On This Day

[Altobelli]

01 DECEMBER

1135 England's King Henry I died. He had fallen ill seven days earlier after eating too many lampreys (jawless fish resembling eels). He was 66, and had ruled for 35 years.

1581 Edmund Campion (later St. Edmund) and three other Jesuits were martyred. He was tried on a charge of treason for promoting Catholicism and was hanged in London.

1642 The 1st English Civil War : A victory for Parliamentarian Forces when Colonel Sir William Waller stormed Farnham Castle in Kent. It became his base for the remainder of the war.

1761 Birth of Madame Marie Tussaud (Grosholz), Swiss-born French waxworks modeller. During the French Revolution she made death masks from the severed heads of the famous. In 1800, separated from her husband, she toured Britain with her waxworks, eventually setting up a permanent exhibition in London.

1821 The birth of the architect Cuthbert Brodrick. Aged 29, Brodrick entered and won a competition for the design of Leeds Town Hall, one of the largest town halls in the United Kingdom. He also designed The Grand Hotel in Scarborough. At the time of its grand opening in 1867, it was the largest hotel and the largest brick structure in Europe.

1843 1st chartered mutual life insurance company opens

1862 In his State of the Union Address, President Abraham Lincoln speaks about ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation

1868 The opening of London's Smithfield meat market.

1885 First serving of the soft drink Dr Pepper at a drug store in Waco, Texas

1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual went on sale, with 'A Study in Scarlet' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which first introduced the detective, Sherlock Holmes.

1895 Henry Williamson, author of the classic book 'Tarka The Otter', was born.

1913 Ford Motor Company institutes world's 1st moving assembly line for the Model T Ford

1919 Lady Astor becomes the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elected November 28


1930 The birth of the singer Matt Monro, who became one of the most popular entertainers on the international music scene during the 1960s. Throughout his 30 year career, he filled cabarets, nightclubs, music halls and stadiums throughout the world.

1934 Leningrad mayor Sergey Kirov assassinated, Stalin uses as excuse to begin the Great Purge of 1934-38

1942 The Beveridge Report, written by Sir William Beveridge, proposed a welfare state for Britain, offering care to all from the cradle to the grave. It revolved around a compulsory National Insurance scheme to provide all adults with free medical treatment, unemployment benefit and old age pensions.

1952 The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of ***ual reassignment surgery

1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama

1960 Paul McCartney and Pete Best are arrested (and later deported) from Hamburg, Germany, after accusations of attempted arson

1965 The Government put forward a plan to improve the lot of both farmers and consumers by encouraging intensive farming.

1966 Britain issued its first special edition Christmas stamps. In 2006 the stamps were heavily criticized as they depicted no Christian images on any of the Christmas stamps.

1969 A statue of former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was unveiled in the House of Commons.

1969 Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II

1982 "Thriller", 6th studio album by Michael Jackson is released (Grammy Award Album of the Year 1984, best-selling album of all time, Billboard Album of the Year 1983)

1987 The Department of Trade inspectors were ordered into the giant Guinness company to investigate allegations of misconduct which ended up with four arrests being made, including the chairman Ernest Saunders. Guinness shares plunged by £300m.

1988 Benazir Bhutto named 1st female Prime Minister of a Muslim country (Pakistan)

1990 Britain and France were joined for the first time in thousands of years as the last wall of rock separating two halves of the Channel Tunnel was removed.

2010 Large parts of the UK were brought to a standstill by the early freeze. Temperatures plunged again overnight to -16C (3F) in the Scottish Highland after one of the coldest starts to December in more than 20 years. Some 4,000 schools were closed, the Forth Road Bridge was closed for the first time since it opened in 1964 and Edinburgh and Gatwick airports were shut. The Met Office issued heavy snow warnings for Scotland and north-east, eastern and south-east England.

2013 Official industry figures showed that some of Britain’s biggest wind farms were, at times, taking electricity out of the National Grid to run basic power supplies on site, rather than actually supplying electricity to households. Renewable power plant capacities from RWE are viewable on a real-time interactive map.

2014 Dr. Myles Bradbury was jailed for 22 years after abusing children who had cancer or grave blood disorders. He pleaded guilty to 25 offences against boys aged 10 to 16, including ***ual assault, voyeurism and possessing more than 16,000 indecent images. About 800 more families were told that their children could have been at risk during the five years that Bradbury worked for the hospital.

2014 Christopher Law, the former owner of Britain’s last surviving temperance bar (Fitzpatrick’s, in Rawtenstall, Lancashire was prosecuted for drink-driving.

