On This Day

[Altobelli]

23 JANUARY

1571 Queen Elizabeth I opened the Royal Exchange, London, as a bankers’ meeting house. It was founded by the financier Sir Thomas Gresham .

1713 The signing of the Treaty of Utrecht redrew the map of Europe. The treaty signalled the end of the long and bloody War of Spanish Succession. As part of the agreement Gibraltar and Minorca become British.

1806 Death of William Pitt ‘The Younger’ at the age of 46. He was Britain's youngest Prime Minister (aged 24) and served twice, from 19th December 1783 to 14th March 1801 and again from 10th May 1804 until his death 'on this day'.

1875 The death of Charles Kingsley, the English clergyman who wrote The Water Babies.

1900 Second Boer War: The defeat of the British at the Battle of Spion Kop, 24 miles west-south-west of Ladysmith on a steep terraced hilltop. Many football grounds in the English Premier League and Football League, have one terrace or stand 'Spion Kop' or 'Kop' because of the steep nature of their terracing.

1901 Marconi carried out his first radio transmission experiments, receiving a Morse code signal across the water from St. Catherine’s on the Isle of Wight to the Lizard in Cornwall. Lizard Point is the most southerly point of the British mainland.

1942 Tank battle at Adzjedabia, Africa Korp vs British 8th army

1943 British 8th army marches into Tripoli

1955 Fourteen people died and dozens were injured when an express train travelling from York to Bristol derailed at Sutton Coldfield station.

1963 At 7.30 pm in Beirut, the American Eleanor Philby was waiting for her husband Kim, a Middle East correspondent for two London journals, to collect her. Instead, he was on his way to Moscow - ‘the most damaging double agent in British history’.

1969 Cream releases their last album "Goodbye"

1972 Entire population of Istanbul under 24 hour house arrest

1985 PC George Hammond was viciously stabbed while on the beat in London, and it took 120 pints of blood to save his life. He never fully recovered, and two years later he committed suicide.

1989 Legislation came into force which permitted garages to display fuel prices by litre only, not by the gallon.

2015 The owner of the mobile network 'Three' confirmed that it was in exclusive negotiations to acquire O2 UK from Spanish telco Telefonica for £10.25bn. It would have made the combined Three and O2 operator the biggest in the UK, with a 41% share of the market but the deal was blocked in May 2016 by the European Commission.

2017 Most expensive house in the US worth $250 million goes on the market in Bel Air, Los Angeles

Famous Birthday's

John Hancock
(1737 - 1793)

Edouard Manet
(1832 - 1883)



1919 Bob Paisley, English soccer player/trainer/manager of FC Liverpool (d. 1996)

Rutger Hauer, Dutch actor (Blade Runner, Ladyhawke, Osterman Weekend)
73rd Birthday

Anita Pointer, rock vocalist (Pointer Sisters-She's So Shy), born in Oakland, California
69th Birthday

1954 Rick Finch, rocker (KC & Sunshine Band-Give It)
63rd Birthday

Mariska Hargitay
54th Birthday

Arjen Robben, Dutch footballer
34th Birthday

Steven Taylor, English footballer
32nd Birthday

Famous Weddings

1906 Composer Igor Stravinsky (23) weds Yekaterina Nosenko



1976 Actor Sidney Poitier (48) weds actress Joanna Shimkus

1999 Princess of Monaco Caroline (42) weds dynastic head of the House of Hanover and Britain's King George I descendant Prince Ernst August (45) in Monaco

Famous Deaths

1803 Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer (b. 1725)

William Pitt the Younger
(1759 - 1806)



Edvard Munch
(1863 - 1944)

1973 Alexander Onassis, Greek heir of the Onassis family (b. 1948)



Salvador Dali
(1904 - 1989)

2005 Johnny Carson, American television host (b. 1925)

2017 Gorden Kaye, British actor (Allo Allo), dies at 75