On This Day

[Altobelli]

26 OCTOBER

0899 King Alfred the Great, Saxon King of Wes*** is believed to have died on this date. A soldier and scholar, he fought against the invading Danes and formed England's first navy. His son, Edward the Elder became King. Winchester was Alfred's capital, and he developed the town and to keep it safe from attack. This statue of him is in the town.

1640 The Treaty of Ripon was signed, by Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Scottish Covenanters. It was a major setback for Charles, and its terms were humiliating. It stipulated that Northumberland and County Durham were to be ceded to the Scots as an interim measure, that Newcastle was to be left in the hands of the Scots, and that Charles was to pay them £850 a day to maintain their armies there.

1775 King George III went before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.

1776 Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.

1825 The Erie Canal opens: Passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.

1850 Robert McClure sights the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time (from Banks Island towards Melville Island)

1859 The Royal Charter steam clipper was wrecked in Dulas Bay, off the coast of Anglesey, with almost 460 dead, the highest death toll of any shipwreck off the Welsh coast. The exact number of dead was not verified as the passenger list was lost in the wreck.

1861 Pony Express (Missouri to California) ends after 19 months

1863 The Football Association was formed at a meeting at Freeman's Tavern in London.

1863 International conference begins in Geneva aimed at improving medical conditions on battlefields - beginning of the Red Cross

1881 The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona.

1901 First recorded use of "getaway car" occurs after holding up a shop in Paris

1907 The Territorial Army was formed by the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane.

1929 London's world famous buses were painted red.

1936 The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.

1950 The first sound and vision broadcast from the House of Commons was broadcast, showing George VI reopening the chamber after repair work carried out on damage sustained during the war.

1965 The Beatles went to Buckingham Palace to be presented with their MBEs by Queen Elizabeth II. Four years later, John Lennon sent back his MBE, stating that he was returning the award in protest against British involvement in Biafra, Nigeria, and Vietnam.

1970 Muhammad Ali faces off against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta, Georgia for the first time after Ali's three year hiatus from evading to be drafted in the Vietnam War.

1977 The birth of Dame Sarah Storey, Britain's most decorated female Paralympian. Her list of major achievements (as of October 2015) include being a 21-time World champion (6 in swimming and 15 in cycling), a 21-time European champion (18 in swimming and 3 in cycling) and a holder of 72 world records. There is a sculpture to her and her husband 'Barney' Storey in their home town of Disley, Cheshire.

1977 Last natural case of smallpox discovered in Merca district, Somalia. Considered the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination

1984 "Baby Fae" receives a heart transplant from a baboon.


1986 Leading politician Jeffrey Archer was forced to resign from the deputy chairmanship of the Conservative party following allegations that he made a payment to a prostitute to avoid a scandal. He denied the allegations and later fought a successful libel case.

1989 The re-built Globe Theatre in London reopened for the first time in 350 years.

1989 The British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson resigned over policy differences with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. John Major replaced him.

1992 The London Ambulance Service was thrown into chaos after the failure of a new Computer Aided Dispatch system. Its poor design and implementation led to significant delays in the assigning of ambulances, with reports of 11 hour waits. Media reports at the time claimed that up to 30 people may have died as a result of the chaos. The then-chief executive, John Wilby, resigned shortly afterwards.

2000 The long awaited report into the spread of BSE or 'mad cow disease' and its fatal human equivalent, vCJD, criticised officials, scientists and government ministers.

2001 British troops were put on standby for action in Afghanistan as Tony Blair warned that Osama bin Laden must be stopped.

2001 The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.

2002 Approximately 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater in Moscow, which had been occupied by Chechen terrorists three days before.

2012 Six care workers at Winterbourne View care home (Gloucestershire) were given prison sentences for 'particularly cruel … callous and degrading' abuse of disabled patients.' The defendents were were secretly filmed by BBC Panorama, slapping extremely vulnerable residents, soaking them in water, trapping them under chairs, taunting and swearing at them, pulling their hair and poking their eyes.

2014 Camp Bastion, the last UK base in Afghanistan, was handed over to the control of Afghan security forces, ending British combat operations in the country.