Famous Birthday's

Georgy Zhukov
(1896 - 1974)

Mary Martin
(1913 - 1990)

Pablo Escobar
(1949 - 1993)



Matt Monro
(1932 - 1985)

Lou Rawls
91933 - 2006)

Billy Paul
(1936 - 2016)

Mike Denness
(1940 - 2013)


Richard Pryor
(1940 - 2005)

Woody Allen
82nd Birthday

Bette Midler
72nd Birthday



Gilbert O'Sullivan
70th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Leo X
(1475 - 1521)

David Ben-Gurion
(1886 - 1973)

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
(1900 - 1990)

Famous Weddings

1927 Chinese political and military leader Chiang Kai-shek (40) weds Soong Mei-ling (28) in Shanghai

1973 NFL running back Gale Sayers (30) weds second wife Ardythe Bullard

1982 Martial artist Jackie Chan (28) weds actress Lin Feng-jiao (29) in Los Angeles

1990 Film director John Carpenter (36) weds producer Sandy King

1996 Model-actress Angie Everhart (27) weds actor Ashley Hamilton (22) at the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles

Famous Divorces

1994 Cindy Crawford & Richard Gere announce they are seperating

2008 "CSI" actress Marg Helgenberger (50) divorces actor Alan Rosenberg (58) due to irreconcilable differences after 19 years of marriage

[Altobelli]

02 DECEMBER

1697 The rebuilt St Paul’s Cathedral, the work of Sir Christopher Wren, was opened. The previous cathedral had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

1755 The second Eddystone Lighthouse (located off the coast of Devon) was destroyed by fire. Four lighthouses have been built on the site. The light was lit on the fourth, (Douglass's lighthouse, designed by James Douglass) in 1882 and it is still in use.

1763 Dedication of the Touro Synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island, the first synagogue in what will become the United States

1769 Britain's first cremation took place, in St. George's burial ground, London.

1804 Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of France in Paris

1816 The Spa Fields Riots. A large crowd, who had gathered to demand political reform, decided to march on London.

1823 President James Monroe declares his "Monroe Doctrine", a US foreign policy regarding Latin America

1823 Monroe Doctrine: U.S. President James Monroe proclaims U.S. neutrality in future European conflicts, and warns Europe not to get involved in U.S. affairs

1845 Manifest Destiny: US President James K. Polk announces to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West

1867 At Tremont Temple in Boston, British author Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the United States

1899 Sir John Barbirolli, English conductor with the 'Halle Orchestra', was born.

1899 John Cobb, British racing driver was born. He made money as a director of fur brokers and could therefore afford to specialise in large capacity motor-racing. He was born and lived in Esher, Surrey, near the Brooklands race track. He broke the land speed record at Bonneville on August 23, 1939, achieving 367.91 mph. Without this being beaten he raised the record to 394.19 mph in 1947. He died in 1952, attempting to break the world water speed record on Loch Ness in the jet speedboat Crusader at a speed in excess of 200 mph.

1907 The Professional Footballer’s Association was formed, after a meeting at the Imperial Hotel, Manchester.

1917 World War I: Russia and the Central Powers sign an armistice at Brest-Litovsk, and peace talks leading to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk begin

1927 Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, the Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A as its new automobile

1927 1st Model A Ford sold, for $385

1929 Britain’s first 22 public telephone boxes came into service. They were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and installed as part of a new scheme for policing and were made available for general use in the Barnes, Kew and Richmond Districts. The red K6 phone boxes have become a British icon and many can be found in tourist cities, such as these boxes at Cambridge. Note:- The 100,000 BT phone box was installed at Dunsop Bridge in the "exact centre of Great Britain and 401 associated islands".

1929 First skull of Peking man found, 50 km out of Peking at Tsjoe Koe Tien

1939 New York City's LaGuardia Airport opens

1943 The first Bevin Boys, aged between 18 and 25 were directed into the mining industry. Many miners had been called up to the armed forces, resulting in a grave shortage of coal.

1961 In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist–Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism

1966 The Mini skirt, the symbol of the Swinging Sixties, was banned from the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.

1976 Fidel Castro becomes President of Cuba, replacing Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado

1982 The film Gandhi received its premiere in London. It won 8 Oscars.

1982 At the University of Utah, Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart

1993 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is shot and killed in MedellÃ*n

1995 28 year old Nick Leeson was sentenced for financial dealings which contributed to the fall of Barings Bank, Britain's oldest merchant bank. He admitted to a judge in Singapore two charges of fraud connected with Baring's £860m ruin.

1997 Representatives of 41 countries met in London to discuss the whereabouts of gold and other valuable assets seized by the Nazi government from Jews in Germany and other occupied countries before and during World War II.

1997 Former wrestler Big Daddy (real name Shirley Crabtree) died in Halifax, aged 67. He was often partnered against Giant Haystacks (Martin Ruane), who died in 1998, aged 52.

1998 Conservative leader William Hague sacked his leader in the House of Lords, Lord Cranborne, for going behind his back to negotiate a deal with the Labour Government over the scrapping of Hereditary Peers.

1999 The United Kingdom devolved political power in Northern Ireland to the Northern Ireland Executive.

2001 Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

2012 Under a Freedom of Information request a draft report from Transport for London (TfL) showed that the Hammersmith Flyover, used by 90,000 vehicles a day, could have experienced a "sudden and catastrophic collapse". Salt water from repeated gritting had rotted internal steel cables yet the road remained open for several more weeks.

