On This Day

[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]

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

[Altobelli]

16 NOVEMBER

534 Second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus published

1272 Whilst travelling during the Ninth Crusade, Prince Edward became King of England upon the death of Henry III, but he would not return to England for almost two years to assume the throne.

1532 Francisco Pizarro captures Inca Emperor Atahualpa after a surprise ambush at Cajamarca

1724 Jack Sheppard, Stepney born highwayman, was hanged at Tyburn in front of 200,000 spectators.

1776 British troops capture Fort Washington during American Revolution

1811 John Bright son of a Quaker cotton spinner, was born in Rochdale, Lancashire. He was an MP for Durham, Birmingham and Manchester and as a Quaker and pacifist he was opposed to slavery and to the Crimean War. He campaigned to abolish the Corn Laws (1846) and was also a campaigner for free trade. The John Bright Group employed thousands of Rochdale people in the textile industry for more than 180 years.

1822 American Old West: Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail.

1848 Frédéric Chopin gave his last public performance at London’s Guildhall. He played on, despite illness and an uninterested audience who spent most of the evening in the refreshment areas.

1849 A Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor

1857 Twenty four Victoria Crosses were awarded in the Second Relief of Lucknow (British India). It was the most awarded in a single day.

1896 Birth of Oswald Mosley, English politician who was successively a Conservative and Labour Member of Parliament before forming the British Union of Fascists. Provocative marches through the Jewish East End of London prior to the Second World War led to major confrontations. He was interned during the war and later lived in exile in France.

1904 English engineer John Ambrose Fleming received a patent for the thermionic valve (vacuum tube). It drove the expansion and commercialisation of radio broadcasting, television, radar, sound recording, large telephone networks, and analogue and digital computers until the invention of the transistor.

1907 Cunard Line's RMS Mauretania, sister ship of RMS Lusitania, set sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York City.

1914 The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens

1920 Qantas, Australia's national airline, is founded as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited

1928 In London, obscenity charges were brought against Radclyffe Hall for her crusading lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness.

1934 The death of Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell) who inspired Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and her ashes were buried in the graveyard of the church of St Michael and All Angels Lyndhurst and the plaque

1938 Willie Hall of Tottenham Hotspurs scored five goals for England against Ireland with his three goals in 3 minutes, setting a record for the fastest ever in an international match.

1938 LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland

1940 New York City's "Mad Bomber" George Metesky places his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by Consolidated Edison

1940 World War II: In response to the heavy bombing of Coventry two days previously, the Royal Air Force bombed Hamburg. Much of Coventry was destroyed, including the Cathedral.

1940 Holocaust: In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world

1942 The jockey Willie Carson was born, in Stirling. He was British Champion Jockey five times (in 1972, 1973, 1978, 1980 and 1983) and had a total of 3,828 wins, making him the fourth most successful jockey in Great Britain.

1945 Founding of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)

1948 Operation Magic Carpet - 1st plane from Yemen carrying Jews to Israel

1960 The TV personality with a reputation for outspokenness, Gilbert Harding, died as he left the BBC's Broadcasting House in London.

1961 Frank Bruno, British boxer, was born.

1973 U.S. President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline

1976 Seven men who took part in an £8m bank robbery raid at the Bank of America in Mayfair, London, received jail terms totalling nearly 100 years. Only £1/2m was recovered. The judge said the sentence ensured that the thieves would not enjoy the fruits of their haul.

1982 Space Shuttle Columbia completes its 1st operational flight

1983 More than 20 English football supporters were arrested in Luxembourg after a night of violence.

1995 The Queen Mother, aged 95, had her right hip replaced in an operation in London.

2010 Clarence House announced that Prince William (second in line to the throne) would marry long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton in 2011.

2014 A couple who had been married for 65 years died moments apart. Harry Stevenson (88) died just minutes after care home staff informed him of the death of wife, Mavis (89), at the Derby care home.

