On This Day

[Altobelli]

My Mrs nearly always has Sea Bass when we go to restaurants in Turkey, I always think of that picture when she does.

[chalky_ncfc]

Due to over fishing that size fish are gone forever

[Altobelli]

09 NOVEMBER

1494 Family de' Medici become rulers of Florence

1620 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts

1799 Napoleon Bonaparte pulls off a coup and becomes the dictator of France under the title of First Consul

1841 The birth of Edward VII, the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He married Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863 and they had three sons and three daughters. This statue of King Edward VII was unveiled by his father King George V in 1912 during a visit to Huddersfield with Queen Mary.

1847 In Edinburgh, Dr James Young Simpson delivered Wilhelmina Carstairs while chloroform was administered to her mother, the first child to be born with the aid of anaesthetics.

1857 The Atlantic is founded in Boston, Massachusetts

1887 The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

1888 At 3:30 a.m. in London's Whitechapel, 25-year-old Mary Kelly became Jack the Ripper's last known victim. The 'Ripper' was never caught, but the nature of the murders and of the victims drew attention to the poor living conditions in the East End of London and galvanised public opinion against the overcrowded, unsanitary slums. In the two decades after the murders, the worst of the slums were cleared and demolished.

1906 Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal

1907 The Cullinan Diamond, the largest rough gem-quality diamond yet found, was presented by the Transvaal to King Edward VII, on his birthday. The largest polished gem from the stone is named Cullinan I or the Great Star of Africa. It was the largest polished diamond in the world until 1985. Cullinan I is now mounted in the head of the Royal Sceptre which was originally made for the coronation of King Charles II in 1661, but was redesigned after the discovery of the Cullinan Diamond.

1908 Britain's first woman mayor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was elected at Aldeburgh. She died on17th December, 1917 and was buried in Aldeburgh churchyard, Suffolk.

1915 The first Women's Institute (WI) meeting in England was held in the main bar of 'The Fox Goes Free' public house at Singleton in West Sus***.

1938 Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from the gunshot wounds of Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate Kristallnacht

1940 The death of Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister at the outbreak of World War II.

1953 Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet, died in New York, aged 39. His heavy drinking and wild living contributed to his early demise. He had a long affinity with Laugharne, (Carmarthenshire) spending the last four years of his life in the Boathouse. He is buried in the over-spill graveyard of St. Martin's Church, Laugharne and his grave is marked with a white cross. His wife, Caitlin, is buried in the same grave and her name appears on the reverse side of the cross.

1960 Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of John F. Kennedy

1961 Brian Epstein went to a lunchtime session at The Cavern in Liverpool to see for himself why his record shop was receiving so many requests for records by a group that had apparently made none. He later became their manager.

1967 The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published

1979 Four men were found guilty of killing paperboy Carl Bridgewater. Eigh**** years later their convictions were quashed.

1980 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declares holy war against Iran

1985 Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union

1989 Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany

1992 Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr Michael Stroud set out on their unassisted crossing of the Antarctic. For 97 days they fought pain, starvation and snow blindness until they were eventually airlifted out after completing the first and the longest, unsupported journey in Polar history. They walked more than 1,350 miles across some of the most hostile terrain in the world, averaging more than 14 miles a day at temperatures as low as -45°C.

1992 The opening of the Victoria Shopping Centre in Harrogate. Described by Bill Bryson, in his book Notes from a Small Island as “heartbreakingly awful, the worst kind of pastiche architecture – a sort of Bath Crescent meets Crystal Palace with a roof by B&Q. The figures perched along the top look as if two dozen citizens of various ages are about to commit mass suicide.

1994 Chemical element Darmstadtium discovered at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research near Darmstadt, German

1998 Brokerage houses are ordered to pay 1.03 billion USD to NASDAQ investors to compensate for price-fixing - largest civil settlement in US history

1999 Pop singer Gary Glitter was charged with seducing and ***ually humiliating a 14-year-old girl. He was cleared on those charges but was jailed for downloading thousands of items of child ****ography. 7 years later a Vietnamese court found him guilty of committing obscene acts with minors and he was sentenced to 3 years in prison. In October 2012, Glitter was taken from his London home into custody for questioning about the *****phile allegations surrounding the late Jimmy Savile and was released on bail.