Famous Birthday's

Edward W. Brooke
(1919 - 2015)

Hillary Clinton
70th Birthday

Seth MacFarlane
44th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(1815 - 1902)

Hattie McDaniel
(1895 - 1952)

Igor Sikorsky
(1889 - 1972)

Famous Weddings

1789 Lexicographer Noah Webster (31) weds Rebecca Greenleaf

1953 Tennis champion Tony Trabert (23) weds beauty queen Shauna Wood at the Salt Lake Country Club in Salt Lake City, Utah

1963 Actress Elizabeth Montgomery (30) weds director-producer William Asher (42) in El Paso, Texas

1968 Lawyer and politician Rudy Giuliani (24) weds second cousin Regina Peruggi (22) in a large Roman Catholic ceremony in Bedford Park, The Bronx

2002 American singer-songwriter and TV personality Jessica Simpson (22) weds singer-songwriter Nick Lachey (28) at Riverbend Church in Austin, Texas

[Altobelli]

27 OCTOBER

312 Roman Emperor Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross

939 Edmund I succeeded Athelstan as King of England.

1275 Traditional founding of the city of Amsterdam.

1644 The Second Battle of Newbury in the English Civil War took place in Speen, adjoining Newbury in Berkshire. The combined armies of Parliament inflicted a tactical defeat on the Royalists, but failed to gain any strategic advantage.

1662 Charles II of England sold the coastal town of Dunkirk to King Louis XIV of France.

1682 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded.

1728 The birthday of Captain James Cook, English naval officer and one of the greatest navigators in history. His voyages in the Endeavour led to the European discovery of Australia, New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands. Thanks to Cook’s understanding of diet, no member of the crew ever died of scurvy, the great killer on other voyages. In his youth he was apprenticed to a ship owner in Whitby.

1795 Pinckney's Treaty [Treaty of San Lorenzo] signed by Spain and US, establishing the southern boundary of the US and giving Americans right to navigate the Mississippi River

1838 Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated.

1904 The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world.

1914 Birth of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. He had a long affinity with Laugharne, spending the last four years of his life in the Boathouse -

1914 World War I: The British super-dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious was sunk off Tory Island, north-west Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin. The Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, Sir John Jellicoe, proposed that the sinking be kept a secret, to which the Board of Admiralty and the British Cabinet agreed, and for the rest of the war, Audacious' name remained on all public lists of ship movements and activities.

1936 American Wallis Simpson, the future Duchess of Windsor, was granted a divorce from her second husband Ernest, leaving her free to marry King Edward VIII.

1939 The birth of John Cleese, actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He appeared in BBC TV's Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers, and has starred in many films including the four Monty Python films, Clockwise and A Fish called Wanda.

1952 The BBC screened part one of the 26 part series 'Victory At Sea', Britain's first TV documentary.

1958 The birth of Simon Le Bon, English musician, best known as the lead singer, lyricist and musician of the band Duran Duran.

1962 Black Saturday - Russian nuclear missile crisis in Cuba

1962 Major Rudolf Anderson of the USAF becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba.

1964 Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater. The speech launched his political career and came to be known as "A Time for Choosing".

1965 An airliner crashed at Heathrow, killing 36 people.

1967 Britain passed the Abortion Act, allowing abortions to be performed legally for medical reasons.

1967 Catholic priest Philip Berrigan and others of the 'Baltimore Four' protest the Vietnam War by pouring blood on Selective Service records.

1968 An estimated 6,000 marchers, demonstrating against the Vietnam War, faced up to police outside the US Embassy in London.

1978 Four people were killed and four others seriously wounded after a gunman (Barry Williams) went on a shooting spree on the Bustleholm estate, Wednesbury and later at a service station in Nuneaton.

1980 The start of a hunger strike by Republican prisoners interned in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland.

1982 China announces its population has reached 1 billion plus people

1986 The government suddenly deregulated financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way in which they operated, in an event now referred to as the Big Bang.

1987 Gilbert McNamee was sentenced to 25 years in prison for being an IRA bomb maker

1988 Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure.


1992 United States Navy radioman Allen R. Schindler, Jr. is murdered by shipmate Terry M. Helvey for being gay, ultimately resulting in the "Don't ask, don't tell" military policy.

1998 Welsh Secretary Ron Davies resigned after what he described as his 'inappropriate behaviour' late at night on Clapham Common, London which led to him being robbed at knife point.