Famous Birthday's

W. C. Handy
(1873 - 1958)



Burgess Meredith
(1907 - 1997)

Joel H. Hildebrand
(1881 - 1983)

Frank Bruno
56th Birthday

Willie Carson
74th Birthday

Griff Rhys Jones
63rd Birthday

Waqar Younis
45th Birthday

Paul Scholes
42nd Birthday



Jacob Joseph Worton, twin actor (Baby's Day Out), born in Newark, Delaware
24th Birthday


Adam Robert Worton, twin actor (Baby's Day Out), born in Newark, Delaware
24th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Henry III, King of England
(1207 - 1272)

Jack Sheppard, English robber, hanged
(1702 - 1724)

Louis Riel, hanged
(1844 - 1885)

Doris Speed
(1899 - 1994)

Arthur Askey
(1900 - 1982)

Reg Varney
(1916 - 2008)

Edward Woodward
(1930 - 2009

Clark Gable
(1901 - 1960)

Cluny MacPherson
(1879 - 1966)

Famous Weddings

1683 Hendrik Casimir II of Nassau-Dietz marries Henriette Amalia

1754 British PM William Pitt the Elder (46) weds Lady Hester Grenville (34) in Argyle Street, London

1933 Ramon Magsaysay, latter President of the Philippines (26) weds Luz Banzon (18) at Lourdes church in Manila

1981 Luke marries Laura on TV soap "General Hospital" (16 million watch)

1987 Actress Lisa Bonet marries singer Lenny Kravitz

Famous Divorces

1973 Sci-fi author Isaac Asimov (53) divorces Gertrude Blugerman after 31 years of marriage

1993 James Carrey files for divorce from Melissa

2010 Singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne (25) divorces "Sum 41" lead singer and guitarist Deryck Whibley (29) due to irreconcilable differences after 3 years of marriage

2011 Second season American Idol winner Rubben Studdard (33) divorces Surata Zuri McCants due to irreconcilable differences after 3 years of marriage

[Altobelli]

19 NOVEMBER

1530 The Recess document resulting from the Diet of Augsburg signed by Charles V and catholic princes

1600 The birth of Charles I, King of England and Scotland who believed that the king ruled by Divine Right, until his action in dissolving Parliament led to the civil war with Cromwell and his eventual execution.

1620 The ship Mayflower arrived at Cape Cod, America. Its 87 passengers were a Protestant sect, known as The Pilgrim Fathers. (Note:- The Pilgrim Fathers were thwarted in their first attempt to sail to America when they left from Havenside, near Boston, Lincolnshire in September 1607.

1805 Lewis & Clark expedition reaches the Pacific Ocean, first European Americans to cross the west

1850 Lord Tennyson became Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland. This statue of Tennyson with his Siberian wolfhound Karenina is on Cathedral Green in Lincoln, the county of his birth.

1863 US President Abraham Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg address beginning; "Four score & seven years ago..."

1895 American inventor Frederick E Blaisdell patents the pencil

1905 The SS Hilda, a steamship owned by the London and South Western Railway sank, with the loss of 125 lives when she struck ground at the entrance to Saint-Malo harbour.

1911 Doom Bar (previously known as Dunbar sands or Dune-bar) in Cornwall claimed two ships in a single day, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew, except the captain. There have been over 600 beachings, wrecks and capsizings at Doom Bar since records began early in the 19th century, with about 300 ships being wrecked.

1916 Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures

1924 The birth of the actor William Russell. His big break was the title role in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot on ITV in 1956. The series was sold to American NBC network and became the first UK television series to be shot in colour.

1933 The marriage of Kathleen Ferrier, English contralto singer who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist. Considered by many as the greatest contralto singer ever, she married Albert Wilson and shortly afterwards the couple moved to Silloth in Cumbria. Mrs. Wilson's Coffee House & Eaterie in Silloth celebrates her life, features historic photographs and is decorated as it would have been at the time.

1942 Operation Uranus: Soviet offensive begins during Battle of Stalingrad, 1 million Soviet soldiers encircle the German Sixth Army

1947 George VI created Philip Mountbatten the Duke of Edinburgh in preparation for his wedding to George's elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II), the following day.

1949 Dennis Taylor, Irish snooker player, was born.

1951 The white football became official.

1959 The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel

1960 The first VTOL (vertical take off and landing) aircraft P.1127, made by the British Hawker Siddeley Company was flown, untethered, for the first time. It's first conventional flight, (i.e. a horizontal take off) was on 13th March 1961.

