-
10 OCOTOBER
680 Al-Hussein (Al-Ḥusayn ibn) and his followers killed at Karbala by army of Yazid, the Umayyad caliph, on the way to Kufa
1580 After a three day siege, (the Siege of Smerwick) the English Army beheaded over 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dún an Óir in Ireland. Although the defenders eventually surrendered, most of them were then massacred on the orders of the English commander, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Grey.
1731 The birth of Henry Cavendish, the English physicist and chemist who discovered hydrogen.
1780 Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000 to 30,000 in Caribbean, hitting Barbados first. Atlantic's deadliest recorded hurricane.
1877 William Morris, motoring pioneer and English car manufacturer, was born. The Morris name remained in use until 1984 when British Leyland's Austin Rover Group decided to concentrate on the more popular Austin brand. William Morris (1st Viscount Nuffield), endowed Nuffield College, Oxford in 1937 and the Nuffield Foundation in 1943.
1881 The Savoy Theatre, the first public building to be lit by electricity, opened with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Patience'.
1899 African-American inventor Issac R. Johnson patents the bicycle frame
1903 Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women's Social and Political Union to fight for women's emancipation in Britain.
1928 George V opened the Tyne Bridge. It contained Britain's largest steel arch.
1954 Ho Chi Minh enters Hanoi after withdrawal of French troops
1957 A major radiation leak was detected at the Windscale (now known as Sellafield) nuclear plant in Cumbria after an accident three days earlier. Milk from about 500 square km. of nearby countryside was diluted and destroyed for about a month.
1961 Following a volcanic eruption, the entire population of the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha was evacuated to Britain.
1971 After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopened in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It was rumoured that the bridge was bought in the belief that it was London's more recognizable Tower Bridge, but this was ardently denied by the purchaser Robert McCulloch, chairman of the McCulloch Oil Corporation.
1975 Elizabeth Taylor got married for the 6th time. She re-married British actor Richard Burton at a remote location in Botswana. They divorced the following year.
1980 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made her memorably defiant speech "U-turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning" at her party's conference in Brighton.
1988 Igor Judge, a British QC, was sworn in as a High Court judge where he would be known as Mr Justice Judge.
1996 A Scottish fisherman found a message in a bottle. It had been thrown in the North Sea in 1914 to chart the currents.
1997 At the British Airways stand at the Conservative Party Conference, former prime minister Margaret Thatcher gave the airline a 'handbagging' by placing a white handkerchief over the model of an aircraft with the new style logo.
1999 Thousands gathered to watch the giant Millennium wheel become the latest landmark on the London skyline.
2010 PM David Cameron said defence spending would fall by 8% over four years. Harrier jump jets, the Navy's flagship HMS Ark Royal and planned Nimrod spy planes would be axed and 42,000 MoD and armed forces jobs cut by 2015. The RAF and navy would lose 5,000 jobs each, the Army 7,000 and the Ministry of Defence 25,000 civilian staff.
2013 The discovery of the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in a neurodegenerative disease was hailed as an exciting and historic moment in medical research although 'More work is needed to develop a drug that could be taken by patients.' Commenting on the research, Professor Roger Morris, from King's College London, said: 'This finding, I suspect, will be judged by history as a turning point in the search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer's Disease.'
Famous Birthday's
Giuseppe Verdi
(1813 - 1901)
Fridtjof Nansen
(1861 - 1930)
Helen Hayes
(1900 - 1993)
Famous Deaths
Charlotte Cooper
(1870 - 1966)
Yul Brynner
(1920 - 1985)
Christopher Reeve
(1952 - 2004)
Famous Weddings
1773 American revolution patriot Paul Revere (38) weds Rachel Walker in Boston, Massachusetts
1774 Composer Antonio Salieri (24) weds Therese Helferstorfer
1975 Actress Elizabeth Taylor (43) 6th marriage and remarriage to actor Richard Burton (49)
1987 Paralympian Rick Hansen (30) weds physiotherapist Amanda Reid
1992 Actress Ally Sheedy weds actor David Lansbury
Famous Divorces
1974 Actress Elizabeth Montgomery (41) divorces director-producer William Asher (53) after 11 years of marriage
2008 Actor and comedian Chris Kattan (37) divorces model Sunshine Tutt (32) due to irreconcilable differences after 2 months of marriage
-
11 OCTOBER
1138 Earthquake in Aleppo, Syria, kills an estimated 230,000
1216 King John lost his crown and jewels whilst crossing 'The Wash', on the north-west margin of East Anglia.
1521 Pope Leo X conferred the title of 'Defender of the Faith' (Fidei Defensor) on England's Henry VIII for his book supporting Catholic principles.
1634 Burchardi flood - "the second Grote Mandrenke" kills about 15,000 in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany
1649 After a ten-day siege, English New Model Army troops, under the command of Oliver Cromwell, stormed the town of Wexford, Ireland, killing over 2,000 Irish Confederate troops and 1,500 civilians.
1727 The coronation of King George II.
1737 Earthquake kills 300,000 and destroys half of Calcutta, India
1738 The birth of Arthur Phillip, English admiral and first governor of New South Wales, who founded the first penal colony at Sydney.
1797 Battle of Camperdown (Kamperduin): British navy defeats Dutch fleet
1821 The birth, in Dulverton, Somerset, of George Williams the founder of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association). As a young man, he described himself as a 'careless, thoughtless, godless, swearing young fellow' but he eventually became a devout Christian.