Famous Birthday's

Georges Seurat
(1859 - 1891)

Gianni Versace
(1946 - 1997)

Monica Seles
44th Birthday

Britney Spears
36th Birthday

Famous Deaths



John Brown (American abolitionist and revolutionary (Harpers Ferry), hanged at 59)
(1800 - 1859)

Aaron Copland
(1900 - 1990)

Philip Larkin
(1922 - 1985)

Shirley Crabtree, (British professional wrestler )
(1930 - 1997)



Anthony Valentine
(1939 - 2015)

Pablo Escobar
(1949 - 1993)

Famous Weddings

1886 26th US President Theodore Roosevelt (28) weds second wife Edith Kermit Carow (25) in London

1926 Film director and producer Alfred Hitchcock (27) weds director Alma Reville (27) at Brompton Oratory in London

1933 1st transatlantic telephone wedding (Bertil Clason-Sigrid Carlson)

1965 Comedian Tony Hancock (40) weds publicist Freddie Ross (35)

2000 Mexican singer Thalia (29) weds co-owner of Casablanca Records Tommy Mottola (51) at St. Patrick

[Altobelli]

03 DECEMBER

1586 Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England from Colombia

1775 First official US flag raised (Grand Union Flag) aboard naval vessel USS Alfred

1795 Sir Rowland Hill, postal pioneer and founder of the 'Penny Post' was born.

1818 Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state

1820 Thomas Beecham, English manufacturer and inventor of Beecham's pills, was born. The Beecham's Building on Westfield Street in St. Helen's is the former headquarters of the pharmaceutical company

1836 Three people were killed at Great Corby, near Carlisle in Cumbria, in the first fatal railway derailment.

1854 Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 goldminers at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences

1868 Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time. He won office for three more terms.

1894 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, died, aged 45 on the island of Samoa.

1909 King Edward VII dissolved Parliament and taxes on alcohol, tobacco and cars were suspended as no budget had been passed. Edward was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and had a reputation as a 'playboy prince'. This statue of King Edward VII, was unveiled by his father King George V in 1912 during a visit to Huddersfield with Queen Mary.

1910 Modern neon lighting is first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show

1926 In an episode as puzzling and intriguing as any in her many novels, Agatha Christie disappeared from her Surrey home and was discovered on the 14th December staying under an assumed name at the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate. She said she had no recollection of how she came to be in Yorkshire.

1927 Putting Pants on Philip, the first Laurel and Hardy film, is released

1936 The Royal Family cancelled all engagements as news broke of Edward VIII's determination to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson.

1944 Britain 'stood down' the Home Guard - formed in 1939 to defend Britain from invasion by Germany. They were officially disbanded in December 1945.

1948 The birth of John Michael 'Ozzy' Osbourne, English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. He rose to prominence as lead singer of the band Black Sabbath and became known as the 'Prince of Darkness'.

1961 The whole of south East England was plunged into darkness for two hours, due to an error by an electrician.

1963 The launch of Britain's second nuclear submarine, HMS Valiant.

1967 At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).

1976 An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, but will play a concert only two days later

1977 Wings started a nine week run at No.1 with Mull of Kintyre. It was the first single to sell over 2 million in the UK.

1979 In Cincinnati, 11 fans are suffocated in a crush for seats on the concourse outside Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert

1979 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran

1984 British Telecom was privatised. The shares immediately made massive gains.

1984 Bhopal disaster: Union Carbide pesticide plant leak 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, kills 2,259 (official figure) - other estimates as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured

1988 Junior Health minister Edwina Currie provoked outrage by saying that most of Britain's egg production was infected with the salmonella bacteria.

1989 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H. W. Bush, declare the Cold War over

1992 Two bombs exploded in the centre of Manchester injuring 65 people. Miraculously no-one was killed, but much of the city centre had to be rebuilt.

1992 A test engineer for Sema Group uses a personal computer to send the world's first text message via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague

1994 The Playstation was released in Japan

2007 Gillian Gibbons, a 54 year old teacher from Liverpool was released after eight days in custody and handed over to British officials in Sudan after being jailed for letting her class name a teddy bear Muhammad.

2009 The death of Richard Todd, British actor, immortalized in the film Dam Busters (1955) as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC.

2012 St James's Palace announced that the Duchess of Cambridge was expecting a baby. The baby, the couple's first, would be born third in line to the throne, after Prince Charles and Prince William.

2015 RAF Tornado jets carried out their first air strikes against 'so-called Islamic State' in Syria, hours after MPs had voted (397 votes to 223) in favour of UK action in Syria.

Famous Birthday's

George McClellan
(1826 - 1885)



Andy Williams
(1927 - 2012)

Mel Smith
(1952 - 2013)

Franz Klammer
64th Birthday

Ozzy Osbourne
69th Birthday

Eamonn Holmes
58th Birthday

Daryl Hannah
57th Birthday

Julianne Moore
57th Birthday



Frank Sinclair
46th Birthday

Daniel Bedingfield
38th Birthday

David Villa
36th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Diocletian
( - 311)

Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850 - 1894)

Pierre Auguste Renoir
(1841 - 1919)

Cow Cow Davenport
(1894 - 1955)

Oswald Mosley
(1896 - 1980)



Jimmy Jewel
(1909 - 1995)

Famous Weddings

1931 Silent film actress Clara Bow (26) weds actor and politician Rex Bell (28) in Las Vegas

1940 Nobel Prize winning author Albert Camus (27) weds pianist and mathematician Francine Faure (25) in Lyon, France

1984 Oldest groom - Harry Stevens, 103, weds Thelma Lucas, 83, in Wisconsin

1993 Baseball player Darryl Strawberry (31) weds Charisse Simon (26)

2005 NBC correspondent Hoda Kotb (41) weds New Orleans tennis coach Burzis Kanga in the Dominican Republic

[Altobelli]

04 DECEMBER

1154 The only Englishman to become a pope, Nicholas Breakspear, became Adrian IV.

1534 Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent occupies Baghdad

1586 Queen Elizabeth I conferred the death sentence on Mary Queen of Scots after discovering a plot to assassinate her and bring about a Roman Catholic uprising. Queen Mary stayed at this house in Jedburgh in 1566 to hold a Circuit Court. She fell gravely ill and almost died there. As her later troubles closed in, she is said to have remarked "Would that I had died in Jedburgh."

