On This Day

[chalky_ncfc]

Thank you Altobelli

[Altobelli]

21 DECEMBER

1118 The birth, in London's Cheapside, of Thomas Ã* Becket, Lord Chancellor of England, Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr.

1620 The Pilgrim Fathers arrived at Plymouth Rock , Massachusetts aboard The Mayflower. Passengers & crew increased to 103 after 2 births on the voyage from Plymouth, England. They had originally set sail from Southampton on 5th August but were beset with problems.

1804 The birth of Benjamin Disraeli, first Earl of Beaconsfield and British Prime Minister. He became the first Conservative Prime Minister in 1868, but was defeated at the next election. He was Prime Minister again in 1874 with a substantial majority.

1842 Pentonville Prison, Islington, was opened. Pentonville became the model for British prisons. A further 54 were built to the same design over six years, and hundreds more were built throughout the British Empire.

1844 At 8:00 p.m. On This Day, the Rochdale Pioneers commenced business at their co-operative, now this museum on Toad Lane, Rochdale, thus starting the Co-operative movement, often referred to simply as the Co-op.

1846 Robert Liston, Scottish surgeon, used anaesthetic (ether) for the first time in a British operation, at University College Hospital, London, to perform an amputation of a leg. Liston was known as 'the fastest knife in the West End' at a time when speed was essential to reduce pain and improve the odds of survival of a patient.

1872 The Challenger expedition, when HMS Challenger, commanded by Captain George Nares, sailed from Portsmouth. The scientific exercise covered almost 70,000 nautical miles, laid the foundation of oceanography and more than 4,000 previously unknown species were discovered. The expedition was hailed as 'the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.'

1880 An act passed by the House of Keys on the Isle of Man granted women the vote, provided they were widows or spinsters with a property rated annually at £4 or over. The first opportunity to vote was in April, the following year. In 1901, Norwegian women were allowed to vote, but in local elections only.

1891 1st game of basketball, based on rules created by James Naismith, played by 18 students in Springfield, Massachusetts

1898 French Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium

1913 1st crossword puzzle (with 32 clues) printed in NY World

1914 1st feature-length silent film comedy "Tillie's Punctured Romance" released starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin



1919 J. Edgar Hoover deports anarchists/feminist Emma Goldman to Russia

1929 Coco the Clown first appears for Bertram Mills Circus in Manchester, England

1933 Fox Films signs Shirley Temple, 5, to a studio contract

1937 The first full-length animated feature film and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre

1941 German submarine U-567 sinks

1961 Gangster Joe Gallo is sentenced to 7 to 14 years in state prison for extortion

1962 President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan agreed that the UK would buy nuclear missiles from the US to form a multilateral NATO nuclear force.

1963 Under soil heating was used for the first time, at the Leeds Rugby League ground for their match against Dewsbury.

1963 Sir Jack Hobbs, English cricketer, died. He is widely regarded as cricket's greatest-ever opening batsman.

1968 David Crosby, Stephen Stills & Graham Nash premiere together in Calif

1969 Diana Ross final TV appearance as a Supreme (Ed Sullivan Show)

1977 The Trades Union Congress General Council narrowly voted to reject firemen's demands for a public campaign against a 10% limit on wage increases. The union decided by 20 votes to 17 not to support the firemen who were in their sixth week of strike action.

1988 A Pan American jumbo jet bound for New York was blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb and crashed onto the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 passengers and 11 people on the ground. It remains the deadliest aviation incident ever to take place in the United Kingdom. The Garden of Remembrance are at Dryfesdale Cemetery, Lockerbie.

1990 In a German television interview, Saddam Hussein declared that he would not withdraw from Kuwait by the UN deadline.

1991 Soviet Union formally dissolves as 11 of 12 republics sign treaty forming Commonwealth of Independent States

1995 The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.

2012 The youngest female drivers faced 'significant increases in their insurance costs' after a ban on different car insurance prices for men and women. A European court ruling the previous year found that gender discrimination in insurance was against the law.