Famous Birthday's

James Cook
(1728 - 1779)

Theodore Roosevelt
(1858 - 1919)

John Gotti
(1940 - 2002)

Famous Deaths

Ivan the Great
(1440 - 1505)

Akbar
(1542 - 1605)

Ivan the Great
(1462 - 1505)

Lou Reed
(1942 - 2013)

Famous Weddings

1880 Theodore Roosevelt, later 26th US President marries Alice Hathaway Lee, on his 22nd birthday

1910 Baseball legend Connie Mack (47) weds Katherine Holahan

1964 Singers Sonny & Cher wed, Cher wore bell-bottoms

1971 Steve Garvey weds Cynthia Truhan

1984 "Jessie's Girl" singer Rick Springfield (35) weds Barbara Porter in Australia

[chalky_ncfc]

Cheers Altobelli, 1914's sinking of HMS Audacious is particularly interesting

[Altobelli]

Cheers Altobelli, 1914's sinking of HMS Audacious is particularly interesting

I looked on the internet for more on the Audacious also Chalky, amongst others.

With the thread seemingly getting an average of 32 views every day I would have thought more would comment on something as there must be an event at sometime that interest's someone.

[chalky_ncfc]

I often look up events after reading about them on this thread,there have been some great titbits to get your mind thinking ,at least the tread is getting read Altobelli and that's the main thing

[Altobelli]

28 OCTOBER

1216 Henry III was crowned. His son was England's warrior king, Edward I.

1492 Christopher Columbus discovers Cuba and claims it for Spain

1538 The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, is established on Hispaniola

1636 A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what would become the United States, today known as Harvard University.

1664 The Corps of Her Majesty's Royal Marines, commonly referred to as the Royal Marines, was established. It was originally known as The Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot.

1746 Peruvian cities of Lima and Callao demolished by earthquake, 18,000 die

1794 The birth of Robert Liston, Scottish physician who carried out Britain's first operation with the aid of an anaesthetic.

1831 English physicist Michael Faraday demonstrated the dynamo, founding the science of electro-magnetism.

1886 In New York Harbor, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.

1893 HMS Havelock, the Royal Navy's first destroyer, went on trials.

1904 St Louis police try a new investigation method - fingerprints

1912 The birth of Sir (William) Richard Doll, English physician and cancer researcher who first proved the link between cigarette smoking and cancer.

1915 Richard Strauss conducts the first performance of his tone poem "Eine Alpensinfonie" in Berlin.

1919 Volstead Act passed by US Congress, establishing prohibition, despite President Woodrow Wilson's veto

1922 March on Rome: Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.

1924 Miner M.de Bruin discovers the infant fossil skull, "Taung child" in a lime quarry in Taung, South Africa. Paleoanthropologist Raymond Dart identifies the fossil as a new hominin species, Australopithecus africanus.

1929 1929 1st child born in aircraft, Miami, Florida

1930 The birth of Bernie Ecclestone English business magnate who is generally considered the primary authority in Formula One motor racing. His early involvement in the sport was as a competitor and then manager and, in 1972, he bought the Brabham team, which he ran for fif**** years. As a team owner he became a member of the Formula One Constructors' Association.

1938 David Dimbleby, TV journalist and commentator was born.

1949 The glove puppet Sooty, with Harry Corbett, made his first appearance on BBC TV.

1958 The State Opening of Parliament was televised for the first time.

1959 The first use of a car phone, with a call from Cheshire to London. A mere twenty five people had paid the astronomical sum of £200 each for one of the phones.

1962 The opening of Britain's first urban motorway - the M62 (now M60) around Manchester.

1962 End of Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.

1965 Construction on the St. Louis Arch is completed.

1971 The House of Commons backed Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath and, by a majority of 112, voted for Britain to apply to join the EEC - the European Economic Community.

1974 Sports Minister Denis Howell's wife and young son survived a bomb attack on their car. The attack was thought to be the work of the Provisional IRA and the first on a serving minister during the current IRA campaign.

1979 Chairman Hua Kuo-Feng, the first Chinese leader to visit Britain, was welcomed at Heathrow by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. (Additional note - Margaret Thatcher was born at this former grocer's shop in Grantham Lincolnshire.

2000 Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble narrowly won party support to keep a Northern Ireland power sharing government alive.

2005 Plame affair: Lewis Libby, Vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is indicted in the Valerie Plame case. Libby resigns later that day.

2007 Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes the first woman elected President of Argentina.

2011 Commonwealth leaders pledged to amend legislation dating back to the 17th century to allow daughters of the monarch to take precedence over younger sons in the line of succession.