1619 38 colonists from Berkeley Parish, England disembark in Virginia and give thanks to God. Considered by many the first Thanksgiving in the Americas.

1791 The Observer, Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper, was first published.

1795 The birth of Thomas Carlyle at this house in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. The philosopher, writer, historian and teacher was considered one of the most important social commentators of his time.

1798 British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger announced the introduction of Income Tax to help finance the war against France.

1865 Birth of Edith Cavell at Swardeston ( 4 miles south of Norwich). An English nurse in Brussels 1914-15, she was accused of helping Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium over the Dutch border and was executed by the Germans. There is a statue of her outside Norwich Cathedral.

1872 Crew from the British brigantine Die Gratia boarded a deserted ship drifting in mid Atlantic. The captain's table was set for a meal aboard the US ship Marie Celeste but the Captain, crew and passengers were all missing.

1829 Britain outlaws "suttee" in India (widow burning herself to death on her husband's funeral pyre)

1930 Ronnie Corbett, comedian partnered with Ronnie Barker, was born.

1937 The first issue of the Dandy comic. With a fan club of over 350,000, Desperate Dan proved a durable character. A copy of this first edition is worth between £850 and £1,000. The closure, on 4th December 2012, coincided with its 75th anniversary and the final print edition included a pullout reprint of the very first edition of the comic.

1948 George Orwell completed the final draft of the book Nineteen Eighty Four which was published on 8th June 1949.

1952 At least 4,000 people died in a week, from breathing difficulties, during a severe London smog.

1956 The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studios for the first and last time

1961 Birth control pills became available on the NHS.

1971 The Montreux Casino in Switzerland is set ablaze by a flare gun set off during a Frank Zappa concert, mentioned in Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water".


1976 Benjamin Britten, considered to be Britain's leading composer, died aged 63. He had been fighting ill health after a heart operation in 1973. This memorial window to him is in Aldeburgh Parish Church, Suffolk. The Aldeburgh Festival of music was started in 1948 by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Every year the Aldeburgh Festival has many of its concerts at the Snape Maltings Concert Hall, 5 miles from Aldeburgh where Britten and Pears lived.

1980 English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbanded, following the death of drummer John Bonham on 25th September.

1997 Europe's health ministers voted to ban tobacco advertising throughout the European Union although they agreed that motor-racing, which relied heavily on sponsorship and advertising by tobacco companies, should be exempt for another 8 years.

2008 The Bank of England cut interest rates by one percentage point, from 3% to 2% - the lowest level since 1951. The move followed a dramatic cut in November in an attempt to help the slowing economy.

2008 Karen Matthews, the mother of nine-year-old Shannon, was convicted of kidnapping her own daughter. Matthews, 33, and her co-accused Michael Donovan, 40, were found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice. The trial at Leeds Crown Court heard that the pair kept Shannon 'drugged, subdued and hidden from the public' so that they could claim £50,000 in reward money.

2012 The highest lottery prize ever to remain unclaimed (£63.8m) eventually went to good causes as the winer did not come forward by the deadline of 23:00 GMT.

2013 One of Edinburgh’s new trams (No. 264) completed the first test run along Princes Street, flanked by teams of engineers. It was the first time since 1956 that a tram had run on Princes Street. Council bosses said that it was another indication that they were back in control of the troubled project.

2014 Knutsford council, in Cheshire, approved plans to widen the town's pavements. 220 years previously, spinster Lady Jane Stanley had paid for narrow pavements to be laid in the town, to prevent lovers from strolling arm in arm.

2014 The death, aged 85, of Jeremy Thorpe, former Liberal partyleader.

Famous Birthday's



Crazy Horse
(1840 - 1877)



Edith Louisa Cavell
(1865 - 1915)

Francisco Franco
(1892 - 1975)

Ronnie Corbett
(1930 -2016)

Dennis Wilson (Photo at foot of post)
(1944 - 1983)

Jay-Z
48th Birthday

Jeff Bridges
68th Birthday

Pamela Stephenson
68th Birthday

Paul McGrath
58th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Thomas Hobbes
(1588 - 1679)

Robert Jenkinson
(1770 - 1828)

Hannah Arendt
(1906 - 1975)

Frank V Zappa
(1940 - 1993

Famous Weddings

1878 Novelist Bram Stoker (31) weds Florence Balcombe (20) in Dublin, Ireland

1973 NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle (47) weds activist Carrie Cooke

1976 Actress Elizabeth Taylor (44) marries for the 7th time to politician John Warner (49)

1979 Liza Minnelli's 3rd marriage (Mark Gero)

1999 Philippe, Duke of Brabant and heir apparent to Belgium throne marries the honourable Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz

Famous Divorces

2015 Actors Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas divorce after 19 years of marriage


50 Years ago Album and Single # 1s

THE SOUND OF MUSIC - ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

BABY NOW THAT I'VE FOUND YOU - FOUNDATIONS

[Altobelli]