2103 A poll showed that 1 in 10 people aged 25 to 34 in Britain thought that Father Christmas was mentioned in the Biblical account of the birth of Jesus.

2013 The death, aged 87, of former BBC sports broadcaster David Coleman. He first appeared on air for the BBC in 1954, covering 11 Olympic Games - from Rome in 1960 to Sydney 2000 and six football World Cups. Coleman presented some of the BBC's leading sporting programmes, including Grandstand and Sportsnight and was the host of Question of Sport for 18 years.

2014 A former senior military intelligence officer disclosed that a British soldier was investigated for touching a Taliban fighter on the nose with a sheet of paper during a routine interrogation as he had broken rules concerning the touching of detainees during questioning. The £31 million inquiry, chaired by Sir Thayne Forbes, a former High Court judge, listed several instances of what was judged to be 'ill-treatment during questioning'.

Famous Birthday's

Walter Hagen
(1892 - 1969)

1916 John Boon, publisher (Mills and Boon), born in King's Lynn, Norfolk (d. 1996)



1940 Frank Zappa, rocker (Mothers of Invention, Catholic Girls), born in Baltimore, Maryland (d. 1995)

1946 Carl Wilson, rock vocalist and guitarist (Beach Boys), born in Hawthorne California (d. 1998)

Samuel L. Jackson
69th Birthday

Jane Fonda
80th Birthday



Chris Evert
63rd Birthday

Famous Deaths

Frank Kellogg
(1856 - 1937)

F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896 - 1940)

George S. Patton
(1885 - 1945)

2000 Alfred J. Gross, American inventor (invented the walkie-talkie), dies at 82



2014 Billie Whitelaw, English actress, dies at 82

Famous Weddings

1762 British Explorer Captain James Cook marries Elizabeth Batts

1886 Founder of Girl Scouts of the USA Juliette Gordon Low (26) weds William Mackay Low in Savannah, Georgia

1947 Actress Estelle Getty (24) weds Arthur Gettleman

1958 Actress Ingrid Bergman (43) weds producer Lars Schmidt

1959 Shah of Persia Mohammed Reza Pahlavi marries Farah Pahlavi Diba

Famous Divorces

1945 American author and journalist "The Old Man and the Sea" Ernest Hemingway and journalist Martha Gellhorn divorce after 5 years of marriage.

2010 "The Lord of The Rings" actor Sean Bean (51) divorces actress Georgina Sutcliffe (32) due to irreconcilable differences after 2 years of marriage

[Altobelli]

01 JANUARY

1660 Samuel Pepys began writing the Diary which he kept for nine years, writing in an early form of shorthand.

1772 The London Credit Exchange Company issued the first traveller’s cheques, accepted in 90 cities and guaranteed against theft.

1781 The first all-iron bridge in the world, Iron Bridge in Shropshire was opened to traffic. The bridge was built by Abraham Darby III, from a design by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard.

1833 Britain claimed sovereignty of the Falkland Islands

1894 The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal linking Manchester to the River Mersey. Queen Victoria later formally opened the canal, on 21st May 1894. After the dockyards closed in 1982, Manchester Docks was transformed into Salford Quays, now the home to the Lowry theatre , retail outlets, the Imperial War Museum North and Media City UK, home to the BBC and ITV studios.

1923 Britain's Railways are grouped into the Big Four: LNER, GWR, SR, and LMSR.

1948 British railways are nationalised to form British Rail.

1951 The first episode of the BBC’s radio serial The Archers - farming folk of Ambridge. It is the world's longest running radio 'soap'. By 18th December 2011 it had reached 16,600 episodes.

1960 Johnny Cash plays first of many free concerts behind bars

1962 The Beatles had an audition for Decca Records, who turned them down and signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead.