2012 The death of the 71 year old actor Bill Tarmey, who played Jack Duckworth in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street for more than 30 years.

Famous Birthday's

Benjamin Banneker
(1731 - 1806)

Hedy Lamarr
(1914 - 2000)

Mary Travers
(1936 - 2009)

Tom Fogerty
(1941 - 1990)

Jill Dando
(1961 - 1999)

Phil May
73rd Birthday

Famous Deaths



Neville Chamberlain
(1869 - 1940)



Charles de Gaulle
(1890 - 1970)

Art Carney
(1918 - 2003)

Bill Tarmey
(1941 - 2012)

Famous Weddings

1887 Painter Grandma Moses (27) weds Thomas Salmon Moses in New York

1899 US Admiral of the Navy George Dewey (61) weds Mildred McLean Hazen at the rectory St. Paul's Catholic Church in Washington, D.C.

1931 Actress Gloria Swanson (32) weds Michael Farmer

1935 "Magnificent Obsession" actress Jane Wyatt (24) weds investment broker Edgar Bethune Ward in Santa Fe, New Mexico

1968 Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant (19) weds Maureen Wilson (19)

Famous Divorces

1931 Actress Gloria Swanson (32) divorces aristocrat Henri de la Falaise (33) after 6 years of marriage

1968 Serial killer John Wayne Gacy (26) divorces first wife Marlynn Myers after 4 years of marriage

2004 Hotel heiress and fashion model Nicky Hilton (21) divorces businessman Todd Andrew Meister (33) due to bi-coastal relationship after nearly 3 months of marriage

[Altobelli]

10 NOVEMBER

1619 René Descartes has the dream that inspires his "Meditations on First Philosophy"

1674 Dutch formally cede New Netherlands (New York) to the English

1683 The birth of George II, King of England from 1727 to 1760.

1697 William Hogarth, painter, best known for his series, 'The Rake's Progress', was born.

1810 The birth of George Jennings, an English sanitary engineer and plumber who invented the first public flush toilets. He specialised in designing toilets that were 'as perfect a sanitary closet as can be made'.

1847 The passenger ship Stephen Whitney was wrecked in thick fog off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 92 of the 110 on board. The disaster resulted in the construction of the Fastnet Rock lighthouse.

1871 Henry Morton Stanley, (Welsh journalist and explorer) having been sent out to Africa by his newspaper to find the Scottish missionary David Livingstone, finally made contact with him at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika with the immortal words, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?' Henry Stanley was born John Rowlands. His mother abandoned him as a very young baby and he was eventually sent to St. Asaph Union Workhouse for the Poor. A memorial plaque to him has been erected in St. Asaph Cathedral, reputed to be the smallest ancient cathedral in Great Britain. This bronze statue of Stanley was unveiled in March 2011, in Denbigh, the town of his birth. It caused controversy because of Stanley's inhumanity and racist views. The sculpture shows the outstretched hand, the moment when Henry Morton Stanley finally met up with Livingstone.

1885 German engineer Gottlieb Daimler unveils the world's first motorcycle

1913 Battersea elected the first coloured mayor in London, John Archer, born in Liverpool of Jamaican parents. The honour of Britain's first black mayor goes to Allen Glaser Minns (Dr. Allan Glaisyer Minns?) who was elected Mayor of Thetford, Norfolk in 1904.

1918 Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia receives a top-secret coded message from Europe stating on November 11, 1918 all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air

1925 Richard Burton, legendary Welsh actor, was born, at Pontrhydyfen, This Richard Burton sculpture is on the Richard Burton Trail in the Afan Forest Park in Neath - Port Talbot.

1942 Buoyant after the desert victory at El Alamein, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said: 'This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.'