05 DECEMBER

771 Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman

1349 500 Jews of Nuremberg massacred during Black Death riots

1456 Earthquake strikes Naples; about 35,000 die

1492 Christopher Columbus discovers Hispaniola (El Espanola/Haiti)

1697 The first Sunday service was held in the new St Paul's Cathedral, London.

1717 English pirate Blackbeard ransacks the merchant sloop "Margaret" and keeps her captain, Henry Bostock prisoner for 8 hours before releasing him. Bostock later provides 1st record of Blackbeard's appearance, and the source for his name

1757 Seven Years' War: Battle of Leuthen – Frederick II of Prussia leads Prussian forces to victory over Austrian forces under Prince Charles Alexander

1766 James Christie, the founder of the famous auctioneers, held his first sale in London. Christie's main London salesroom is on King Street in St. James's, where it has been based since 1823.

1830 The birth of Christina Georgina Rossetti, the English poet who wrote a variety of romantic and children's poems. She also wrote the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.

1839 The postage rate in Britain was changed to a standard charge of 4d (4 old pence) a half ounce instead of being charged by distance.

1848 US President Polk triggers Gold Rush of 1849 by confirming gold discovery in California

1863 The rules of Association Football were published.

1879 1st automatic telephone switching system patented

1899 The death of Lancashire businessman and philanthropist Henry Tate (sugar refining and the Tate Gallery)

1905 The roof of Charing Cross Railway Station in London collapsed, killing five people.

1913 Britain forbade the selling of arms to Ireland.

1928 England beat Australia by a record 675 runs in the Test at Brisbane.

1932 German physicist Albert Einstein granted a visa to enter America

1933 21st Amendment to the US Constitution ratified, 18th Amendment (Prohibition of alcohol) repealed (5:32 PM EST)

1943 World War II: U.S. Army Air Force begins attacking Germany's secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow

1944 German troops steal all the silver coin in Utrecht

1952 -8] worst smog in London ever, 4-8,000 die

1956 Miss Rose Heilbron QC was appointed Recorder of Burnley to become Britain’s first woman judge.

1958 The Queen dialled Edinburgh and spoke to the Lord Provost from Bristol, to inaugurate the first direct dialled trunk call, known as STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling)

1958 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan opened the Preston bypass in Lancashire. It was the first stretch of motorway in Britain and is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.

1967 The Beatles' clothing store "Apple" opens at 94 Baker Street, London

1973 Paul McCartney & Wings release album "Band on the Run"

1973 During a petrol shortage, the government imposed a 50mph speed limit to save fuel.

1974 Final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus airs on BBC TV

1985 Great Britain performs nuclear test

1989 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defeated Sir Anthony Meyer in the first challenge to her leadership of the Conservative Party.

1991 Robert Maxwell's business empire collapsed with huge debts of more than £1bn and revelations about misappropriation of money in pension funds.

1993 The record by Mr Blobby, a pink-and-yellow spotted BBC television star, reached number one in the charts.

2005 The Civil Partnership Act came into effect in the United Kingdom. It gave same-*** couples rights and responsibilities identical to civil marriage. In addition a formal process for dissolving partnerships was put in place, akin to divorce.

2007 Westroads Mall massacre: A gunman opens fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha, Nebraska, mall, killing eight people before taking his own life

2008 O.J. Simpson is sentenced to 33 years in prison for kidnapping and armed robbery

2012 The Audit Commission announced that English councils had increased their reserves by £4.5bn over the previous five years to £12.9bn despite cuts to funding. The money set aside was the equivalent of almost a third of their spending on services.

2013 Reforms in Chancellor George Osborne's Autumn Statement included that those in their twenties would have to work until they were 70, under sweeping changes to the basic state pension.

2013 The death, aged 95, of Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa's struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world.There are more streets named after Nelson Mandela in the UK than anywhere in the world outside South Africa. He also shares one of London’s most high profile public spaces in Parliament Square, with his statue alongside great figures from British history, such as former prime ministers Winston Churchill and Robert Peel.

2014 Scotland lowered the legal drink-drive limit in Scotland, from 80mg to 50mg in every 100ml of blood, lower than elsewhere in the UK.

Famous Birthday's

Martin Van Buren
(1782 - 1862)



George Armstrong Custer
(1839 - 1876)



Walt Disney
(1901 - 1966)

George Savalas
(1924 - 1985)

Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards
54th Birthday

Famous Deaths



Wolfang Amadeus Mozart
(1756 - 1791)

Claude Monet
(1840 - 1926)

Alexandre Dumas, (French writer, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo), dies at 68
(1802 - 1870)

Nelson Mandela
(1918 - 2013)

Famous Weddings

1926 Gangster Carlo Gambino (24) weds his first cousin Catherine Castellano

1932 "East of Eden" director Elia Kazan (23) weds playwright Molly Day Thatcher (25)

1943 Singer and actress Dinah Shore (27) weds actor George Montgomery (27)

1945 Actor Eddie Albert (39) weds actress Margo (28)

1947 "Spider-Man" creator Stan Lee (24) weds Joan Clayton Boocock

[Altobelli]

06 DECEMBER

The Feast day of Nicholas, popularly known as Santa Claus. He is the patron saint of children. The name Santa Claus is a phonetic alteration from the German Sankt Niklaus and the Dutch Sinterklaas.