1899 The start of the Boer War between the British Empire and the Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal in southern Africa.
1919 The first airline meals were served on a Handley-Page flight from London to Paris. They were pre-packed lunch boxes at 3 shillings each (15p).
1937 Bobby Charlton, English footballer, was born. He played almost all of his club football (from 1956–1973) at Manchester United.
1945 Chinese civil war begins between Kuomintang government led by Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong's Communist Party
1951 Gordon Richards, champion British jockey, rode his 200th winner for the sixth successive season.
1957 The largest radio telescope in the world (at that time) was switched on at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire.
1962 Second Vatican Council (21st ecumenical) convened by Pope John XXIII
1966 The Post Office announced that all home and business addresses in Britain were to be allocated postcodes.
1982 The Mary Rose, which had been the pride of Henry VIII's English fleet until it sank in the Solent in 1545, was raised, by the Mary Rose Trust. It was one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology. She was one of the largest ships in the English navy and was one of the earliest examples of a purpose-built sailing warship. Since the mid-1980s, the hull of the Mary Rose has been kept in a covered dry dock in Portsmouth whilst undergoing conservation.
1986 Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev open talks at a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland
1987 A huge sonar exploration of Loch Ness, failed to find the world famous monster, known affectionately as Nessie.
1988 Girls began to study at Magdalene College, Cambridge for the first time. To mark the occasion male students wore black armbands and the porter flew a black flag.
2014 A would-be thief tried to saw through the standing leg of the monument to Eric Morecambe, in the legendary comedian's home town of Morecambe. The bronze figure by sculptor Graham Ibbeson was unveiled by the Queen in July 1999.
Famous Birthday's
Henry John Heinz
(1844 - 1919)
Eleanor Roosevelt
(1884 - 1962)
Maria Bueno
78th Birthday
Bobby Charlton
80th Birthday
Famous Deaths
Meriwether Lewis
(1774 - 1809)
Edith Piaf
(1915 - 1963)
James Franklin Hyde
(1903 - 1999)
Famous Weddings
1938 Jazz musician Louis Armstrong (37) weds longtime girlfriend Alpha Smith
1948 Fellow students Fidel Castro and Mirta Diaz-Balart marry (divorced 1955)
1954 Philippine president Corazon Aquino (21) weds Tarlac governor Benigno Aquino Jr (22) in Pasay City, Philippines
1975 Future US President Bill Clinton (29) weds future US Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham (28) in a Methodist ceremony in their living room in Fayetteville, Arkansas
1987 Rock and blues singer Joe Cocker (43) weds Pam Baker
Famous Divorces
1939 Actor Jackie Coogan (24) divorces actress Betty Grable (22) after 2 years of marriage
-
12 OCTOBER
539 BC The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon
1279 Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon
1492 Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall on Caribbean island he names San Salvador (likely Watling Island, Bahamas). The explorer believes he has reached East Asia (OS 21 Oct)
1537 Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII by his third wife Jane Seymour was born. Jane died 13 days after giving birth to him.
1817 The launch of HMS Trincomalee. She is the oldest warship afloat anywhere in the world and is berthed at Jackson Dock, Hartlepool.
1823 Charles Macintosh of Scotland began selling raincoats, now better known as - Macs. He was first employed as a clerk but before he was twenty resigned his clerkship to take up the manufacture of chemicals. The essence of his patent for waterproof fabrics was the cementing together of two pieces of natural India-rubber, the rubber being made soluble by the action of naphtha, a byproduct of tar. For his various chemical discoveries he was, in 1823, elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
1845 The death of Elizabeth Fry, English prison reformer, social reformer and, as a Quaker, a Christian philanthropist. She was a major driving force behind new legislation to make the treatment of prisoners more humane. Since 2001, she has been depicted on the Bank of England £5 note.
1859 Robert Stephenson, English civil engineer, died. He was the only son of George Stephenson, the famed locomotive builder and railway engineer. Many of the achievements popularly credited to his father were actually the joint efforts of father and son. A replica of Robert Stephenson's Rocket -
1866 James Ramsay McDonald, Scottish statesman, was born. He became the first Labour Prime Minister in 1924. His opposition to the First World War made him unpopular, and he was defeated in 1918. However post war disillusionment quickly made his anti-war position more popular, and he returned to Parliament in 1922, the point at which Labour replaced the Liberal Party as the second-largest party.
1872 The birth at the Old Vicarage in Down Ampney (Gloucestershire - Cotswolds) of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. He was he third child and younger son of the vicar of All Saints Church. A tune he composed, used for the hymn 'Come Down, O Love Divine', is titled 'Down Ampney' in its honour.
1901 President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.
1915 Ford Motor Company under Henry Ford manufactures its 1 millionth Model T automobile
1936 The leader of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley, led a controversial anti-Jewish march down the Mile End Road in London which was a predominantly Jewish area of the capital.
1915 Despite international protests, Edith Cavell, an English nurse in Belgium, was shot by a German firing squad, for aiding the escape of Allied prisoners. She was born in Swardeston, close to Norwich and there is a memorial to her outside Norwich Cathedral.
1940 World War II: Adolf Hitler postponed indefinitely 'Operation Sealion' - the planned invasion of Britain.
1948 The first Morris Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis, was produced at Cowley, Oxfordshire. 1.6 million Morris Minors were built until production ceased in 1971.
