwanda

1997 Rebels massacred more than 80 villagers in Algeria, slaughtering some with chainsaws and dousing others in petrol.

Births

1826 Gustave Moreau, French painter

1849 John William Waterhouse, British painter (d. 1917)

1866 Butch Cassidy, American outlaw

1874 Harry Houdini, US escapologist

1906 John Betjeman, English poet

1928 James Watson, US biologist

1929 André Previn, US conductor

1938 Paul Daniels, English magician and entertainer

Deaths

1199 Richard I, 'the Lion-Heart', King of England

1520 Raphael, Italian painter and architect

1528 Albrecht Dürer, German painter

1590 Francis Walsingham, English politician

1605 John Stow, English historian

1961 Jules Bordet, Belgian bacteriologist

1971 Igor Stravinsky, Russian composer

1992 Isaac Asimov, US scientist

1994 Juvénal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda

1996 Greer Garson, Irish actress

2005 Prince Rainier III, Prince of Monaco

[Raistlin]

Events

1827 The first matches were sold in Stockton, England, by their inventor, chemist John Walker.

1853 Chloroform was used as an anaesthetic on Queen Victoria, during the birth of her eighth child, Prince Leopold.

1906 A major eruption of the Italian volcano, Vesuvius, took place.

1939 Italy invaded Albania.

1948 The World Health Organization (WHO) was established.

1980 USA bannned trade with Iran, broke off relations, and expelled Iranian diplomats.

1992 The EC formally recognized the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1997 US President Clinton, emerging from talks with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Washington, failed to condemn the new Jewish Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem.

1998 Singer George Michael is arrested in a Beverly Hills public restroom for "engaging in a lewd act."

1999 Kosovo War: Kosovo's main border crossings are closed by Serbian forces to prevent ethnic Albanians from leaving.

2001 Mars Odyssey is launched.

2003 US troops capture Baghdad, Saddam Hussein'sregime falls two days later.

2005 The State of Connecticut allows same-sex civil unions.

Births

1506 St Francis Xavier, Spanish Jesuit missionary

1770 William Wordsworth, English poet

1915 Billie Holiday, US jazz singer

1920 Ravi Shankar, Indian sitar player

1939 David Frost, English TV presenter and interviewer

1939 Francis Ford Coppola, US film director

Deaths

1614 El Greco, Greek-born Spanish painter

1739 Dick Turpin, English highwayman

1891 Phineas T Barnum, US showman

1947 Henry Ford, US car manufacturer

1955 Theda Bara, US silent-film actress

1968 Jim Clark, English racing driver, killed in a crash

2003 Cecile de Brunhoff, French storyteller

[Raistlin]

Events

1513 Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León arrived in Florida and claimed it for Spain.

1820 The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos

1838 Isambard Brunel's steamship Great Western set off on its first voyage, from Bristol to New York; the journey took 15 days.

1898 Lord Kitchener defeated Sudanese leader the Mahdi, at the Battle of Atbara.

1899 Martha Place becomes the first woman to be executed in an electric chair

1908 Herbert Asquith became prime minister of Britain.

1939 In Albania, King Zog abdicated after Italy occupied the country.

1946 The League of Nations met for the last time.

1953 British colonial authorities in Kenya sentenced Jomo Kenyatta to seven years' imprisonment for allegedly organizing the Mau Mau guerrillas.

1992 Serb and federal army forces began bombardment of Sarajevo.

1997 The results of the first ultrasonic scan of the front of the Titanic revealed a series of six short slits as the principle damage to the ship after it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic in 1912.

Births

1889 Adrian Boult, English conductor

1893 Mary Pickford, US film actress

1919 Ian Smith, Rhodesian prime minister

1928 Eric Porter, English actor

1931 Dorothy Tutin, English actress

1944 Hywel Bennett, Welsh actor

1959 Balli Hi, TOC Poster with taste

Deaths

217 Caracalla, Roman emperor, assassinated

1848 Domenico Donizetti, Italian composer

1861 Elisha Graves Otis, US inventor of the safety lift

1973 Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter

1993 Marian Anderson, US contralto

[balli hi]

Births

1889 Adrian Boult, English conductor

1893 Mary Pickford, US film actress

1919 Ian Smith, Rhodesian prime minister

1928 Eric Porter, English actor

1931 Dorothy Tutin, English actress

1944 Hywel Bennett, Welsh actor

1959 Balli Hi , Genious , All round good egg , etc etc

[Raistlin]

Don't forget modest :D

[Raistlin]

Events

1633 Bananas, never seen before in England, were on sale in a London shop.

1820 The first British settlers landed at Algoa Bay, South Africa.

1841 The US newspaper New York Tribune was first published.

1849 The safety pin was patented in the USA; unaware of this, a British inventor patented his own safety pin later the same year.