1240 Mongols under Batu Khan occupy & destroy Kiev

1421 Henry VI, youngest King of England to accede the throne (at 296 days), was born.

1732 The birth of Warren Hastings, first Governor General of Bengal who established the foundations of British administration in India. He was impeached for corruption on his return to England in 1785, but was later acquitted.

1745 Charles Edward Stewart (commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender) and his army began their retreat from Derby during the second Jacobite Rising.

1768 The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published, in Edinburgh.

1865 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery

1888 The birth of William Thomson Hay (known as 'Will' Hay); English comedian, actor, film director and amateur astronomer. His half hour weekly Will Hay Programme began in August 1944, and was broadcast live from the Paris Cinema, which still exists in a basement just off Piccadilly Circus.

1897 The world's first fleet of motorised taxi cabs started operating in London.

1916 David Lloyd George became Prime Minister. He was born in Chorlton-on-Medlock, near Manchester, to Welsh parents, but the tiny village of Llanystumdwy was his childhood home. This building, in Llanystumdwy, is one of the very few museums in Britain which celebrates the life of a former Prime Minister.

1921 Irish independence was granted for the 26 southern states that became known as the Irish Free State. Six counties which formed Ulster (Northern Ireland) remained as part of the UK.

1963 English call-girl Christine Keeler, one of the models named in the scandal involving British Secretary of State for War John Profumo, was jailed for 9 months for perjury arising from the trial of an ex-boyfriend.

1975 The Balcombe Street siege in Central London was watched by millions on television. It ended when the four IRA gunmen, who had taken a couple hostage following a gun battle and chase, finally gave themselves up without a shot being fired.

1977 The birth of Andrew Flintoff, English and Lancashire cricketer. His nickname 'Freddie' or 'Fred' comes from the similarity between his surname and that of Fred Flintstone. He developed deep vein thrombosis after surgery to his knee and announced his retirement from all cricket on 16th September 2010.

1982 The 'Droppin Well' bombing: The Irish National Liberation Army detonated a bomb in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, killing eleven British soldiers and six civilians.

1983 Surgeons successfully completed the first heart and lung transplant operation to be performed in Britain. Swedish journalist, Lars Ljungberg underwent the transplant, receiving the organs of a woman from the south of England who had died the previous day.

1994 The Queen gave the go ahead for oil drilling to take place in the grounds of Windsor Castle. The move came after studies showed there could be up to £1bn of oil lying beneath the castle.

1998 Hugo Chávez is elected President of Venezuela

2005 David Cameron beat David Davis to the leadership of the Conservative Party.

2006 NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars

2012 The SA Agulhas set off from London on the start of the world’s first ever attempt to cross the Antarctic in winter. On 25th February 2013, Sir Ranulph Fiennes had to pull out of the expedition due to frostbite. On 18th June 2013, after encountering a crevasse field extending up to 60 miles, with temperatures close to -90c and operating in near permanent darkness the team officially halted its mission and decided to focus only on scientific experiments.

2013 Communities on the east coast of England began assessing the damage caused by the previous night's worst tidal surge for 60 years. Thousands had abandoned their homes, 1,400 properties were flooded and seven cliff-top homes collapsed into the sea at Hemsby - Norfolk. It was the start of a winter of severe floods and storms that affected many parts of Britain. These show severe cliff erosion at Skipsea Sands in East Yorkshire.

2015 Exactly two years later, communities in Cumbria and the Scottish Borders began assessing the damage caused by the previous night's rain storms that broke river banks and flooded properties in towns and villages, including Appleby, Cockermouth, Keswick and Hawick. Residents were evacuated from their homes and all trains between England and Scotland were cancelled. This new addition to the garden wall at a house in Appleby, on the banks of the River Eden, gives an indication as to river level.

Famous Birthday's

Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin
(1805 - 1861)

John Singleton Mosby
(1833 - 1916)

Agnes Moorehead
(1900 - 1974)

Famous Deaths

Jefferson Davis
(1808 - 1889)



Werner von Siemens
(1816 - 1892)

Honus Wagner
(1874 - 1955)

Tunku Abdul Rahman
(1903 - 1990)



Roy Orbison
(1936 - 1988)

Famous Weddings

1491 King Charles VIII of France marries Anna of Bretagne

1930 Pablo Neruda marries Marie A Hagenaar Vogelzang in Batavia

1941 King Leopold of Belgium marries Lilian Baels

1962 Actor Sean Connery (32) weds actress Diane Cilento on Gibraltar

1975 US Senator Bob Dole (52) weds former senator Elizabeth Hanford (39)

Famous Divorces

1938 Actress Bette Davis (30) divorces musician Harmon Nelson (31) due to cruel and inhuman manner after more than 6 years of marriage

1982 US Senator Ted & Joan Kennedy divorce

1988 Actor and comedian Robin Williams (37) divorces Valerie Velardi after 10 years of marriage

[chalky_ncfc]

This is the bit of this forum that I missed the most,still as entertaining as ever Altobelli

[Altobelli]

I'm pleased its still keeping you happy Chalky, I was a bit worried when you went awal, glad you are back fella

[Altobelli]

07 DECEMBER

43 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman orator and politician is assassinated in Formiae

521 The birth of Saint Columba, the Irish Christian who made his missionary trip to Scotland in 563. Columba is credited as bringing a revival of Christianity to Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. He died on the Scottish island of Iona and was buried in 597 AD by his monks in the abbey he had created there.