1951 The launch of Holme Moss Transmitting Station, one of the highest in the country, reaching 228m above ground and 524m above sea level. In 1951 it provided BBC television (the only TV programme at the time) but now transmits VHF, FM and DAB radio to Derbyshire, Manchester and West Yorkshire, with coverage of around 13.5 million people.
1967 Zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his book The Naked Ape that compared human behaviour with animals.
1969 The opening of Preston Bus Station, one of the largest in Western Europe. Threatened with demolition since the year 2000, campaigns and applications were made numerous times to save the building. It featured on the 2012 World Monument Fund's list of sites at risk. Nevertheless, on 7th December 2012, Preston City Council announced that the bus station would be demolished, but in 2013 it was saved when English Heritage granted it the status of a Grade II listed building.
1979 The publication of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide comedy science fiction series by the English writer and dramatist Douglas Adams. His memorial service on 17th September 2001 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Trafalgar Square was the first church service of any kind broadcast live, on the web, by the BBC.
1982 British armed forces held a victory parade in London following the defeat of Argentina in the Falklands War.
1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped an assassination attempt when an IRA bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel, Brighton which was being used by delegates to the Conservative Party Conference. Five people were killed and 30 people injured, including the Employment Secretary Norman Tebbit and his wife Margaret, who was left permanently disabled.
1986 Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to visit China.
1989 The remains of Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre were found on London's Bankside.
1999 The Day of Six Billion: the proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world is born
2000 The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.
Famous Birthday's
Luciano Pavarotti
(1935 - 2007)
Hugh Jackman
49th Birthday
Marion Jones
42nd Birthday
Famous Deaths
Robert E. Lee
(1807 - 1870)
John Denver
(1943 - 1997)
Wilt Chamberlain
(1936 - 1999)
Famous Weddings
1810 First Oktoberfest: The Bavarian royalty invites the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
1822 "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" author Victor Hugo (20) weds Adele Fourcher
1893 Education pioneer Booker T. Washington (37) weds Margaret James Murray
1929 US military leader George Marshall (48) weds Katherine Tupper
1942 Jazz musician Louis Armstrong (41) weds dancer Lucille Wilson (28)
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13 OCTOBER
54 Nero succeeds Claudius as Roman Emperor
1307 French King Philip IV has Grand Master Jacques de Molay and Knights Templar arrested and charged of idolatry and corruption
1399 Henry IV (the first King of the House of Lancaster) was crowned king of England.
1853 The birth of Lillie Langtry, actress and mistress of King Edward VII, also the Earl of Shrewsbury and Prince Louis of Battenberg.
1884 Greenwich was chosen as the universal time meridian of longitude from which standard times throughout the world are calculated.
1894 The first Merseyside 'derby' football match was played at Goodison Park between Liverpool and Everton, with Everton winning 3 - 0.
1899 The start of the siege of the British garrison at Mafeking by Boer forces. The commander of the garrison, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell and his forces held firm for 217 days.
1904 The birth, in Halifax, of Wilfred Pickles OBE, actor and radio presenter. Pickles was a proud Yorkshireman and was the first newsreader to speak in a regional accent. His BBC Radio show 'Have A Go', ran from 1946 to 1967 and launched such catchphrases as 'What's on the table, Mabel?' and 'Are yer courting?', all delivered in Pickles's inimitable style.
1924 Labour Party leader Ramsay MacDonald became the first Prime Minister to make an election broadcast on BBC radio.
1925 The birth of Margaret Thatcher British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Known as 'The Iron Lady' she was the longest serving Prime Minister for more than 150 years. She was born above her father's grocer's shop: No 1 North Parade, Grantham, Lincolnshire - .
1940 Princess Elizabeth, aged 14, (now Queen Elizabeth II), made her first radio broadcast to child evacuees.
1943 Italy declares war on former Axis partner Germany
1944 US 1st army begins battle of Aachen, first German city captured during WWII
1946 The birth of Edwina Currie, former Member of Parliament. She resigned as a Junior Health Minister in 1988 over the controversy of salmonella in eggs. Among her comments over the next two years were that good Christian people don't get AIDS, that old people who couldn't afford their heating bills should wrap up warm in winter, and that northerners die of ignorance and chips.
1954 Chris Chataway broke the 5,000-metres world record by five seconds in the London v Moscow match at White City, West London.
1963 The term Beatlemania was coined after The Beatles appeared at the Palladium. They made their debut as the top of the bill on ITV's 'Sunday Night at The London Palladium.'
1971 The British Army blew up border roads in Northern Ireland to crack down on IRA gun-running.
1988 The British Government failed to stop publication of the controversial book Spycatcher, written by a former secret service agent.
1988 The Queen sued The Sun newspaper after it printed a private photograph.
1992 The government announced plans to close one third of Britain's deep coal mines, putting 31,000 miners out of work.
1996 British racing driver Damon Hill, driving a Williams, won the Japanese Grand Prix to clinch his first (and only) World Championship.
2008 The government said that they would pump billions of pounds of taxpayers money into three UK banks in one of the UK's biggest nationalisations. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds TSB and HBOS would have a total of £37bn injected into them. In return for the investment, the government would get a say in how the banks were run, including controls over the bonuses paid to management.
2010 Copiapó mining accident in Chile comes to a happy end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground
2014 The Royal College of Midwives took part in strike action for the first time in the organisation's 133 year history, in protest at the government's decision not to grant a 1% 'across the board' pay rise. The 4 hour strike, (from 7:00 a.m. at hospitals in England) also included nurses, paramedics, hospital porters and ambulance crews.