1967 The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, stood by his decision to devalue the pound saying it would tackle the 'root cause' of Britain's economic problems. The Bank of England spent £200m in a single day trying to shore up the pound from its gold and dollar reserves.

1969 Association football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal

1969 Apollo 12's Charles Conrad & Alan Bean become 3rd & 4th humans on the Moon

1976 The death of Sir Basil Spence, the Scottish architect, most notably associated with designing Coventry Cathedral.

1985 US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for first time

1985 Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States

1987 A 1931 Bugatti Royale was sold for £5.5 million at an auction at the Royal Albert Hall, a record at that time for a car.

1990 Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It's True album

1994 Britain's first National Lottery draw. It had a jackpot of £7M and was shown live on BBC television. A £1 ticket gave a one in 14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.

1996 A fire broke out in the Channel Tunnel, injuring 34 people and disrupting rail services.

1997 McCaughey septuplets born to Bobbi McCaughey in Des Moines, Iowa. First set of septuplets to survive infancy

1997 Police confiscated indecent videos and pictures of children in a series of raids on the homes and offices of British pop star Gary Glitter. Exactly six years later, American pop star Michael Jackson was arrested in California on charges of child molestation.

1998 Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for US$71.5 million

2009 Floods in Cumbria brought devastation to towns such as Cockermouth. In just 24-hours the total rainfall at Seathwaite was 31.44cm (12.4 inches); a UK record for a single location in any given 24-hour period. William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, on Main Street and his house was one of many historic houses in the region to be affected by the floods.

2012 Two snap bags of the class A drug cocaine were identified by the police officer father of children who had been trick-or-treating in the Royton area of Oldham. Magistrates heard that Donald Junior Green, 23, was mortified by his 'terrible mistake'.He was given a 12-month community order and 130 hours community work.

2012 Father Christmas was left dangling from the ceiling for 30 minutes after his beard became trapped while abseiling inside a Reading shopping centre as part of a Christmas lights switch-on show.

Famous Birthday's

Charles I
(1600 - 1649)

James Garfield
(1831 - 1881)



Indira Gandhi
(1917 - 1984)

Ray Collins (Mothers of Invention)
(1937 - 2012)

Ted Turner (Founder of CNN)
79th Birthday


Calvin Klein
75th Birthday

Dennis Taylor
68th Birthday



Meg Ryan
56th Birthday

Jodie Foster
55th Birthday

Chris Eagles
32nd Birthday

Famous Deaths

Man in the Iron Mask
(c. 1640 - 1703)


Franz Schubert
(1797 - 1828)

Emma Lazarus
(1849 - 1887)

Joe Hill (Labor leader/songwriter, executed for murder)
(1879 - 1915)

Tom Evans (English bass guitarist Badfinger)
(1947 - 1983)

Durlyn Eddmonds (murderer, executed at 45)
(1952 - 1997)

Walter Stewart (murderer, executed at 42)
(1956 - 1997)

Famous Weddings

1834 US President Franklin Pierce (30) weds Jane Pierce (28) in Amherst, New Hampshire

1923 Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (56) weds artist Maude Noel

1939 Baseball legend Joe DiMaggio (24) weds "Freshies" actress Dorothy Arnold at St. Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco

1954 Actress Vera-Ellen (33) weds millionaire Victor Rothschild at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Los Angeles

1986 Hall of Famer boxing champ Muhammad Ali (44) weds Yolanda Williams

Famous Divorces

2004 Singer Jermaine Jackson (49) divorces Alejandra Genevieve Oaziaza (35) after 9 years of marriage

Number 1 Single and Album 50 years ago.

Single: Massachusetts - Bee Gees

Album: THE SOUND OF MUSIC - ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

[Altobelli]

22 NOVEMBER

1497 Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounds Cape of Good Hope on way to first voyage from Europe to reach India

1594 The death of Sir Martin Frobisher, the English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to look for the Northwest Passage. His knighthood was awarded for service in repelling the Spanish Armada in 1588.