1944 The birth of Tim Rice, best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and additional songs for the 2011 West End revival of The Wizard of Oz.

1954 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery

1958 The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston

1958 British speed enthusiast Donald Campbell broke the water speed record of 248mph on Coniston Water. He died in 1967 (also on Coniston Water) and is buried in the new parish churchyard at Coniston.

1960 Bookshops all over England sold out of Penguin's first run of 200,000 copies of the controversial novel Lady Chatterley's Lover.

1968 England and Yorkshire fast bowler Fred Trueman announced his retirement. This bronze statue of him is in the canal basin at Skipton, North Yorkshire, the town where he lived for many years.

1980 Outspoken left wing MP Michael Foot defeated Denis Healey in a shock result to become the new leader of the Labour party.

1983 Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0

1984 The first Breeders' Cup takes place at Hollywood Park Racetrack

1986 The legendary jockey, Sir Gordon Richards, died aged 82.

1989 Germans begin demolishing the Berlin Wall

1997 Louise Woodward, British child-minder, was freed from jail in the United States after her conviction for murdering a baby was reduced to manslaughter. Her sentence was cut to 279 days, the exact length of time she had already spent in jail.

2002 Viewers of the UK music channel VH1 voted 'I Will Always Love You' as the most romantic song ever.

2010 Tens of thousands of people protested against plans to treble tuition fees and cut university funding in England. The Conservative Party headquarters were stormed and outside, placards and banners were set on fire and missiles were thrown.

2012 The BBC's director general, George Entwistle, resigned in the wake of a Newsnight child abuse broadcast which wrongly implicated ex-senior Tory Lord McAlpine.

2014 The first UK TV adverts featuring the use of an electronic cigarette (vaping) were shown. While e-cigarette adverts have been on television for some time, showing the device itself was banned until a change in advertising rules which came into force 'On This Day'.

Famous Birthday's

George II
(1683 - 1760)

Martin Luther
(1483 - 1546)

John Thompson
(1845 - 1894)

Jane Froman
(1907 - 1980)

Roy Scheider
(1932 - 2008)



Greg Lake
(1947 - 2016)

Tim Rice
72nd Birthday

Famous Deaths

Arthur Rimbaud
(1854 - 1891)



Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
(1881 - 1938)

Leonid Brezhnev
(1906 - 1982)

Pat Eddery
(1952 - 2015)

Famous Weddings

1926 Belgium crown prince Leopold weds princess Astrid Bernadotte of Sweden

1963 Actress Doris Roberts (33) weds novelist William Goyen (48)

1965 Netherlands 2nd Chamber accept marriage of Princess Beatrice & Claus von Amsberg

1973 Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully (45) weds Sandra Hunt

1977 Actor Bryan Cranston (21) weds writer Mickey Middleton

Famous Divorces

1975 Journalist Ben Bradlee (54) divorces Antoinette Pinchot after 19 years of marriage

2004 Talk show host Ricki Lake and Rob Sussman divorce after 10 years of marriage

[Altobelli]

11 NOVEMBER

1620 The Mayflower Compact was signed aboard ship in what is now Provincetown Harbour near Cape Cod. It was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony and was written by those who had fled to America in the ship the Mayflower to escape religious persecution from King James VI of Scotland (James I of England). Note:- The Pilgrim Fathers were thwarted in their first attempt to sail to America when they left from Havenside, near Boston, Lincolnshire in September

1675 German mathetician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = f(x) function

1724 The highwayman Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, was hanged in London. He had attracted attention for attacking the nation's leading policeman and 'Thief Taker' Jonathan Wild with a pocket knife. The policeman was also a successful gang leader and became the most infamous criminal in Britain during the 18th century. The attack by Blake left Wild incapacitated for weeks, and his grip over his criminal empire started to slip during his recuperation. Like Blake, he too was later hanged for his crimes.