2014 176 people took part in the 48th World Conker Championships at Southwick, in Northamptonshire. Competitors came from overseas, including the United States, Mexico, and Italy.
2014 UKiP leader Nigel Farage hailed it an 'emotional moment' as he watched Douglas Carswell introduced to Parliament as the party's first elected MP.
2016 Queen Elizabeth II became the world's longest-reigning monarch following the death of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
Famous Birthday's
Arna Bontemps
(1902 - 1973)
Margaret Thatcher
(1925 - 2013)
Jerry Rice
55th Birthday
Edwina Currie
71st Birthday
Famous Deaths
Claudius
(10 BC - 54)
Milton S. Hershey
(1857 - 1945)
Bhumibol Adulyadej
(1927 - 2016)
Famous Weddings
1941 NFL halfback Red Grange (38) weds flight attendant Margaret Hazelberg
1956 MLB player Roger Maris (22) weds high school sweetheart Pat Carvell at St. Anthony Padua Church
1978 James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King weds Anna Sandhu
2011 Queen consort of Bhutan Jetsun Pema (21) weds Dragon King of Bhutan Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck (31) at Punakha Dzong in Punakha, Bhutan
2012 "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" actor Alfonso Ribeiro (41) weds Angela Unkrich (31) in California
Famous Divorces
1998 Golfer champ Nick Faldo (41) divorces manager's secretary Gill Bennett after 12 years of marriage
-
14 OCTOBER
1066 The Battle of Hastings was fought, on Senlac Hill, near Pevensey. An English army, commanded by King Harold, was defeated by the invasion force of William of Normandy. Harold was killed and Edgar the Ætheling was proclaimed king, but never crowned. William I 'The Conqueror' and the first Norman King of England, was subsequently crowned at Westminster Abbey on 25th December 1066.
1322 Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeated King Edward II of England at the Battle of Old Byland in Yorkshire, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence. (There is a local tradition that he was born at Lochmaben and not at Turnberry Castle in Ayrshire.)
1586 Mary, Queen of Scots, went on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England. She was convicted on 25th October and sentenced to death, but Elizabeth hesitated initially to order her execution concerned that the killing of a queen set a discreditable precedent.
1633 King James II, youngest son of Charles I was born. His pro-Catholic stand led to his overthrow by William of Orange.
1644 The Birth of William Penn, the English Quaker leader who founded a Quaker colony named Pennsylvania in his honour.
1774 1st Continental Congress makes Declaration of Colonial Rights in Philadelphia
1843 The British arrested the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell for conspiracy to commit crimes. O'Connell campaigned for the right of Catholics to sit in Parliament and the repeal of the Act of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland.
1867 15th and last Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigns in Japan
1878 The first football match played under floodlights took place at Bramhall Lane, Sheffield, in front of a crowd of just under 20,000. Two generators positioned behind each goal powered lights on 30 ft. high wooden towers situated at each corner of the field. The light was deemed so bright that some ladies present put up their parasols to protect themselves from being burned!
1881 189 men died when the Berwickshire fishing fleet was caught in a hurricane. The tragedy, which became known locally as Black Friday, remains Scotland's worst fishing disaster. 129 of the victims came from the village of Eyemouth.
1913 Britain's worst pit disaster. More than 400 miners were killed in an explosion down a mine at Senghenydd in Glamorgan, S. Wales.
1929 The world's largest airship, the R101, made its maiden voyage.
1933 Nazi Germany announces its withdrawal from the League of Nations
1939 The Royal Navy battleship, HMS Royal Oak, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine while at harbour in Scapa Flow, off the northern coast of Scotland, a little more than a month after the start of World War II. 810 British seamen were killed.
1940 Cliff Richard was born. His first hit was 'Move It'.
1969 Ahead of the complete changeover to decimalization, Britain scrapped the 10 shilling note and introduced the 50 pence coin.
1982 US President Reagan proclaims a war on drugs
1983 Cecil Parkinson, Trade and Industry Secretary, resigned after revelations about his affair with his former secretary Sara Keays.
1986 An historic moment for Queen Elizabeth II as she became the first British monarch to walk along the Great Wall of China.
2013 The death of Grace Jones, the oldest person in the UK, at the age of 113 years 342 days. She was the last living British person to be born in the 1800s.
Famous Birthday's
William Penn
(1644 - 1718)
Dwight D. Eisenhower
(1890 - 1969)
Beth Daniel
61st Birthday
Famous Deaths
Erwin Rommel
(1891 - 1944)
Bing Crosby
(1903 - 1977)
Famous Weddings
1806 German writer, artist and politician Johann Wolfgang von Goethe marries mistress Christiane Vulpius in Weimar
1913 Athlete Jim Thorpe (25) weds Margaret Iva Miller at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
1914 Baseball legend Babe Ruth (19) weds Helen Woodford
1923 "All Quiet on the Western Front" author Erich Maria Remarque (25) weds Ilse Jutta Zambona
1961 Howard Allen Frances (Anne) O'Brien (20) best-selling author (The Vampire Chronicles) marries poet and painter Stan Rice (21)
Famous Divorces
1988 Mike Tyson countersues Robin Givens for divorce & annulment
1990 Jeff Goldblum and wife Geena Davis file for divorce after nearly 2 years of marriage
2015 Ricki Lake and Christian Evans divorce after 3 years of marriage
-
15 OCTOBER
1581 Commissioned by Catherine De Medici, the 1st ballet "Ballet Comique de la Reine" is staged in Paris
1666 Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that Charles II had started wearing the first known waistcoat. The King was so overweight that he left the bottom button undone, a fashion custom followed to this day.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on island of St Helena to begin his exile
1864 The Church Times published ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, with music by Arthur Sullivan and words by the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould. It was written for a children’s festival.