1718 Edward Teach, the English pirate who sailed under the name of Blackbeard, was killed in battle off the coast of North Carolina, with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard..

1764 History credits James Hargreaves with inventing the first Spinning Jenny, but it had been designed and built years before by an obscure artisan from Leigh called Thomas Highs.

1774 Robert Clive, English soldier often referred to as 'Clive of India', died, possibly from an overdose of opium. It may have been suicide, but suicide was regarded as a sin, and if this had been admitted by his family he would not have been allowed a church burial. As it is, his grave was unmarked and remains so.

1808 Birth of Thomas Cook, the English travel agent. He began his pioneering tour business, Thomas Cook & Son, when he organized the first publicly advertised railway excursion from Leicester to a temperance meeting at Loughborough (11 miles away) on 5th July 1841. This statue of Thomas Cook is outside Leicester Railway Station, on London Road.

1819 The birth, in Nuneaton, of Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot. She was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.

1869 The clipper Cutty Sark was launched In Dumbarton, Scotland. She was one of the last clippers ever built, and is the only one still surviving today. She is preserved as a museum ship, located near the centre of Greenwich, in south-east London.

1926 Imperial Conference ends, giving autonomy inside British Commonwealth

1935 Flying boat "China Clipper" takes off from Alameda, California, carrying 100,000 pieces of mail on 1st trans-Pacific airmail flight

1943 World War II: Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek met in Cairo, to discuss ways to defeat Japan.

1946 The first Biro ballpoint pen went on sale, invented by Hungarian Laszlo Biro and manufactured by a British company.

1954 The Humane Society of the United States is founded

1955 RCA Records make its best investment paying $35,000 to Sun Records for Elvis Presley's contract

1963 The death of the author Aldous Huxley, best known for his novels including Brave New World.

1963 In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is later captured and charged with the murder of the President

1968 The Beatles release The Beatles (known popularly as The White Album).

1969 Isolation of a single gene announced by scientists at Harvard University

1971 Five teenagers, all from Ainslie Park School in Edinburgh, and their female instructor died in one of Scotland's worst mountaineering accidents.

1977 1st three nodes of the ARPAnet are connected, in what eventually becomes the Internet

1977 The world's first supersonic airliner, Concorde, was given permission to fly into New York's Kennedy Airport following an agreement over noise levels.

1986 Mike Tyson defeats Trevor Berbick to become youngest Heavyweight champion in boxing history

1987 Two Chicago television stations are hijacked by an unknown pirate dressed as Max Headroom

1988 In Palmdale, California, the first prototype B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is revealed

1990 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdrew from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her premiership that had begun in 1979

1995 Britain's most prolific female serial killer, Rosemary West, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 10 young women and girls.

1995 Toy Story is released as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery

1997 Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of Australian rock band INXS and partner of British television star Paula Yates, was found dead in a hotel in Sydney.

2002 In Nigeria, more than 100 people are killed at an attack aimed at the contestants of the Miss World contest

2003 England's rugby team won the World Cup, beating Australia 20-17 in a nail biting final in Sydney.

2005 Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany

2013 Police arrested 63 year old Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-operative Bank, in connection with an ongoing drugs supply investigation that plunged the group into crisis.

Famous Birthday's

Abigail Adams
(1744 - 1818)

Thomas Cook (British founder and CEO of Thomas Cook & Son travel agency Cook Travel Bureau)
(1808 - 1892)

Charles de Gaulle
(1890 - 1970)

Floyd Sneed (rock drummer, Three Dog Night-Joy to the World)
75th Birthday

Terry Gilliam
77th Birthday



Ron McClure (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
76th Birthday

Billie Jean King
74th Birthday



Jamie Lee Curtis
59th Birthday

Boris Becker
50th Birthday

Scarlett Johansson
33rd Birthday

Marouane Fellaini
30th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Robin Hood, dies
1247

Edward Teach or Edward Thatch (Blackbeard, dies in battle at 38)
1718

George Washington Gale Ferris (inventor, Ferris wheel, dies)
(1859 - 1896)

Aldous Huxley
(1894 - 1963)

John F. Kennedy
(1917 - 1963)

Mae West
(1893 - 1980)