2011 Vincent Tabak, a 33 year old Dutch engineer with an obsession for violent *** and ****ography, was found guilty of strangling landscape architect Joanna Yeates for ***ual thrills. Her body was found, covered with leaves on Christmas morning 2010. The police initially suspected and arrested Christopher Jefferies, Yeates' landlord, who lived in a flat in the same building. The nature of press reporting on aspects of the case led to 'substantial, undisclosed libel damages' from eight newspapers being awarded to Mr. Jefferies.

2014 105 year old Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved 669 children, most of them Jews, from the Nazis was awarded the Czech Republic's highest state honour, the Order of the White Lion. He was aged 29 when he arranged trains to take the children out of occupied Czechoslovakia and for foster families to meet them in London.

2014 Tesco's Aberystwyth store made a blunder on a Welsh sign which was supposed to advertise 'free money' from the supermarket's cashpoint. The sign read "codiad am ddim", meaning free erections when it should read "arian am ddim" which means free money.

Famous Birthday's

Jonas Salk
(1914 - 1995)

Evelyn A Waugh
(1903 - 1966)

Bill Gates
62nd Birthday

Julia Roberts
50th Birthday

Hank Marvin
76th Birthday

Dennis Lillie
68th Birthday

Wayne Fontana
72nd Birthday

Cleo Laine
90th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Maxentius
( - 312)

John Locke
(1632 - 1704)

Abigail Adams
(1744 - 1818)

John Wallis
(1617 - 1703)

Ted Hughes
(1930 - 1998)

Famous Weddings

1533 Prince Henry of France (later Henry II) (14) marries Florentine noblewoman Catherine de' Medici (14)

1863 Painter Edouard Manet (31) weds Suzanne Leenhoff (34)

1869 Sarawak's head of state Charles Brooke (40) weds Margaret Alice Lili de Windt (20) at Highworth, Wiltshire

1981 Film director David Lean (73) weds fifth wife Sandra Hotz

2004 Economist Joseph Stiglitz (61) weds professor Anya Schiffrin (41) at the Municipal Building in New York

[Altobelli]

29 OCTOBER

539 BC King Cyrus "the Great" of Persia marches into Babylon, freeing Jewish captives and allowing them to return home

1268 Conradin, the last legitimate male heir of the German Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings and Holy Roman Emperors, is executed with Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily

1390 First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people.

1618 Sir Walter Raleigh, English seafarer, courtier, writer and once a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I (he named Virginia after her) was beheaded at Whitehall. He had been falsely accused of treason and sentenced to death, commuted to imprisonment. He was released after 13 years to try and find the legendary gold of El Dorado. He failed, and returned to an undeserved fate.

1656 Edmund Halley, British astronomer, was born.

1665 Battle of Mbwila [Ambuila],: Portuguese forces defeat forces of the Kingdom of Kongo and decapitate King Antonio I of Kongo / Nvita a Nkanga

1787 Mozart's opera Don Giovanni receives its first performance in Prague.

1843 The world's first telegram was sent, from Paddington to Slough.

1863 Eigh**** countries, including Britain, met in Geneva and agreed to form the International Red Cross. The final resolutions adopted included The foundation of national relief societies for wounded soldiers - Neutrality and protection for wounded soldiers and a protection symbol for medical personnel in the field, namely a white armlet bearing a red cross.

1886 Fred Archer rode the last of his 2746 winners at Newmarket, retiring as a jockey after 16 years.

1901 Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

1929 The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called "Black Tuesday", ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.

1945 The Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment was set up in England.

1960 An airplane carrying the Cal Poly football team crashes on takeoff in Toledo, Ohio.

1961 Syria exits from the United Arab Republic.

1964 A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

1969 The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

1971 In Macon, Georgia, guitarist Duane Allman is killed in a motorcycle accident.

1972 The three surviving perpetrators of the Munich massacre are released from prison in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615.

1975 More than 20 people were injured in an IRA bomb attack on a restaurant in Mayfair, London.

1975 The world’s largest mining complex was opened at Selby, Yorkshire. Selby is now an attractive market town with an ancient abbey that dates back to shortly after the Norman conquest.

1983 Yachtsman Chay Blyth had to cancel his plans to create a new world clipper record when his trimaran capsized 500 miles east of New York.

1986 The final section of the M25 was opened. The motorway around Greater London was designed to relieve traffic congestion within the capital.

1988 Two of Britain’s greatest middle distance runners, Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram, re-ran the 367 metre ‘Chariots of Fire’ race around the Great Court at Trinity College, Cambridge. Sebastian Coe was the winner in 45.52 seconds. In the original race Lord Burghley crossed the line in 42.5 seconds.