1881 P.G. Wodehouse was born. He was famous for his Jeeves and Wooster novels.
1887 Preston North End beat Hyde 26-0 in an FA Cup tie, the highest goal score ever by an English club in a major competition, with James Ross the first player to score seven goals in a 1st Division match.
1888 A 'From Hell' letter was sent to George Lusk, then head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, claiming to be from the serial killer Jack the Ripper. It was delivered with a small box containing half of what doctors later determined was a human kidney, preserved in ethanol. One of his victim's kidneys had been removed by the killer, which gave the letter some authenticity. The letter ended with the words - 'Catch me when you can Mister Lusk.', but the Ripper was never caught.
1927 Britain's Public Morals Committee attacked the use of contraceptives, on the basis that they caused 'poor hereditary stock'.
1951 The first Liberal Party political broadcast was televised by the BBC.
1951 Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes synthesizes the first oral contraceptive
1953 The British nuclear test Totem 1 was detonated at Emu Field in South Australia. The main purpose of the trial was to determine the limit on the amount of plutonium-240 which could be present in a bomb and thus aid the British government's weapons programme.
1956 The last RAF Lancaster bomber was retired from service.
1959 The birth of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York and ex wife of Prince Andrew. She no longer holds the title HRH and if she remarries, any use of the title Duchess of York will be lost permanently too.
1961 The human rights organization Amnesty International was established in London.
1964 Harold Wilson won the election with a majority of just 4, making him the youngest Prime Minister at the time of the 20th century.
1969 The print unions finally allowed Rupert Murdoch's purchase of 'The Sun' newspaper.
1969 Vietnam Moratorium Day; millions nationwide protest the war
1973 Britain and Iceland ended the 'Cod War' with agreement on fishing rights.
1987 The worst hurricane to hit Britain since records began devastated southern England and caused at least 17 deaths.
1993 Nelson Mandela and South African President F. W. de Klerk awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
1994 Five people were killed and 13 injured in a head-on rail collision at Cowden in Kent after the driver ran a red signal.
1997 Following a new land speed record by Andy Green in Thrust SSC the previous month, Thrust SSC became the first land vehicle to exceed the speed of sound when it achieved 763 mph (Mach 1.020) at Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The record still stands.
2001 Home Secretary David Blunkett told MPs he was introducing an emergency anti-terrorism Bill.
2013 26 year old British racing driver Sean Edwards died (as the passenger) in a crash at the Queensland Raceway in Australia. He was the son of former F1 driver Guy Edwards, who pulled Niki Lauda out of his burning Ferrari after a crash at the Nurburgring in 1976.
2017 The round £1 coin, introduced in 1983, goes out of circulation at midnight tonight. Its replacement is 12 sided and has additional security features.
Famous Birthday's
Akbar
(1542 - 1605)
Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844 - 1900)
Roscoe Tanner
66th Birthday
Famous Deaths
Mata Hari
(1876 - 1917)
Hermann Goering
(1893 - 1946)
Carlo Gambino
(1902 - 1976)
Famous Weddings
1501 Heir to the English Prince Arthur marries Catherine of Aragon
1913 Author Beatrix Potter (47) weds solicitor William Heelis at St Mary Abbots in Kensington, London
1927 Writer Graham Greene (23) weds Vivien Dayrell-Browning at St. Mary's Church in Hampstead, North London
1948 38th US President Gerald Ford (35) weds department store fashion consultant Elizabeth (Betty) Bloomer Warren (30) at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, Ford
1963 Folk singer Mary Travers (26) weds photographer Barry Feinstein
Famous Divorces
1993 Guardian Angel Lisa Evers Sliwa files for divorce from Curtis Sliwa
1993 Baseball player Darryl Strawberry (31) divorces Lisa Andrews after more than 8 years of marriage
2002 Comedian Tom Green (30) divorces actress Drew Barrymore (26) due to irreconcilable differences after less than a year of marriage
-
16 OCTOBER
1555 English bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burnt at the stake for heresy.
1803 The birth of Robert Stephenson, the English civil engineer who built railways and bridges. A replica of Robert Stephenson's Rocket - is on view at the York Railway Museum.
1813 Battle of Leipzig, largest battle in Europe prior to WWI, Napoleon's forces defeated by Prussia, Austria and Russia
1834 The original Houses of Parliament were almost completely destroyed by fire. The blaze, which started from overheated chimney flues, spread rapidly throughout the medieval complex and developed into the biggest conflagration to occur in London since the Great Fire of 1666. Westminster Hall and a few other parts of the old Houses of Parliament survived the blaze and were incorporated into the New Palace of Westminster, which was built over the following decades.
1846 William T. G. Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.
1847 Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre was published in London. The book's author used the pseudonym Currer Bell.
1869 Girton College, Cambridge was founded and became England's first residential college for women.
1869 The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered".
1875 Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.