1864 Austrian Archduke Maximilian was made emperor of Mexico.

1972 Earthquakes in Iran killed over 3,000 people.

1983 US Middle East peace plan collapsed when Jordan withdrew from talks.

1997 A German court ruled that Iran's leaders ordered the Sept 1992 murders of three Iranian Kurdish opposition activists in Berlin. The judgement plunged German and EU relations with Iran into a crisis.

1997 In the UK, the National Trust's ruling council voted unanimously to ban stag-hunting on its land after a study concluded that the chase caused extreme suffering and exhaustion to the deer.

Births

1512 King James V of Scotland

1778 William Hazlitt, English essayist and critic

1829 William Booth, English founder of the Salvation Army

1847 Joseph Pulitzer, US newspaper proprietor who founded the Pulitzer Prize for literature and journalism

1929 Max von Sydow, Swedish actor

1932 Omar Sharif, Egyptian film actor

Deaths

1585 Pope Gregory XIII

1813 Joseph-Louis Lagrange, French mathematician

1909 Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet

1919 Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary leader, shot by government troops

1954 Auguste Lumière, French cinema pioneer

1966 Evelyn Waugh, English novelist

1993 Chris Hani, South African ANC leader, asssassinated

1995 Yun Chen, Chinese communist politician

1995 Morarji Desai, Indian politician

[Bizarra]

I'm getting to have a BIG head

As far as I can see, to date, I'm the only noteworthy person born in 1941 :lol2:

[Raistlin]

I'm getting to have a BIG head

As far as I can see, to date, I'm the only noteworthy person born in 1941

OMG, that makes you an antique...

[Bizarra]

I'm getting to have a BIG head

As far as I can see, to date, I'm the only noteworthy person born in 1941

OMG, that makes you an antique...

Yeah :shutit: But Antiques are collectable & valuable & need T.L.C. [ lots of] :lol2:

[Raistlin]

Is that why you need to be polished on a regular basis...

[Raistlin]

Events

1564 The Peace of Troyes ended the war between England and France.

1689 The coronation of William III and Mary II took place in London.

1713 The War of the Spanish Succession was ended by the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht; France ceded Newfoundland and Gibraltar to Britain.

1814 Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba; Louis XVIII became king of France.

1855 Britain's first pillar boxes were put up in London; there were just six of them, and they were painted green.

1945 Allied troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald.

1951 US General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of his command in Korea, after a disagreement with President Truman.

1961 Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Jerusalem after being kidnapped from Argentina, where he had fled after World War II.

1996 Fire destroyed the main terminal building at Düsseldorf airport, killing 16 people.

1997 The government of Indian Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda lost a parliamentary vote of confidence and resigned.

1997 In a landmark settlement, a British multinational chemical company agreed to pay £1.3 million in compensation to 20 South African workers who were poisoned by mercury.

2002 The Ghriba synagogue bombing by Al Qaeda kills 21 in Tunisia.

2002 An attempted coup d'état in Venezuela against President Hugo Chavez began.

Births

1755 James Parkinson, English physician who discovered Parkinson's disease

1770 George Canning, British prime minister

1819 Charles Hallé, German-born British pianist and conductor

1893 Dean Acheson, US politician

1908 Dan Maskell, British tennis player, coach, and commentator

1933 Joel Grey, US actor and singer

Deaths

1514 Donato Bramante, Italian architect who began St Peter's, Rome

1554 Thomas Wyatt, English soldier and conspirator

1926 Luther Burbank, US botanist

1960 Archibald McIndoe, New Zealand-born plastic surgeon

1970 John O'Hara, US novelist

1987 Primo Levi, Italian chemist, composer, librettist, and author

1987 Erskine Caldwell, US novelist

2001 Harry Secombe, Welsh actor and comedian

[Raistlin]

Events

1204 Soldiers taking part in the Fourth Crusade under the direction of the Doge of Venice, captured the Byzantine city of Constantinople.