1989 Eight people died when winds of almost 100mph struck South Wales and the West of England, causing flooding, fallen trees and power cuts.

1998 Apartheid: In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.

1998 Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, makes landfall in Honduras.

2003 The Conservative Party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, resigned after failing to win the backing of his fellow MPs.

2004 Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a 2004 Osama bin Laden video in which he first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

2008 TV and radio presenters Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were suspended. All their shows were taken off air whilst the BBC investigated their prank calls made to actor Andrew Sachs (Fawlty Towers) and comments made about the actor's granddaughter.

2010 Take That fans complained after facing major problems buying tickets to see Robbie Williams tour with the group for the first time in 16 years. The websites of official agencies including Ticketmaster, See Tickets, Ticketline and The Ticket Factory all buckled under the strain as the tickets went on sale at 0900 BST.

2012 The UK's first fourth generation (4G) mobile service was launched. 11 cities - London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Glasgow and Southampton had access to network EE's 4G from Tuesday morning, 30th October.

2012 Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States, killing 148 directly and 138 indirectly, while leaving nearly $70 billion in damages and causing major power outages.

2013 The Lonely Planet Guide named Yorkshire as one of the top places in the world to visit. It put the area third in the top 10 world regions, behind destinations in India and Australia.

2013 Turkey opens a sea tunnel connecting Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul.

2014 The Serious Fraud Office initiated a criminal investigation into accounting irregularities at supermarket giant Tesco after the supermarket announced that its profits had been overstated by £263m.

2015 China announces the end of their one-child policy after 35 years

Famous Birthday's

Joseph Goebbels
(1897 - 1945)

Robert Hardy
(1925 - 20170

Edwin van der Sar
47th Birthday

Matthew Hayden
46th Birthday

Robert Pirès
44th Birthday

Michael Vaughan
43rd Birthday

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
79th Birthday

Richard Dreyfuss
70th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Walter Raleigh
( - 1618)

Nathan Bedford Forrest
(1821 - 1877)

George McClellan
(1826 - 1885)

Jimmy Savile
(1927 - 2011)

Famous Weddings

437 Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor, marries Licinia Eudoxia, daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople. This unifies the two branches of the House of Theodosius

1994 Impressionist Rich Little (55) weds comedian Jeannette Markey (28) at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas

2004 "Jackass" member Chris Pontius (30) weds Claire Nolan in Malibu

2011 Actress Eva Amurri (26) weds former Major League Soccer player Kyle Martino (31) in Charleston, South Carolina

Famous Divorces

1951 Singer/actor Frank Sinatra and 1st wife Nancy (Barbato) divorce due to infidelity after 12 years of marriage

2010 Country singer Randy Travis (51) divorces manager Lib Hatcher due to state of incompatibility exists between the two parties after 19 long years of marriage. One of country music's longest-lasting couples

[Altobelli]

30 OCTOBER

1340 Battle of Rio Salado Battle (or Tarifa): King Afonso IV of Portugal and King Alfonso XI of Castile defeat Sultan Abu al-Hasan 'Ali of Morocco and Yusuf I of Granada, last Marīnids invasion of Iberian Peninsula

1470 Henry VI returned to the English throne after the Earl of Warwick (known as Warwick the Kingmaker) defeated the Yorkists in battle.

1485 The coronation of Henry VII of England. He founded the Yeoman of the Guard - 'Beefeaters' - to guard Royal Palaces in London.

1534 English Parliament passes Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the Church in England - a role formerly held by the Pope

1580 English explorer Sir Francis Drake completed his circumnavigation of the world when his ship, the 'Golden Hind', arrived back at Plymouth on the south coast of England.

1899 Battle of Ladysmith, Natal: Boers defeat the British, leading to the Siege of Ladysmith

1905 "October Manifesto" Russian Tsar Nicholas II grants civil liberties and accepts the first Duma (Parliament)

1917 British government gives final approval to Balfour Declaration

1922 Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy.

1925 In his workshop in London, Scotsman John Logie Baird achieved the transmission of the first television pictures using the head of a dummy as his image source.. He then persuaded a 15 year old office boy, William Taynton, to sit in front of a camera, becoming the first live person captured on camera.

1935 The birth of Michael Winner, former film director, producer, and food critic for the Sunday Times until his death in 2013. An active proponent of law enforcement issues he established the Police Memorial Trust after WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered in 1984.