1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's army enters England

1807 Washington Irving's Salmagundi periodical published - first to associate the name "Gotham" with New York City

1880 Australian Bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol

1887 Work started on building the Manchester Ship Canal at Eastham, Merseyside. At one time the Manchester end of the canal ended at an area now known as Salford Quays, a residential area with shopping precincts and home to the Lowry Theatre, the Imperial War Museum North and the TV studios - Media City UK.

1911 Many cities in the Midwestern United States break their record highs and lows on the same day as a strong cold front rolls through

1918 At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ended; a war that had lasted for 4 years and 97 days. Germany, bereft of manpower, supplies and food, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies. The war left 9 million soldiers dead and more than 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria, Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, some 6 million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

1919 Britain introduced a two minute silence at 11:00 a.m. to remember those who died in World War I.

1921 The first British Legion Poppy Day.

1921 The Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery

1926 The United States Numbered Highway System, including U.S. Route 66, is established

1930 Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator

1946 Stevenage was officially designed as Britain’s first New Town, one of ten which were planned to relieve London’s post-war housing problems.

1953 The BBC television programme Panorama was first broadcast.

1954 Thousands of elderly people took part in a rally in London calling for an increase in their pensions.

1965 The Rhodesian Government, led by Prime Minister Ian Smith, illegally severed its links with the British Crown.

1975 Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam removed from office by Governor General Sir John Kerr - 1st elected PM removed in 200 yrs

1987 Irises, a painting by Vincent Van Gogh was sold for £27m at Sotheby's, a world record at that time for a work of art.

1992 The Church of England General Synod voted to allow women to be ordained to the priesthood.

1997 Britain's Labour Party admitted to accepting a £1m donation from Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, but claimed it would be repaid and that it had nothing to do with the Government's decision to exempt motor racing from the ban on tobacco-related sports sponsorship.

1998 In the first joint engagement of its kind, the Queen and the Irish president, Mary McAleese, unveiled a peace tower in memory of the Irish dead of the First World War.

2004 Yasser Arafat's death through unidentified causes confirmed by Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas elected PLO chairman minutes later.

2011 Sean Quinn, an entrepreneur who was once the richest man in Ireland declared himself bankrupt over debts of £1.7 billion to the former Anglo-Irish Bank. Mr. Quinn ran a multi-billion empire until it collapsed due to massive, secret stock market gambles.

2013 Sean Conway, 32, made history by completing a marathon swim from Land's End to John O'Groats. He left Cornwall on 30th June, swimming along the west coast to the most northerly point of the UK mainland. He swam around 10 miles a day, slept on a yacht or in accommodation onshore and raised thousands of pounds for the War Child charity in the process.

2013 Hundreds of people attended the funeral of 99 year old Harold Jellicoe Percival (from Lytham St. Annes), a war veteran they never knew who died with no close friends or relatives around him. Veterans' groups and other military supporters campaigned, including via Twitter and Facebook, to acknowledge Mr. Percival's career as ground crew with the RAF's Bomber Command. He was also a distant relative of former Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated - (1812).

Famous Birthday's

Henry IV
(1050 - 1106)

Paracelsus
(1493 - 1541)



Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(1821 - 1881)

George S. Patton
(1885 - 1945)



Raemer Schreiber
(1910 - 1998)

Leonardo DiCaprio
43rd Birthday

June Whitfield
92nd Birthday

Demi Moore
55th Birthday

Famous Deaths



Nat Turner
(1800 - 1831)

Typhoid Mary
(1869 - 1938)

Ned Kelly
(1854 - 1880)

Martin Luther King Sr
(1899 - 1984)

Yasser Arafat
(1933 - 2004)

Famous Weddings

1100 Anglo Norman King Henry I marries Princess Matilda of Scotland at Westminster Abbey

1838 Emma Wedgwood accepts English naturalist Charles Darwin's marriage proposal

1858 20th US President James Garfield (26) weds Lucretia Rudolph (26) in Hiram, Ohio

1860 1st Jewish wedding in Buenos Aires Argentina

1944 Blues musician B.B. King (19) marries his first wife Martha Denton

[Altobelli]

12 NOVEMBER

764 Tibetan troops occupy Chang'an, capital of Chinese Tang Dynasty, occupy for fif**** days

1439 Plymouth, England, becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament


1555 The English Parliament re-establishes Catholicism

1595 The death of Admiral Sir John Hawkins chief architect of the Elizabethan navy. Among his many other roles, he rebuilt older ships and helped design the faster ships that withstood the Spanish Armada in 1588.