C. S. Lewis
(1898 - 1963)



Michael Conrad, (actor, Hill Street Blues, dies of cancer at 58)
(1925 - 1983)

Bill Bixby, US actor (My Favorite Martian), dies from cancer at 59
(1934 - 1993)

Famous Weddings

1964 Actress Rosemary Clooney weds actor José Ferrer for the second time in Los Angeles, California

1965 Bob Dylan weds Sara Lowndes

1997 "The Lord of The Rings" actor Sean Bean (38) weds actress Abigail Cruttenden (29)

1998 "Titanic" actress Kate Winslet (23) weds assistant film director Jim Threapleton (25) at All Saints Church in Reading, England

2003 Actress Carmen Electra (31) weds rocker Dave Navarro (36) at the St. Regis Hotel in Los Angeles, California

Famous Divorces

2011 Singer-songwriter and actress Ashlee Simpson (27) divorces rock band Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz (33) due to irreconcilable differences after two and a half year of marriage

[Altobelli]

25 NOVEMBER

1120 Henry I's only legitimate son, William, was drowned when The White Ship (la Blanche-Nef) carrying him from Normandy to England sank off Barfleur. This set up a conflict, known as the Anarchy, for the English crown between Stephen and Henry's daughter, Matilda.

1177 Battle of Montgisard: Baldwin IV of Jerusalem defeats Saladin and a larger Ayyubid force

1703 The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, reached its intensity which it maintained through to 27th November. Winds gusted up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people died.

1783 Britain evacuates New York city, its last military position in United States

1823 The first pleasure pier, The Chain Pier at Brighton, opened. It closed in 1896 and was destroyed in a storm in the same year.

1835 Birth of Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born US industrialist and philanthropist who rose from telegraph boy to iron and steel multimillionaire. He devoted his vast wealth to libraries and universities including the Carnegie Hall in New York which opened in 1891.

1839 Cyclone slams south eastern India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroying city of Coringa. Storm waves sweep inland, destroying 20,000 ships and killing an estimated 300,000 people

1867 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patents dynamite

1896 William Marshall became the first person in Britain to receive a parking summons after leaving his car in Tokenhouse Yard in the City of London, but the case was dismissed.

1932 British Equity, the actors' union, voted for a 'closed shop' to begin operating in 1933.

1937 An inter-regional spelling competition became the first British quiz programme to be broadcast.

1940 World War II: The first flight of the deHavilland Mosquito aircraft. The Mosquito was one of the few operational, front-line aircraft to be constructed almost entirely of wood and, as such, was nicknamed 'The Wooden Wonder' or Mossie to its crews. When it entered production in 1941 it was one of the fastest operational aircraft in the world.

1952 The play, The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, opened in London, at the Ambassador's Theatre where it remained for 21 years. By Saturday 12th April 1958 it had become the longest running production of any kind in the history of British Theatre.

1953 Hungary, led by their talented footballer Ferenc Pushkas, beat England 6-3 at Wembley to become the first foreign team to achieve an away win at Wembley.

1969 John Lennon returned his MBE in protest against British involvement in Biafra and British support of US involvement in Vietnam.

1981 The inquiry into the Brixton riots in April blamed serious social and economic problems affecting Britain's cities.

1983 World's greatest robbery; 26 million pounds (sterling) worth of gold, diamonds and cash stolen from Brink's-Mat warehouse at Heathrow Airport, England

1984 Band Aid rock stars gathered at Sarm Studios in London to record 'Do They Know It's Christmas', to aid famine relief in Ethiopia.

1991 Winston Silcott became the first of the 'Tottenham Three', convicted for the 1985 killing of a policeman in Tottenham, North London, to have his conviction overturned.

2005 Former football star George Best died in hospital at the age of 59 after suffering multiple organ failure. He was a talented and charismatic player and became one of the first celebrity footballers. Best's subsequent extravagant lifestyle led to various problems, most notably alcoholism, which he suffered from for the rest of his adult life. A common description of his place in football history is summed up by the quote 'Maradona good; Pelé better; George Best.'