1938 Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States

1941 World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations

1942 Three British Royal Navy personel - Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and can**** assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard boarded the sinking German submarine U-559, and retrieved ***** instruments and documentation which would later lead the Bletchley Park codebreakers to crack the German Enigma code. Brown was the only one of the three to survive when the submarine sank. All three received the George Cross Medal and Tommy Brown (aged 16 and too young to be at sea at the time ) is the youngest person to have ever received that award.

1944 Anne and Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they die the following year, shortly before the end of WWII

1957 The Government revealed details of plans to reform the House of Lords, which included creating the first women life peerages.

1960 English surgeon Michael Woodruff performed Britain's first successful kidney transplant, at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

1961 Because of "violations of Vladimir Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb

1965 English model Jean Shrimpton wore a miniskirt to the first day of the Melbourne Cup Carnival in Australia. The event became a milestone in the advancement of the mini as the defining fashion of the 1960s.

1973 The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time

1974 The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali KOs George Foreman in the 8th round in Kinshasa, Zaire

1974 As a member of the California Angels, Major League Baseball player Nolan Ryan throws the fastest recorded pitch, at 100.9 miles per hour

1979 Barnes Wallis, British aeronautical engineer and inventor of the wartime dam busting 'bouncing bomb' died. The pilots of 617 squadron used Derwent Reservoir in Derbyshire to practice their low level flying. There is a memorial to them at Derwent Dam.

1984 The 3 surviving members of the 'Beatles' Pop group were given the freedom of the City of Liverpool. Harrison refused to attend.

1990 English and French tunnellers met for the first time underneath the English Channel during the construction of the Channel Tunnel.

1995 At Winchester Crown Court, Rosemary West, the wife of serial killer Frederick West, broke her 20 month silence to plead her innocence over her husband's murders.

2001 Farmer Tony Martin, the loner who shot dead a ****age burglar, was cleared of murder but told he must spend at least another year in jail.

Famous Birthday's

Christopher Columbus
(1451 - 1506)

John Adams
(1735 - 1826)

Ezra Pound
(1885 - 1972)

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1821 - 1881)

Michael Winner
(1935 - 2013)

Otis Williams
76th Birthday

Henry Winkler
72nd Birthday

Diego Maradona
57th Birthday

Courtney Walsh
55th Birthday

Ivanka Trump
36th Birthday

Ashley Barnes
28th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Charles Tupper
(1821 - 1915)

Bonar Law
(1858 - 1923)

Steve Allen
(1921 - 2000)

William Cavendish-Bentinck
(1738 - 1809)

Sir Barnes Wallis
(1887 - 1979)

Famous Weddings

1943 Italian director Federico Fellini marries actress Giulietta Masina

1991 Singer Clint Black (34) weds actress Lisa Hartman (29)

2004 Blink-182 pop punk band drummer Travis Barker (28) weds actress and First Runner Up Miss USA 1995 Shanna Moakler (29) at the Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara, California

2012 Actress Evan Rachel Wood (25) weds "Billy Elliott" actor Jamie Bell (26) in California

[Altobelli]

31 OCTOBER

1517 Martin Luther posts 95 theses on Wittenberg church - precipitates the Protestant Reformation

1541 Michelangelo Buonarroti finishes painting "The Last Judgement" in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

1795 The birth of John Keats, English romantic poet.

1828 The birth of Sir Joseph Swan, English chemist and inventor. Both he and Edison were separately credited with the invention of the electric lamp. Edison was first, but his had a much shorter life and was therefore not practical.

1863 The Maori Wars resumed as British forces in New Zealand led by General Duncan Cameron began their Invasion of the Waikato in North Island. In 1995 the Waikato Tainui tribe completed negotiations with the New Zealand government and accepted a settlement package worth approximately 1 percent of the value of the lands confiscated in 1863.

1864 Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state

1876 Great Backerganj Cyclone of 1876 ravages British India (Modern-day Bangladesh), over 200,000 killed

1888 Scottish inventor John Boyd Dunlop patented pneumatic bicycle tyres.

1903 Hampden Park football ground - Glasgow, was opened.

1913 Dedication of the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile highway across United States

1915 For the first time during World War I, British troops wore steel helmets.

1917 World War I: Battle of Beersheba in southern Palestine - "last successful cavalry charge in history" performed by the 4th Australian Light Horse

1918 Spanish flu-virus kills 21,000 in US in 1 week

1923 The first of 160 consecutive days of 100º Fahrenheit at Marble Bar, Western Australia

1926 Jimmy Savile, radio and TV entertainer was born. In October 2012 numerous allegations were made that Savile had ***ually abused up to 200 young people, dating back to 1958. In the aftermath, his gravestone at Scarborough was removed at the request of Savile's family and plaques and statues of him in other locations were removed to prevent further defacement.