1881 The first edition of The People' - later renamed 'The Sunday People'.
1900 Great Britain and Germany sign the Anglo-German Treaty, agreeing to maintain territorial integrity of China and support 'open door' policy called for by US Secretary of State
1902 Britain opened its first 'Borstal' detention centre, at the village of Borstal in Kent. The institution was designed to keep boys, especially first offenders, away from adult criminals in prisons; to teach them a trade and to reward good behaviour.
1916 In Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States
1920 Gordon Richards, 26 times a champion jockey, had his first ride, at Lingfield Park.
1923 The Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney.
1934 Mao Zedong & 25,000 troops begin 6,000 mile Long March
1940 Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.
1944 Wally Walrus, Woody Woodpecker's first steady foil, was debuted at the The Beach Nut, a Walter Lantz's cartoon.
1946 Nuremberg Trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.
1949 Nikolaos Zachariadis, leader of the Communist Party of Greece, announces a "temporary cease-fire", effectively ending the Greek Civil War.
1958 Britain's most popular children's television programme 'Blue Peter' was first broadcast on BBC TV. The first presenters were Leila Williams and Christopher Trace.
1962 Cuban missile crisis begins as JFK becomes aware of missiles in Cuba
1964 China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
1964 Harold Wilson became Prime Minister of a Labour Government. He was the first Labour PM in 13 years.
1974 Three prison staff were taken to hospital and dozens of prisoners were injured after rioting and fires at the Long Kesh Maze prison, Belfast.
1978 Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla elected Pope John Paul II
1987 Southern Britain began a massive clear-up operation after the worst night of storms in living memory. BBC Weatherman Michael Fish faced criticism, as he had reassured viewers that the worst of the stormy weather would be across Spain and France.
1995 The Million Man March occurs in Washington, D.C.
1996 British Home Secretary Michael Howard announced stringent new gun controls following the mass shooting in March 1996 of children at a school in Dunblane, Scotland.
1998 Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and the SDLP leader John Hume were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their part in forging the Northern Ireland Agreement which was signed in April of the same year.
1998 Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a Spanish warrant requesting his extradition on murder charges
2001 Government special adviser Jo Moore apologised for sending an e-mail in which she suggested 11th September (the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York) was a good day to 'bury bad news'.
Famous Birthday's
Oscar Wilde
(1854 - 1900)
Michael Collins
(1890 - 1922)
Angela Lansbury
92nd Birthday
Famous Deaths
Marie Antoinette
(1755 - 1793)
Joachim von Ribbentrop
(1893 - 1946)
George Marshall
(1880 - 1959)
Famous Weddings
1923 General Francisco Franco (30) marries MarÃ*a del Carmen Polo y MartÃ*nez-Valdés (23) at Church of San Juan el Real in Oviedo
1965 Singer Leslie Uggams marries Grahame Pratt in NYC
1979 MLB outfielder Tim Raines (20) weds his high school sweetheart Virginia Hilton
1986 Marie Osmond marries Brian Blosil
1992 Author J. K. Rowling (27) weds Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes
Famous Divorces
1924 American writer ("Gone with the Wind") Margaret Mitchell divorces 1st husband Berrien (Red) Upshaw
1984 Joyce King divorces NBA guard George Gervin (32) after nearly 8 years of marriage
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17 OCTOBER
733 Battle at Tours (Poitiers): Charles Martel's Frankish and Burgundian forces beat those of al-Andalus under Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi halting Islamic influence (date disputed)
1091 A tornado struck London. It was Britain's earliest reported tornado. The wooden London Bridge was demolished, and the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in the city of London was badly damaged. Other churches in the area were demolished, as were over 600, mostly wooden, houses.
1346 At the Battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham, the Scots were routed and King David II of Scotland was captured by Edward III of England and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.
1651 Defeated by Oliver Cromwell at Worcester, Charles II of England fled to France.
1727 The birth of John Wilkes, English political agitator and advocate of press freedom who, despite being elected to Parliament four times, was not allowed to take his seat. Eventually, working, and middle-class support secured him his rightful entry to Parliament where he fought for reforms and religious tolerance.
1771 Premiere in Milan of the opera Ascanio in Alba, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, age 15.
1855 A steel-making process was patented, by Englishman Sir Harry Bessemer.
1860 The world's first professional golf tournament was held, at Prestwick in Scotland.
1888 Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie)
1907 Guglielmo Marconi's company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland
1914 German U-boats raided Scapa Flow, the main base of the British Grand Fleet, off the north coast of Scotland in the Orkney Islands.
1919 RCA is incorporated as the Radio Corporation of America.
1933 Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States.
1936 Newspaper owner Lord Beaverbrook promised King Edward VIII that he would arrange for the British press to remain silent on the subject of his relationship with American divorcee Mrs. Wallis Simpson.
1956 Queen Elizabeth II opened Calder Hall in Cumbria - Britain's first large scale atomic energy station.
1956 Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer play a famous chess game called The Game of the Century. Fischer beat Byrne and wins a Brilliancy prize.
1973 The start of a major world oil crisis when oil producing Arab states increased prices by 70 per cent and cut production in protest at US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
1978 Public pressure led ministers to reduce the number of grey seals to be culled in Scotland.
1979 Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1980 The Queen made history by becoming the first British monarch to make a state visit to the Vatican, when she met Pope John Paul II.
1985 The House of Lords, in the Gillick case, permitted doctors to prescribe oral contraceptives to girls aged under 16 without parental consent.
1991 Four independent television companies: TV-am, Thames, TVS and TSW lost their licences to broadcast following a 'sealed bid' system of awarding the franchises by the Independent Television Commission.