1545 The birth of Henry Stuart. He was the first cousin and second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the father of her son King James VI. He was murdered at Kirk o' Field in Edinburgh in 1567.

1703 The greatest windstorm "The Great Storm" ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die

1732 The first Covent Garden Opera House, then called the Theatre Royal, opened in London to an elite crowd, for a performance of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, a tribute to Gay, who had died three days previously.

1817 The death of William Bligh, rear-Admiral who was captain of the HMS Bounty at the time of the mutiny.

1869 American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri

1889 The first performance at the Savoy, London, of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 'The Gondoliers', their last real success. It ran for a very successful 554 performances, closing on 30th June 1891.

1909 Inventor Leo Baekeland patents the first thermo-setting plastic, Bakelite, sparking the birth of the plastics industry

1940 The birth, in Liverpool, of the comedian Stan Boardman who broke into television via Opportunity Knocks and The Comedians.

1941 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attack US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people

1955 Clement Atlee resigned as leader of the opposition Labour Party, following months of speculation. Hours later he was made an Earl by the Queen; the first Labour leader to accept a hereditary peerage. Mr Attlee led his party for 20 years and had a seat in the House of Commons for 33 years. In 1942 he became deputy prime minister in the war cabinet under Sir Winston Churchill. During his six years as prime minister from 1945 to 1951 he oversaw sweeping changes to the welfare state, with the introduction of the National Health Service and the nationalisation of many key industries - the Bank of England, civil aviation, coal, telecommunications, transport, electricity, iron and steel.

1965 Pope Paul VI & Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that led to split of 2 churches in 1054

1968 Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandfather took out in 1823 from the University of Cincinnati

1979 Cabinet minister Lord Soames was named transitional governor of Rhodesia to oversee its progress into legal independence. In 1964, the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia Ian Smith had rejected British conditions for independence. Rhodesia became a British colony in 1923, and was dogged by violence and international alienation during its struggle for independence.

1979 Production of MG Midget sports cars came to an end. 73,899 of the last version were produced and the last 500 cars were painted black.

1982 In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr., becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States

1983 Iberia Airlines Boeing 727 collides with an Aviaco DC-9 in dense fog while they are taxiing down the runway at Madrid–Barajas Airport, killing 93 people.

1983 A cat climbed to a height of 160ft up an industrial chimney, holding up the work of Lancashire's chief steeplejack and chimney demolisher Fred Dibnah.

1988 PLO delegation lead by Yasir Arafat proclaims the State of Palestine, recognizing the existence of the State of Israel for the first time

1988 6.9 earthquake in Spitak, Armenia kills 25,000-50,000 people and leaves up to 500,000 homeless

1993 Protesters lost a 20 year fight to save a 250 year old chestnut tree in east London. Twenty protesters were arrested after they clashed with 200 police officers sent to ensure a court order to cut down the tree was enforced and that the planned motorway extension could go ahead.

1999 A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.: The Recording Industry Association of America sues the file-sharing service Napster for copyright infringement

2001 The Taliban regime gave up its stronghold in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The fall of Kandahar came after the Afghan capital Kabul had been retaken in November. An ebullient Tony Blair, Prime MInister at the time, said - 'That regime is effectively now disintegrated. The terror camps can be shut down, and I think that is a fantastic thing.'

2012 Jacintha Saldhana, a nurse at King Edward VII hospital - London, who took a hoax call about the Duchess of Cambridge from two Australian radio presenters posing as the Queen, was found dead at her home after committing suicide

Famous Birthday's

Mário Soares
(1924 - 2017)

Ellen Burstyn
85th Birthday



Stan Boardman
80th Birthday

Johnny Bench
70th Birthday

Geoff Lawson
60th Birthday

Larry Bird
61st Birthday

Colin Hendry
52nd Birthday

John Terry
37th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Cicero
(106 BC - 43 BC)

1817 William Bligh (British naval officer of "Bounty") dies at 63

Thomas Nast
(1840 - 1902)



Harry Morgan
(1915 - 2011)

Billy Bremner
1942 - 1997)


Greg Lake
(1947 - 2016)

Famous Weddings

1646 Princess Louise Henriette (19) of Nassau marries Frederick Henry Elector of Brandenburg

1929 Nizari Imam Aga Khan III (52) weds Andrée Joséphine Carron in Aix-les-Bains, France

1940 Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo remarry in San Francisco (divorced 1939)

1996 Former Tennessee Republican Senator Howard Baker (71) weds retired Kansas GOP Senator Nancy Kassebaum (64) in Washington, D.C.



2003 Queen of hip-hop soul, Mary J. Blige (32) weds record producer Kendu Isaacs in Bergen County, New Jersey (JULY 2016 MARY J BLIGE FILES FOR DIVORCE)

[Altobelli]

08 DECEMBER

1542 The birth of Mary Queen of Scots, Scottish Queen who ascended to the throne when she was just 6 days old and was crowned nine months later. A rebellion led to her abdication and later Elizabeth I imprisoned her for a plot to restore the Roman Catholic religion and to take the throne from her. After 19 years in custody, Mary was tried and executed for treason.