1926 Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that develops after his appendix ruptures

1940 World War II: The Battle of Britain ended. Britain had successfully avoided a possible German invasion.

1941 A fire in a clothing factory in Huddersfield, Yorkshire killed 49.

1941 After 14 years of work, Mount Rushmore is completed

1951 Zebra crossings came into use for the first time in Britain.

1955 Princess Margaret called off her plans to marry divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend.

1956 Britain and France bombed Egypt in retaliation for the barring of their ships from the Suez Canal.

1963 An explosion at the Indiana State Fair Coliseum kills 74 people and injures another 400 during an ice skating show. A faulty propane tank connection iis blamed

1964 The Windmill Theatre off London’s Piccadilly Circus finally closed after 32 years. Their slogan ‘We Never Closed’ was a tribute to them staying open to troops during the war.

1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam."

1971 A terrorist bomb exploded at the top of the Post Office Tower in London. The building has been closed to the public ever since.

1973 Three Provisional IRA members escaped from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin aboard a hijacked helicopter that briefly landed in the prison's exercise yard. As the helicopter took off, one officer, in the confusion shouted 'Close the gates, close the ******* gates.' The escape resulted in all IRA prisoners held at Mountjoy Prison being transferred to the maximum security Portlaoise Prison.

1982 The Thames barrier, part of London's flood defences, was raised for the first time.

1988 Coventry became Britain's first city to introduce a by-law banning the drinking of alcohol in public places. Coventry was made famous much earlier by Lady Godiva who, in 1678, clothed only in her long hair, rode through the city after her husband agreed to repeal the taxes if she would strip naked and ride through the streets.

1997 A 19 year old British au pair Louise Woodward, was found guilty by a court in America of murdering 8 month old Matthew Eappen.

2002 A federal grand jury in Houston, Texas indicts former Enron CEO Andrew Fastow on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice


2008 Officials asked for the Welsh translation of a bilingual road sign which in English read - "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only." When the automatic e-mail came back from Swansea council it read "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu" and this was duly printed on the road sign. Only later was it discovered that the Welsh part of the sign said "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."

2011 The world population reaches 7 billion inhabitants according to the United Nations

2013 TV cameras were allowed to record proceedings at the Court of Appeal in England and Wales for the first time. Senior judges and major broadcasters welcomed the move, which the head of BBC News said was a "landmark moment".

Famous Birthday's

John Keats
(1795 - 1821)

Chiang Kai-shek
(1887 - 1975)

Jimmy Savile
(1926 - 2011)

Eddie Charlton
(1929 - 2004)

Michael Landon
(1936 - 1991

John Candy
(1950 - 1994)

John Evelyn
(1620 - 1706)

Tom O'Connor
78th Birthday

Vanilla Ice
50th Birthday

Matt Dawson
45th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Harry Houdini
(1874 - 1926)

Brian Cobby
(1929 - 2012)

Indira Gandhi
(1917 - 1984)

River Phoenix
(1970 - 1993)

Famous Weddings

1968 Singer Davy Jones (22) weds actress Linda Haines

1970 "Easy Rider" director and actor Dennis Hopper (34) weds singer Michelle Phillips (26) in Mexico

1980 Baptist minister Al Sharpton (26) weds back up singer Kathy Jordan

Famous Divorces

1976 NBA legend Larry Bird (19) divorces highschool sweetheart Janet Condra only 11 months after getting married

2011 Socialite and model Kim Kardashian (31) divorces basketball player Kris Humphries (26) due to irreconcilable differences only 72 days after getting married

[Altobelli]

01 NOVEMBER

1512 The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time

1604 William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello was presented for the first time, at The Palace of Whitehall in London. The palace was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698. Seven years to the day, Shakespeare's romantic comedy The Tempest was also presented for the first time, and also at the Palace of Whitehall.

1611 William Shakespeare's play The Tempest is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London

1688 William III of Orange set out from the Netherlands to invade England and to overthrow James II of England during the Glorious Revolution. William's successful invasion led to him ascending the English throne as William III of England jointly with his wife Mary II.