1996 England international footballer Paul Gascoigne was accused of beating up his wife Sheryl at a hotel in Scotland.
2000 Four people were killed when a high speed passenger train derailed in Hatfield, just north of London. The accident was a defining moment in the subsequent collapse of Railtrack.
2001 Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi becomes the first Israeli minister to be assassinated in a terrorist attack.
2012 Colin Farmer, aged 61 and a blind stroke victim said that he thought he was going to die when he was shot in the back in Chorley town centre with a 50,000-volt Taser stun gun fired by a police officer who mistook his white stick for a Samurai sword.
Famous Birthday's
Arthur Miller
(1915 - 2005)
Evel Knievel
(1938 - 2007)
Eminem
45th Birthday
Famous Deaths
Agrippina the Elder
( - 33)
Frederic Chopin
(1810 - 1849)
Laura Secord
(1775 - 1868)
Famous Weddings
1469 Crown prince Fernando of Aragon marries Princess Isabella of Castile
1707 German composer Johann S Bach marries for the 1st time his cousin Maria Barbara Bach
1749 US revolutionary Samuel Adams (27) weds Elizabeth Checkley
1826 Historian Thomas Carlyle (30) weds Jane Welsh (25)
1916 Cartoonist Rube Goldberg (33) weds Irma Seeman
-
18 OCTOBER
1009 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock
1541 The death of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland; the elder of the two surviving daughters of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the elder sister of Henry VIII.
1648 Boston Shoemakers form first American labor organization.
1674 The birth of Richard ‘Beau’ Nash, English gambler who made Bath a city of fashion; improving its streets and buildings.
1685 French King Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes cancelling rights of French Protestants
1775 African-American poet Phillis Wheatley is freed from slavery.
1826 Britain's last state lottery was held, prior to the launch of the National Lottery in 1994.
1851 Herman Melville's book Moby-Dick was first published as 'The Whale' by Richard Bentley of London.
1865 The death of Tory politician and twice Prime Minister Lord Palmerston. He dominated British foreign policy when Britain was at the height of her power. Palmerston's abrasive and arrogant style earned him the nickname Lord Pumice-stone. He lived at Romsey in Hampshire, where there is this statue of him.
1867 US takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia having paid $7.2 million
1871 The death of Charles Babbage, English mathematician, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. He is considered a 'father of the computer' as he is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.
1898 The United States takes possession of Puerto Rico from Spain.
1910 The trial of English murderer Dr Crippen began at the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London.
1922 The British Broadcasting Corporation was officially formed, to operate from Marconi House in London, under the management of John Reith. It established a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.
1931 American gangster Al Capone convicted of tax evasion
1945 The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1954 Texas Instruments announces the first Transistor radio.
1957 The Queen and Prince Philip visited the US and the White House to mark the 350th anniversary of the British settling in Virginia.
1962 James Watson (US), Francis Crick (UK) and Maurice Wilkins (UK) win the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work in determining the structure of DNA
1963 Harold Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister because of ill health. Sir Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister.
1966 The Queen granted a royal pardon to Timothy Evans, wrongly convicted and hanged in 1950 for the murder of his wife and child. The real murderer was John Reginald Christie who had been hanged for mass murder in 1953.
1977 Hilary Bradshaw became the first woman to referee a rugby match when Bracknell played High Wycombe.
1978 The birth of Mike Tindall, an English rugby player who has captained the England team and is married to Zara Phillips, the daughter of the Princess Royal and the eldest granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II.
1987 Nigel Mansell won the Mexican Grand Prix.
1988 British Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, banned all broadcasts involving terrorist spokesmen. IRA spokesmen could be seen, but not heard, although their statements could be reported by the media.
1995 Red Rum, three times winner of the Grand National at Aintree, died at the age of 30, an exceptional age for a horse. He was buried at Aintree.
1998 Richard Bacon, presenter of the BBC TV programme 'Blue Peter' was sacked for taking cocaine.
2014 A flock of sheep was left feeling rather woolly-headed after accidentally munching on £4,000 worth of cannabis plants that had been dumped in their field, at the edge of Fanny’s Farm in Merstham, Surrey. By the time that the police arrived, much of the evidence had been eaten.
Famous Birthday's
Pierre Trudeau
(1919 - 2000)
Lee Harvey Oswald
(1939 - 1963)
Martina Navratilova
61st Birthday
Famous Deaths
Henry John Temple
(1784 - 1865)
Thomas Edison
(1847 - 1931)
Bess Truman
(1885 - 1982)
Famous Weddings
1869 Sardinia king Victor Emmanuel II (49) weds his mistress Rosa Vercellana (36) in Italy
1926 Communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh (36) weds midwife Zeng Xueming (21) in Guangzhou
1952 Latin actress Maria Felix (38) weds actor and singer Jorge Negreta (40) in Mexico
1970 Actor Lee Marvin (46) weds radio producer Pamela Marvin (40)
1986 "Fleetwood Mac" member Christine McVie (43) weds keyboardist Eduardo Quintela
Famous Divorces
2000 Actress Demi Moore (37) divorces actor Bruce Willis (45) due to irreconcilable differences after 13 years of marriage
-
19 OCTOBER
202 BC Battle of Zama: Hannibal Barca and the Carthaginian army are defeated by Roman legions under Scipio Africanus, ending 2nd Punic War
1216 King John died of dysentery at Newark-on-Trent , during a Civil War which was the result of his refusal to recognize the Magna Carta signed the previous year. He was known as John Lackland for losing so much territory to France and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry.