2012 34 year old former two-weight world champion Ricky Hatton announced his retirement from boxing following his loss to Vyacheslav Senchenko in Manchester. Quote by Hatton "A fighter knows and I know it isn't there any more. I have got to be a man and say it is the end of Ricky Hatton."

2013 It was announced that Clare's Law, which enables people to check the police record of their partners, would be expanded (in March 2014) to cover all of England and Wales. The policy is named after Clare Wood, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend George Appleton at her Salford home in February 2009

Famous Birthday's

Karl Benz
(1844 - 1929)



Joe DiMaggio
(1914 - 1999)

John F. Kennedy Jr.
(1960 - 1999)

Famous Death's



Upton Sinclair
(1878 - 1968)



Anthony Burgess
(1917 - 1993)

Fidel Castro
(1926 - 2016)

Famous Weddings

1795 US President William Henry Harrison (22) weds Anna Symmes (20) in North Bend, Ohio

1908 Vaudeville performer Will Rogers (29) weds Betty Blake

1913 28th US President Woodrow Wilson's daughter Jessie marries in The White House

1923 Film director Frank Capra (26) weds actress Helen Howell in San Francisco, California

1961 Racing car driver Mario Andretti (21) weds high school sweetheart Dee Ann Hoch (19)

Famous Divorces

2002 Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage (38) divorces "Princess of Rock and Roll" Lisa Marie Presley (34) due to irreconcilable differences after 3 months of marriage

[Altobelli]

27 NOVEMBER

27 November is Lancashire Day

1095 Pope Urban II preaches 1st Crusade

1295 English King Edward I calls what later became known as "The Model Parliament" extending the authorities of its representatives

1582 William Shakespeare, aged 18, married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter in 1583 and a twin boy and girl in 1585. The boy died aged 11. Anne Hathaway's cottage .

1811 The death of Andrew Meikle, a mechanical engineer credited with inventing the threshing machine to remove the outer husks from grains of wheat.

1835 James Pratt and John Smith are hanged in London; they are the last two to be executed for sodomy in England

1874 The birth of Chaim (Azriel) Weizmann, first president of Israel, who was a chemistry professor in Geneva where he became active in the World Zionist Movement. After settling in Britain in 1904 he assisted the British munitions industry during the First World War when he devised a way of extracting acetone (needed for cordite) from maize. In return, the British government promised to help his cause and establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

1895 At the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies

1897 The death of James Bateman, British landowner and accomplished horticulturist. He created the famous themed gardens at Biddulph in Staffordshire. The garden is a rare survival of the interim period between the Capability Brown landscape garden and the High Victorian style. Bateman was also responsible for laying out the Arboretum at Derby, the first public park in England.

1914 Miss Mary Allen and Miss E F Harburn became the first two trained policewomen to be granted official status in Britain when they reported for duty at Grantham, Lincolnshire.

1920 The birth of Harry "Buster" Merryfield, English actor best known for starring as Uncle Albert in the BBC comedy series Only Fools and Horses.

1920 "The Mask of Zorro" directed by Fred Niblo and starring Douglas Fairbanks is shown in New York - 1st American superhero film

1924 In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held

1925 Ernie Wise, 'straight man' to comedian Eric Morecambe, was born.

1943 Conference of Tehran (Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin)

1944 Between 3,500 and 4,000 tons of explosives stored in a cavern beneath Staffordshire detonated, killing 68 people and wiping out an entire farm. The explosion was heard over 100 miles away in London, and recorded as an earthquake in Geneva.

1965 1st French satellite launched; France becomes 3rd nation in space

1966 The first Lancashire Day to commemorate the day in 1295 when Lancashire first sent representatives to Parliament, to attend the Model Parliament of King Edward I. The county has two AONBs (Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) - The Forest of Bowland and Arnside/Silverdale

1967 President de Gaulle said ‘Non’ to British entry into the Common Market.

1975 Ross McWhirter, TV presenter and co-editor of The Guinness Book of Records, was assassinated by two Provisional IRA gunmen after he had offered a £50,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for several high-profile bombings.