1755 Lisbon earthquake kills more than 50,000 in Portugal

1762 The birth of Spencer Perceval who was later assassinated in the House of Commons. To date he is the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated.

1765 Parliament enacted the Stamp Act on the 13 American colonies to help pay for British military operations there. The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.

1870 In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast

1800 John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to live in the Executive Mansion (later renamed the White House).

1814 Congress of Vienna opens to re-draw the European political map after the defeat of France, in the Napoleonic Wars.

1848 WH Smith opened its first railway bookstall, at Euston Station in London.

1858 Following the bloody events of the Indian Mutiny, Queen Victoria was proclaimed ruler of India, replacing the reign of the East India Company.

1887 The birth of L.S Lowry, English artist, famous for his matchstick figures. The Lowry theatre and art gallery is at Salford Quays. Lowry spent many holidays at Berwick-upon-Tweed and painted many scenes such as Bridge End and Berwick Harbour.

1894 Vaccine for diphtheria announced by Dr Roux of Paris

1896 A picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time

1911 The first Woman's Weekly magazine was published in Britain.

1914 World War I: The Royal Navy suffered its first defeat of the war with Germany at the Battle of Coronel, fought off the western coast of Chile. HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth were both sunk, with a combined loss of 1,570 lives and no survivors from either ship.

1916 Paul Miliukov delivers in the Russian State Duma the famous "stupidity or treason" speech, precipitating the downfall of the Boris Stürmer government.

1922 The first radio licences went on sale in Britain at a cost of ten shillings (50p).

1927 Betting tax was first levied in Britain. Two days later the bookies went on strike at Windsor in protest.

1939 The first rabbit born after artificial insemination is exhibited to the world

1941 Ansel Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of Hernandez, New Mexico that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography

1944 Britain's Home Guard, formed in 1939 to fight the expected German invasion, was ordered to disband.

1945 It was announced that all available evidence supported the theory that German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in Berlin.

1951 6,500 American soldiers are exposed to 'Desert Rock' atomic explosions for training purposes in Nevada. Participation is not voluntary

1952 "Ivy Mike", the first thermonuclear weapon to utilize the H-bomb design of Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, is detonated in the Marshall Islands, Pacific Ocean

1956 Premium Bonds first went on sale in Britain with the winning numbers picked at random by a machine with the acronym 'ERNIE'. The first Premium Bond was bought by the then Lord Mayor of London, Sir Cuthbert Ackroyd.

1959 The first stretch of the M1 motorway linking London with the North of England was opened.

1982 Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of its factory in Marysville, Ohio

1990 The UK's deputy Prime Minister, Sir Geoffrey Howe, resigned after disagreements over the government's European policy.

2012 Scientists detect evidence of light from the universe's first stars, predicted to have formed 500 million years after the big bang

2014 A pilot was killed and another injured as Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo space tourism craft crashed in the California desert. Richard Branson said - "Space is hard - but worth it. We will persevere and move forward together."

Famous Birthday's

Spencer Perceval
(1762 - 1812)

L. S. Lowry
(1887 -1976)

Ted Lowe
(1920 - 2011)

Alfred Wegener
(1880 - 1930)

Gary Player
82nd Birthday

Larry Flynt
75th Birthday

Sharron Davies
55th Birthday

Mark Hughes
54th Birthday

V V S Laxman
43rd Birthday

Famous Deaths

Ezra Pound
(1885 - 1972)

Walter Payton
(1954 - 1999)

Man o' War
(1917 - 1947)

Famous Weddings

1940 Theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer (36) weds biologist Katherine Harrison Puening

1954 Actor John Wayne (47) weds actress Pilar Pallete in Kona, Hawaii

1986 MLB player Kirby Puckett (24) weds Tonya Hudson (20)

1988 US Actors Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis marry in Las Vegas

2003 "Showgirls" actress Elizabeth Berkley (31) weds artist Greg Lauren (33) at Esperanza Resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Famous Divorces

1947 Film director D. W. Griffith (72) divorces actress Evelyn Baldwin (37) after 11 years of marriage

1954 Actor John Wayne (47) divorces actress Esperanza Baur due to drunken violence after 7 years of marriage

1982 Director Martin Scorsese (39) divorces Isabella Rossellini (30) after 3 years of marriage

2010 Film actor Charlie Sheen (45) divorces socialite Brooke Mueller (33) due to irreconcilable differences after two-and-a-half years of marriage