1469 Ferdinand II of Aragon marries Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paves the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain.
1512 Martin Luther becomes a doctor of theology (Doctor in Biblia).
1649 New Ross town, in County Wexford, Ireland, surrendered to Oliver Cromwell during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
1688 The birth of William Cheselden who was influential in establishing surgery as a scientific medical profession.
1745 Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, died aged 77.
1781 The American War of Independence came to an end when British commander Lord Cornwallis surrendered his 8,000 troops to George Washington at Yorktown, in Virginia, after a three week siege.
1789 Chief Justice John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.
1900 Max Planck, in his house at Grunewald, on the outskirts of Berlin, discovers the law of black-body radiation (Planck's law).
1914 World War I - The start of the First Battle of Ypres. It saw the British and French defeat repeated German attempts to break their lines in an attempt to capture the channel ports.
1914 Wartime licensing laws came into operation, premises having to close at 10 p.m.
1917 The Love Field airport in Dallas is opened.
1926 Russian Politburo throws out Leon Trotsky and his followers
1933 Germany withdrew from the League of Nations, an intergovernmental organization, founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. I
1943 Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University
1954 The first day of the public inquiry into the crashes of two Comet airliners within months of each other heard that metal fatigue was the most likely cause. The Comet's certificate of airworthiness was withdrawn after the second crash.
1960 Cold War: The United States government imposes a near-total trade embargo against Cuba, which remains in effect today.
1970 British Petroleum announced the first major discovery of oil under the British sector of the North Sea.
1973 President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court decision that he turn over the Watergate tapes.
1978 For the first time in Britain, the International Motor Show was held outside London, its new home being the newly-completed National Exhibition Centre (NEC) near Birmingham.
1987 Black Monday. Millions of pounds were wiped off the value of shares and other financial markets around the world. Wall Street ended the day down 22%, a greater fall than the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
1989 The 'Guildford Four' had their convictions quashed after wrongly serving 14 years in prison for the IRA bombings at Guildford and Woolwich.
1991 London's Royal Opera House had to cancel its performance, as orchestra members, pursuing an industrial dispute, refused to wear dinner jackets and turned up in jeans.
2001 It was announced that a 'serious error' was made by researchers who wasted five years testing the wrong animal brains for BSE!
2001 Dennis Yates (aged 58), a Second World War memorabilia dealer, was jailed for 10 months for handling a wartime Enigma encoding machine. It was stolen from a display cabinet at Bletchley Park (codenamed Station X) on 1st April 2000 during an open day at the former top secret site. A separate charge, of blackmailing Christine Large, the director of Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, where the Abwehr Enigma G312 machine was kept, was ordered to lie on file. Following months of ransom demands, the machine, one of only three left in the world, was returned via BBC Two's Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman.
2011 After a 10 year legal battle, police and bailiffs began clearing the illegal part of the UK's largest travellers' site, at Dale Farm, Basildon, Es***.
2012 Trenton Oldfield, aged 36, who disrupted the 2012 University Boat Race by swimming between the boat race crews was jailed for six months for causing a public nuisance. Oldfield said that he was demonstrating against government cuts.
2012 Andrew Mitchell, the government chief whip, resigned after criticism for making rude remarks to police officers at the gates of Downing Street. It was alleged that he called police officers 'plebs'and that he had said to the officers - 'I thought you guys were supposed to f***ing help us'. In 2014 Mitchell lost a libel cases against both the Sun and PC Rowland and became liable for both parties' costs, which were estimated at £2m.
2012 Big Tex, a 52-foot statue and cultural icon in Dallas is destroyed by fire during the final weekend of the 2012 State Fair of Texas.
2013 The violin that was apparently played to calm passengers on the Titanic as it sank was sold for £900,000 in just 10 minutes at auction in Wiltshire. Bidding started at £50 and the violin had a guide price of £300,000. The bandleader Wallace Hartley aged 33, was from Colne in Lancashire and is buried in Colne cemetery. The words 'Nearer My God To Thee', the alleged last song that the band played on RMS Titanic, are engraved on the plinth along with a violin and bow.
2014 The death (at the age of 66) of the British actress and presenter Lynda Bellingham. The actress was best known for her long-running role as a mother in the 1980s Oxo TV adverts.
2015 US scientists from University of California find evidence life on earth may have begun 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million earlier than previously thought
Famous Birthday's
Jaap Eden
(1873 - 1925)
Peter Max
80th Birthday
Evander Holyfield
55th Birthday
Famous Deaths
Jonathan Swift
(1667 - 1745)
Ernest Rutherford
(1871 - 1937)
Famous Weddings
1926 Pathologist Howard Florey (28) weds Ethel Reed at Holy Trinity Church in Paddington, New South Wales
1991 Filmmaker Michael Moore (37) weds movie producer Kathleen Glynn (32)
1996 "Rescue Me" actor-comedian Lenny Clarke (43) weds former TV producer Jennifer Miller (31) at Martha's Vineyard in Cambridge, Massachusetts
2012 Grammy Award winning singer Justin Timberlake (31) weds "Total Recall" actress Jessica Biel (30) at the Borgo Egnazia resort in Fasano, Italy
2012 Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg Prince Guillaume (30) weds Countess of Belgium Stephanie de Lannoy (28) in a civil ceremony at the Hotel De Ville in Luxembourg