1606 The Union jack was adopted as the official flag of England.

1782 The British fleet under Admiral Rodney defeated the French fleet in the Battle of the Saints in the West Indies.

1861 The American Civil War began when Confederate troops fired on the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter.

1943 The 'Katyn massacre', the grave of 4,500 Polish officers at Katyn near Smolensk in the USSR, was discovered.

1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth.

1981 The US space shuttle Columbia was launched from Cape Canaveral.

Births

1777 Henry clay, American politician

1913 Lionel Hampton, US bandleader

1924 Raymond Barre, French politician

1939 Alan Ayckbourn, English playwright

1941 Bobby Moore, English footballer

Deaths

1748 William Kent, English architect and landscape gardener

1938 Fyodor Chaliapin, Russian operatic bass

1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd president of the USA

1975 Josephine Baker, US-born French singer and dancer

1988 Alan Paton, South African novelist and politician

1989 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer

[Raistlin]

Events

1598 Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, giving religious freedom to the Huguenots.

1668 English poet John Dryden became the first Poet Laureate.

1829 The British Parliament passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, lifting restrictions imposed on Catholics at the time of Henry VIII.

1919 The Amritsar Massacre took place in the Punjab, India; British troops fired into a crowd of 10,000 which had gathered to protest at the arrest of two Indian Congress Party leaders, 379 people were killed and 1,200 wounded.

1936 Luton Town footballer Joe Payne set a goal-scoring record when he scored ten goals in one match against Bristol Rovers.

1980 Spanish golfer Severiano Ballesteros became the youngest-ever winner of the US Masters Tournament.

1983 In the USA, Harold Washington was elected the first African-American mayor of Chicago.

1996 Cyril Ramaphosa, secretary general of the ANC and chair of the South African Constitutional Assembly, resigned unexpectedly.

1997 In his first year as a professional US golfer, Tiger Woods, aged 21, became the youngest US Masters champion at Augusta, Georgia, achieving the lowest total ever recorded in the Masters, 270.

Births

1743 Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the USA

1771 Richard Trevithick, English engineer

1852 F W Woolworth, US founder of chain stores

1922 John Braine, English novelist

1939 Seamus Heaney, Irish poet

1963 Gary Kasparov, Russian chess player

Deaths

1605 Boris Godunov, Russian tsar

1695 Jean de La Fontaine, French writer of fables

1910 William Orchardson, Scottish painter

1966 Abdul Salam Arif, president of Iraq

1983 Christmas Humphreys, English judge

[Raistlin]

Events

1532 The Submission of the Clergy was made to Henry VIII, beginning the political Reformation in England.

1755 English lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary; he had taken eight years to compile it.

1797 Sailors at Spithead, near Portsmouth, mutinied, demanding better conditions; the British government met their demands.

1891 US inventor Thomas Edison gave a public demonstration of his kinetoscope, a moving-picture machine.

1912 Over 1,500 people died when the passenger liner Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg on its first voyage.

1922 Insulin was discovered by Canadian physiologist Frederick Banting and John J R Macleod.

1927 Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Norma and Constance Talmadge become the first celebrities to leave their footprints in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood

1942 The George Cross was awarded to the island of Malta, for bravery under heavy attack by German and Italian forces during World War II.

1945 The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated.

1986 Bombers from US warships and bases in Britain attacked targets in Libya.

1989 In England, 96 Liverpool fans died in a crush during the Football Association Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough, Sheffield.

1997 Fire engulfed a pilgrims' tent city, killing more than 340 people and injuring 1,290 people on an annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

Births

1469 Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism

1843 Henry James, US-born British novelist

1901 Joe Davis, English snooker player

1924 Neville Marriner, British conductor

1940 Jeffrey Archer, English politician and novelist

1959 Emma Thompson, English actress

Deaths

1764 Mme de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, King of France

1865 Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the USA, assassinated

1888 Matthew Arnold, English poet and educationalist

1889 Father Damien, Belgian missionary

1980 Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher and writer

1982 Arthur Lowe, English actor

1984 Tommy Cooper, Welsh comedy magician

1988 Kenneth Williams, English actor and comedian

1993 Leslie Charteris, British-born novelist

1994 John Curry, English ice skater

1998 Pol Pot, Cambodian dictator

2000 Edward Gorey, American illustrator