1976 The four millionth 'Mini' car left the production line.

1987 A young man in Somerset tried seven times to kill himself following a row with his girlfriend. He threw himself in front of four cars, and jumped under the wheels of a lorry. He tried to strangle himself and jumped from a window. The real victims were a driver of one car who suffered a heart attack, a policeman who injured his back trying to restrain the man, and a doctor who was kicked in the face when the struggling man reached hospital.

1990 John Major won his second ballot for leadership of the Conservative Party and became Prime Minister. (Mrs. Thatcher had resigned as Prime Minister 5 days previously.)

2000 A 10-year-old schoolboy, Damilola Taylor, died after being stabbed in the leg by a gang of hooded attackers near his home in Peckham, south London.

2005 President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, in power since 1967 and the longest-serving head of state in the world, is re-elected to his third consecutive seven-year term

2005 The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France

2008 The Queen Elizabeth II liner (the QE2) retired from active Cunard service. It was planned for her to begin conversion to a floating hotel; however, she remains moored at Port Rashid (Dubai) facing an uncertain future.

2012 Police admitted that the late Sir Cyril Smith, former MP for Rochdale, was a *** abuser of boys in the late 1960s. Despite not being charged, after inquiries in 1970, 1998, and 1999, the CPS stressed that changes in procedure meant a prosecution would be pursued today.

2013 The death of actor, Lewis Collins, aged 67. He was the quintessential British hard man, best known as Bodie in the TV the series 'The Professionals'.

2014 A new treatment for bladder cancer was shown to completely cure some people, in the first significant breakthrough in the disease for 30 years. Scientists from Queen Mary University of London discovered that an antibody allowed cancer cells to be picked up by the immune system and eradicated before they could spread.

2014 A consortium made up of 'Stagecoach' and 'Virgin' won the franchise to run the East Coast mainline rail route. The firms promised to invest £140m in the route over eight years, and to pay the government £3.3bn for the contract.

2014 Australian Test batsman Phillip Hughes died aged 25, two days after being struck on the top of the neck by a ball during a domestic match in Sydney. He also played for Hampshire, Middle*** and Worcestershire. His final innings score was adjusted to show him being 63 not out, after an update from Cricket Australia.

2014 The American wife of London financier Sir Chris Hohn was awarded £337m by a High Court judge in a divorce case. The sum was thought to be the biggest of its kind made by a judge in England. The couple separated following 17 years of marriage.

2014 The car registration plate "25 O" was sold at auction for £518,000, setting a new British record.

2014 The death, aged 94, of the acclaimed British crime writer PD James. Her books Her books (e.g Death Comes To Pemberley) sold millions of copies around the world during her 50-year career, with many made into television films.

Famous Birthday's

Anders Celsius
(1701 - 1744)

Ernie Wise
(1925 - 1999)

Bruce Lee
(1940 - 1973)

Jimi Hendrix
(1942 - 1970)

Trevor Leonard Ward-Davies 'Dozy', (English musician, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
(1944 - 2016)

John Alderton
77th Birthday


Matthew Taylor
36th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Horace
(65 BC - 8 BC)

Ada Lovelace
(1815 - 1852)

Alan Freeman
(1927 - 2006)

Lewis Collins
(1946 - 2013)

Gary Speed
1969 - 2011)



Len Shackleton
(1922 - 2000)

Harvey Milk
(1930 - 1978)


Famous Weddings

1960 Actress Lana Turner marries for the 6th time to Frederick May

1971 MLB center fielder Willie Mays (40) weds Mae Louise Allen in Mexico City

1980 British playwright (Nobel prize for literature 2005) Harold Pinter (50) marries 2nd wife British writer and historian Antonia Frazer (48)

1993 Actress Teri Garr (44) weds building contractor John O'Neil (42) at the Twin Dolphins Hotel in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

2010 US Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell (25) weds Melanie Juneau in Texas

Famous Divorces

2006 "Baywatch" actress Pamela Anderson (39) divorces singer Kid Rock (36) due to irreconcilable differences only 4 months after getting married

2006 Actress Selma Blair (34) divorces actor-rocker Ahmet Zappa (32) due to irreconcilable differences after more than 2 years of marriage

2013 Actor Ashton Kutcher (35) divorces actress Demi Moore (51) due to irreconcilable differences after 8 years of marriage