1660 English author John Bunyan was arrested for preaching without a licence. He refused to give up preaching and remained in jail for 12 years.

1793 Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, is guillotined

1847 The first public demonstration of the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic was given by James Simpson, at Edinburgh University.

1911 Birth of Reverend Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans, the voluntary group who counsel those in distress. Originally established at St Stephen’s Church, London, it provides a service day and night, every day of the year. (Reverend Chad Varah died on 8th November 2007, aged 95.)

1912 The remains of English explorer Robert Scott and his companions were found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Scott's party had reached the South Pole on 17th January 1912, only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition. Scott and his four comrades all perished on the return journey from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold. This Antarctic 100 memorial at Cardiff Bay overlooks the point from which Scott's ship the SS Terra Nova left Cardiff on its ill-fated voyage.

1919 The first flight from England to Australia started at Hounslow, with Ross and Smith in a Vickers Vimy. They landed safely on 13th December 1919.

1927 Leon Trotsky expelled from Soviet Communist Party, paving way for Joseph Stalin

1928 The birth, in South Africa of Bob Holness, English radio and television presenter. He is best known for presenting the British version of the quiz show Blockbusters, but also presented the quiz shows Take a Letter, Raise the Roof and Call My Bluff.

1933 The first photograph of the ‘Loch Ness monster’ was taken by Mr Hugh Gray. He managed to take five pictures altogether but after processing, four of them were blank and the fifth was not confirmed as being Nessie.

1936 In California, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic

1941 World War II: Temperatures around Moscow drop to -12 °C as the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city

1942 Naval Battle of Guadalcanal begins between Allied and Japanese forces in Solomon Islands (WWII)

1944 The RAF launched 29 Avro Lancaster bombers in one of the most successful precision bombing attacks of war and sank the German battleship Tirpitz, the last of the major German battleships.

1968 US Supreme Court: Epperson v. Arkansas, court declares unconstitutional Arkansas law banning teaching evolution in public schools

1970 Cyclone Bhola makes landfall in East Pakistan killing up to 500,000 - deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded

1974 A salmon was caught in the Thames, the first since around 1840. It was an 8lb 4 1/2oz female and she was discovered entangled in the protective nets around West Thurrock power station It was regarded by Thames Water authority as a vindication of the £100m they had spent on effluent control.

1984 It was announced, by Chancellor Nigel Lawson, that the pound note, after being in circulation for more than 150 years, would be phased out and replaced with the pound coin.

1979 Iran hostage crisis: In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran

1990 Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web

1997 Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

1997 Train robber Ronnie Biggs, was celebrating after Brazil's Supreme Court rejected a British request to extradite him, for the 2nd time. The court in Rio de Janeiro ruled that because Biggs' crime was committed more than 20 years previously he could not be extradited.

2001 Greece held 12 plane-spotting British 'spies' to carry out further inquiries. All were arrested for allegedly taking photographs at an air show at a military base.

2014 Police killer Harry Roberts was released from prison. Roberts, now aged 78, was jailed for life for murdering three unarmed officers in Shepherd's Bush, west London, in 1966.

2015 Out Magazine names Barack Obama 'Ally of the Year', Obama becomes 1st sitting US President to pose for cover of a gay magazine

2015 Storm Abigail, the first storm to be officially named by the Met Office, was upgraded to amber, with winds forecast of up to 90mph in the Western Isles, parts of Argyll and the north west Highlands and Orkney from 9:00pm on the 12th to midday on Friday 13th.