1863 Abraham Lincoln issues his Amnesty Proclamation and plan for Reconstruction of the South

1863 The world’s first heavyweight boxing championship took place at Wadhurst, Kent, between Tom King (England) and John C Heenan (US). The fight lasted for 24 rounds and King was the champion. Heenan was America's heavyweight champion under the London Prize Ring, or bare-knuckle rules, but retired after his defeat by the English heavyweight.

1864 The opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon at Bristol, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel when he was aged just 24. A plaque on the bridge commemorates Brunel's work. There have been over 500 suicides since the bridge was opened, including the tragic death of Charlotte Bevan and her new-born baby Zaani Tiana, whose bodies were discovered at the foot of the gorge on 3rd and 4th of December 2014 respectively.



1874 Jesse James gang takes train at Muncie Kansas

1914 Battle of the Falkland Island: British Royal Navy destroys a German battle squadron

1915 John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields" appears anonymously in "Punch" magazine

1941 The US, Britain and Australia declared war on Japan following the Pearl Harbour attack the previous day. The attack sank 9 ships of the American fleet and 21 ships were severely damaged. The overall death toll reached 2,403, including 68 civilians.

1941 President Roosevelt delivers "Day of Infamy" speech to US Congress a day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor

1941 The birth of Sir Geoff Hurst, English footballer. He made his mark in World Cup history as the only player to have scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final. His three goals came in the 1966 final for England in their 4–2 win over West Germany at the old Wembley stadium.

1952 Her Majesty the Queen announced that she would permit her coronation to be televised.

1955 Turkish government of Menderes forms

1963 Frank Sinatra Jr is kidnapped

1965 The new Race Relations Act came into force making racial discrimination unlawful in public places.

1965 Pope Paul VI signs 2nd Vatican council

1966 US & USSR sign treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space

1967 The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" album is released in UK

1980 Annie Leibovitz has a photo-shoot with John Lennon, the last person to professionally photograph him before his death

1980 John Lennon, former member of the Liverpool group The Beatles, was shot dead by Mark David Chapman who opened fire outside the musician's New York apartment.

1981 Arthur Scargill became leader of 'The National Union Of Mineworkers'. Scargill’s last official connections with his old union expired at the end of 2011. His honorary presidency of the NUM was terminated and so was his last remaining paid employment, as an adviser to the NUM’s Yorkshire and Lancashire Area Trust Funds.

1983 The House of Lords voted in favour of allowing live broadcasts from its chamber.

1993 Daisy Adams of Church Gresley, Derbyshire, thought to be Britain's oldest person at the time, died aged 113 years and 161 days.

1993 Storm hits western Europe, 11 killed in England

1995 Head teacher Philip Lawrence, aged 48, died after being stabbed outside his west London school while protecting a pupil who was being assaulted.

2004 The Cuzco Declaration is signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations

2011 Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced an end to the ban on women serving on submarines. Female officers would begin serving on Vanguard class nuclear-powered submarines towards the end of 2013 and on the new Astute class submarines from 2015.

2013 Northumberland National Park and the adjoining Kielder Water and forest park, were declared Europe's largest "dark sky park". The award recognises the profound darkness that makes nearly 580 square milesof the county an ideal territory from which to stare up at the night sky.

2014 A £6,000 diamond and sapphire band engagement ring, stolen from a handbag on Caroline Marshall's wedding day in West Sus***, was replaced by Ashraf Ahmed (a Dubai-based jeweller), who was so moved that he gave the bride an identical ring.

Famous Birthday's

Mary Stuart
(1542 - 1587)

Eli Whitney
(1765 - 1825)

Lee J Cobb
(1911 - 1976)



Samuel "Sammy" Davis Jr
(1925 - 1990)



David Carradine
(1936 - 2009)

Jim Morrison
(1943 - 1971)

Gregg Allman, guitarist/vocalist (Allman Brothers Band), born in Nashville, Tennessee (guitarist/vocalist, Allman Brothers Band), born in Nashville, Tennessee
(1947 - 2017)

James Galway
78th Birthday

Bobby Elliott (rock drummer, The Hollies), born in Burnley, Lancashire
76th Birthday

Bill Bryson
66th Birthday



Teri Hatcher
53rd Birthday

Sinéad O'Connor
51st Birthday

Geoff Hurst
76th Birthday

Amir Khan
31st Birthday

Raheem Sterling
23rd Birthday

Famous Deaths

Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr.
(1935 - 1967)

John Lennon
(1940 - 1980)

John Glenn
(1921 - 2016)

Famous Weddings

1872 Religious leader Brigham Young (71) weds his fifty-fifth wife Hannah Tapfield in Salt Lake City, Utah

1950 NBA player Bob Cousy (22) weds his college sweetheart Missie Ritterbusch

1953 Prime Minister of Canada John Diefenbaker (58) weds second wife Olive Palmer (51) at Park Road Baptist Church in Toronto, Canada

2007 "Happy Days" actor and legendary bachelor Scott Baio (46) weds longtime girlfriend Renee Sloan at a luxury high-rise in Los Angeles

2007 Backstreet Boys member Howie Dorough (34) weds longtime girlfriend Leigh Boniello at St. James Cathedral in Orlando, Florida

Famous Divorces

2010 "Heart" rock singer Nancy Wilson (56) divorces "Almost Famous" and "Elizabethtown" director Cameron Crowe (53) due to irreconcilable differences after 24 years of marriage