Famous Birthday's



Auguste Rodin
(1840 - 1917)

Sun Yat-sen
(1866 - 1925)

Bukka [Booker T. Washington] White
(1909 - 1977)

Grace Kelly
(1929 - 1982)

Errol Brown
1943 - 2015)



Charles Manson
83rd Birthday

Anne Hathaway
35th Birthday

Booker T Jones
72nd Birthday

Neil Young
71st Birthday

Famous Deaths

Percival Lowell
(1855 - 1916)

William Holden
(1918 - 1981)

Jonathan Brandis
(1976 - 2003)



Warren Clark
(1947 - 2014)

Famous Weddings

1028 Future Byzantine empress Zoe marries Romanus Argyrus according to the wishes of the dying Constantine VIII.

1656 English Poet and author of epic "Paradise Lost" John Milton (47) marries 2nd wife Katherine Woodcock

1963 Singer and actor Robert Goulet (30) weds actress Carol Lawrence (31)

1964 Academy Award-winning actress Ellen Burstyn weds actor Neil Nephew

1969 Director Blake Edwards (47) weds "The Sound of Music" actress Julie Andrews (34) in Beverly Hills

[Altobelli]

13 NOVEMBER

1002 English king Aethelred II ordered the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice's Day massacre.

1093 Malcolm III of Scotland, son of King Duncan, died at Alnwick, Northumberland, during his fifth attempt to invade England.

1312 Birth of Edward III, King of England from 1327.

1553 Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer and four others, including Lady Jane Grey, are accused of high treason and sentenced to death under "Bloody" Mary I

1642 First English Civil War: At the Battle of Turnham Green (Middle***), the Royalist forces withdrew in the face of the Parliamentarian army and failed to take London. Charles and his army retreated to Oxford for secure winter quarters.

1779www.beautifulbritain.co.ukThomas Chippendale, English cabinet-maker died. (Note:- He was born in Otley, Yorkshire and there is a statue to him outside the former Grammar School.

1789 Ben Franklin writes "Nothing . . . certain but death & taxes"

1841 James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism

1850 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was born.

1887 'Bloody Sunday' in London when violence erupted in Trafalgar Square at a Socialist rally attended by Irish agitators.

1901 The Caister (Norfolk) Lifeboat Disaster. Eight bodies were subsequently recovered at the scene with another, that of Charles Bonney George being washed away, only to be recovered months later in April of the following year. The victims are all buried in Caister Cemetery where a monument raised by public donation was raised to them in 1903.

1910 The birth of Pat Reid British Army officer and author. He was a prisoner of war at Colditz Castle and was one of the few to escape. He wrote about his experiences in two best-selling books, which became the basis of a film, TV series and even a board game.

1916 The Battle of the Somme (World War 1) ended. By the end of the battle, the British Army had suffered 420,000 casualties including nearly 60,000 on the first day alone. The French lost 200,000 men and the Germans nearly 500,000. The battle epitomised the futility of trench warfare and the indiscriminate slaughter of so many men.

1927 The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City

1933 1st modern sit-down strike by Hormel meat packers in Austin, Minnesota

1936 King Edward VIII told the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, that he intended to marry twice divorced Mrs. Simpson.

1940 Walt Disney's animated musical film Fantasia is first released, on the first night of a roadshow at New York's Broadway Theatre

1947 Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, resigned after admitting he had disclosed tax proposals to a reporter several minutes before presenting his Budget speech.

1947 The Soviet Union completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles

1954 Great Britain defeated France to capture the first ever Rugby League World Cup, held in Paris, in front of around 30,000 spectators.

1956 The Supreme Court of the United States declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1969 Britain's first live quintuplets this century were born, at Queen Charlotte's maternity hospital in London.

1974 Ronald DeFeo, Jr. murders his entire family in Amityville, Long Island in the house that would become known as The Amityville Horror

1979 The Times newspaper was published for the first time in nearly a year. The paper's disappearance from news stands followed a dispute between management and unions over manning levels and the introduction of new technology.

1980 US spacecraft Voyager 1 sends back 1st close-up pictures of Saturn

1985 Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupts in Colombia, killing 25,000

1987 With a view to encouraging 'safe ***', or AIDS prevention, the BBC screened its first condom 'commercial' (without a brand name).

1995 18 year Leah Betts was on a life-support machine after taking a single ecstasy tablet at her 18th birthday party. She died three days later without ever regaining consciousness.

Famous Birthday's

Edward III
(1312 - 1377)

John Dickinson
(1732 - 1808)



Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850 - 1894)



Ken Shuttleworth
72nd Birthday

Whoopi Goldberg
61st Birthday

Famous Deaths

George Grenville
(1712 - 1770)

Camille Pissarro
(1830 - 1903)

Elsa Schiaparelli
(1890 - 1973)

Thomas Chippendale
(1718 - 1779)

Famous Weddings

1160 Marriage of Louis VII of France with Adele of Champagne.

1929 Writer E. B. White (30) weds literary editor Katharine Angell (37)

1934 Actress and dancer Ginger Rogers (23) weds "All Quiet on the Western Front" actor Lew Ayres (25)

1960 US Entertainer Sammy Davis Jr marries Swedish actress May Britt (divorced 1968)

1987 MLB baseball player Cal Ripken Jr (27) weds Kelly Geer at Towson United Methodist Church in Maryland

Famous Divorces

1922 Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (55) divorces socialite Catherine Tobin after 33 years of marriage

2011 Torrei Hart divorces actor and comedian Kevin Hart (32) due to irreconcilable differences after 8 years of marriage

[Altobelli]

14 NOVEMBER

1680 Gottfried Kirch discovers the Great Comet of 1680 (Kirch's Comet/Newton's Comet)

1687 The death of Eleanor 'Nell' Gwyn, long-time mistress of King Charles II of England and mother of two of his illegitimate children.

1770 James Bruce, Scottish traveller and travel writer, discovered what he believed to be the source of the Blue Nile. Bruce admitted that the White Nile was the larger stream but that the Blue Nile was the Nile of the ancients and thus he was the discoverer of its source.

1862 President Abraham Lincoln approves General Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, leading to the Battle of Fredericksburg

1864 Franz Müller, a German tailor, who had murdered Thomas Briggs in the first murder committed on a British train (on 9th July) was publicly hanged at Newgate prison.

1889 New York World reporter Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) begins her attempt to surpass fictitious journey of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg by traveling around the world in under 80 days. She succeeds, finishing the trip in 72 days, 6 hours

1896 The speed limit for horseless carriages in Britain was raised from 4 mph (2 mph in towns) to 14 mph. It was marked by the first London to Brighton Car Run, which only became a regular and official event from 1927, when it was sponsored by the Daily Sketch.

1896 Power plant at Niagara Falls begins operation

1908 Albert Einstein presents his quantum theory of light

1911 George V and Queen Mary landed at Gibraltar, the first time a reigning British monarch had visited a British Commonwealth country.

1922 BBC radio was first broadcast from Alexandra Palace. The first programme was broadcast at 6 pm from 2LO London (later the BBC). A news bulletin, repeated again at 9 pm, and a weather report were the entire programme.

1936 The birth of Freddie Garrity, singer, frontman and the comical element in the 1960s pop band, Freddie and the Dreamers. The group disbanded in the late 1960s but he formed a new version of Freddie and the Dreamers and toured regularly for the next two decades until 2001, when he was diagnosed with emphysema. He died on 19th May 2006.

1940 449 German Luftwaffe bombers dropped 503 tons of bombs and 881 incendiaries onto the City of Coventry, killing over 500 civilians and destroying the medieval cathedral. A new cathedral was built adjacent to the old, and the bombed cathedral was left as a memorial.

1941 The British aircraft carrier Ark Royal sank off Gibraltar after being hit by a torpedo from German U-boat, the U-81.

1948 Birth of Prince Charles (Charles Philip Arthur George), Prince of Wales and an enthusiastic and concerned environmentalist.

1952 Britain’s first music chart was published, in the New Musical Express, with Al Martino’s ‘Here in my Heart’ at No. 1.

1957 The Apalachin Meeting outside Binghamton, New York is raided by law enforcement, and many high level Mafia figures are arrested

1969 The BBC began colour television programmes.

1973 Bobby Moore made his 108th and final appearance for England.

1973 Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey.

1977 Firefighters held their first national strike, over a 30% pay demand. More than 10,000 troops were called in to cover emergencies.

1983 The first Cruise missiles arrived at Greenham Common, a US airbase.

1991 In Royal Oak, Michigan, a fired United States Postal Service employee goes on a shooting rampage, killing four and wounding five before committing suicide

2011 Coronation Street become the first prime time television show in the UK to feature product placement, when a Nationwide Building Society cash machine was shown in the episode, after ITV signed a deal with the company. The law was changed in February after commercial broadcasters, hit by falling advertising revenues, lobbied the Government. (Note:- Coronation Street is now filmed at Media City UK in Salford Quays, but was formerly filmed at the Granada studios on Quay Street, Manchester -.

2013 A standards of living report by price comparison website Uswitch.com, which examined every aspect of life in different parts of Britain, named Solihull, home to Land Rover's main production plant and former 'Good Life' actress Felicity Kendal as the best place to live in the UK.

2014 The 3,000th edition of the BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, which was first broadcast on 29th January 1942. The guest for the 3,000th show was 95 year old Eric 'Winkle' Brown, the Navy Fleet Air Arm’s most decorated pilot and the record holder for the most flight deck landings.

2014 *****phile Angus Sinclair (aged 69), who says he may have attacked hundreds of victims, was jailed for life (and ordered to spend at least 37 years behind bars) for raping and murdering 17 year-olds Helen Scott and Christine Eadie in 1977. Sinclair had met his victims in Edinburgh's "World's End" pub before raping and strangling them. He became the first person north of the border to be tried for the same crime twice after Scotland scrapped its double jeopardy law.

2014 The Care for the Wild charity estimated that badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire had cost the equivalent of £5,200 for each badger killed. Official figures show the cost of £3,350 for every animal killed, but the welfare charity said that this did not include the cost of policing.

2014 Parliamentary authorities defended their decision to ask a gardener to remove each leaf manually from trees outside the House of Commons. A Commons spokesman said: “If we waited for the leaves to fall off it would waste a lot of time raking them up. It is more time efficient.”

Famous Birthday's

Claude Monet
(1840 - 1926)

Aaron Copland
(1900 - 1990)



Shirley Crabtree
(1930 - 1997)



Freddie Garrity
(1936 - 2006)

Condoleezza Rice
63rd Birthday

Prince Charles
69th Birthday

Adam Gilchrist
46th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Alexander Nevsky
(1220 - 1263)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
(1646 - 1716)

Booker T. Washington
(1856 - 1915)



Warren Mitchell
(1926 - 2015)

Famous Weddings

1677 Prince William of Orange (27) marries English princess Mary Stuart (15)

1855 Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart (22) weds Flora Cooke in Fort Riley, Kansas

1951 Musician Louis Jordan (43) weds dancer Vicky Hayes

1964 MLB right fielder Roberto Clemente (30) weds Vera Zabala at San Fernando Church in Carolina

1973 Britain's Princess Anne marries commoner, Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey

Famous Divorces

1983 Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (35) divorces Sarah Hugill after more than 11 years of marriage

[chalky_ncfc]

Thanks Altobelli, the 2014 story about Parliament is staggering,who makes those decisions?

[Altobelli]

Someone still living in the 19th Century Chalky, when the coffers are full and its not your money it will always be wasted especially by Government, Who the hell rakes leaves nowadays ?


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30055912