1964 Jimmy Savile presented the very first Top of the Pops, the longest running music show in the world. He also co-hosted the last, on 30th July 2006. After Savile's death in October 2012, numerous allegations were made that he had ***ually abused hundreds of young people, dating back to 1958. Police also confirmed that Savile had been questioned over allegations of child *** abuse in 2007. His gravestone at Scarborough was removed at the request of Savile's family and plaques and statues of him in other locations were removed to prevent further defacement.



1965 Stanley Matthews was knighted, the first professional footballer to receive this honour.

1973 The UK became a fully-fledged member of the European Economic Community.

1985 Michael Harrison, the son of former Vodafone chairman Sir Ernest Harrison, made the first ever mobile phone call in Britain. He called his father from London's Parliament Square on the newly-launched Vodafone network using an 11lb (5kg) Transportable Vodafone VT1, which boasted around 30 minutes of talk time. A few days later, a crowd gathered at St Katherine's Dock in London to watch comedian Ernie Wise make the first public mobile phone call using the same device. All were far from portable and cost around £2,000 - equivalent to roughly £5,000 today.

1995 Fred West, the 53 year old Gloucestershire builder charged with 12 murders, was found dead in his prison cell.

2009 61 die in nightclub fire in Bangkok, Thailand.

2014 Right wing newspapers gathered at airports to interrogate an expected influx of millions of unemployed Romanians and Bulgarians after transitional controls were lifted. They were greeted by two new entrants, both of whom already had jobs.

Famous Birthday's

Paul Revere
(1735 - 1818)

1879 E. M. Forster, English writer and novelist (Howards End, Passage to India), born in Marylebone, Middle*** (d. 1970)

J. Edgar Hoover
(1895 - 1972)

Hank Greenberg
(1911 - 1986)



1912 Kim Philby, British spy and Soviet mole who was a member of the "Cambridge Five", born in Ambala, Punjab, India (d. 1988)



1919 J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, American novelist (Catcher in the Rye), born in NYC, New York (d. 2010)

Jack Wilshere
25th Birthday

Famous Deaths



Hank Williams
(1923 - 1953)

1949 Malcolm Campbell, English cyclist (world speed-record), dies at 63

Grace Hopper
(1906 - 1992)

Cesar Romero
(1907 - 1994)

2013 Patti Page [Clara Ann Fowler], American pop singer, dies at 85


Famous Weddings

414 King Ataulf of Narbonne marries emperor Honorius sister Galle Placidia

1772 US founding father Thomas Jefferson (30) marries Martha Wayles Skelton (23)

1811 Writer James Fenimore Cooper (21) weds Susan Augusta de Lancey in Mamaroneck, New York

1824 US President James Knox Polk (28) weds Sarah Childress (20) in Murfreesboro

1888 55th UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George (25) weds first wife Margaret Owen

[Altobelli]

15 JANUARY

1759 The opening of the British Museum, at Montague House, London. Access often depended on who you were and who you knew. Permission had to be given by the librarian and only 10 people an hour were allowed in. Its permanent collection numbers some eight million works and is amongst the finest, most comprehensive, and largest in existence. It illustrates and documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present day.

1790 Fletcher Christian, eight fellow mutineers from the ship Bounty, six Tahitian men and 12 women, landed on the remote Pacific island of Pitcairn following the mutiny led by Christian. They stripped the Bounty of all that could be floated ashore before setting it on fire.

1797 The first top hat was worn by John Hetherington, a London haberdasher. He was fined £50 the first time he wore his new creation, 'for causing a disturbance'.

1863 1st US newspaper printed on wood-pulp paper, Boston Morning Journal

1867 Crowds flocked onto the frozen surface of the lake in London’s Regent's Park during a severe frost. The ice broke, and 40 people died.

1870 Britain's first woman doctor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, passed the final exam of the Medical Faculty of the Sorbonne and became a fully qualified MD. She had connections with Aldeburgh in Suffolk.

1880 The London Telephone Company published the first directory, listing 255 subscribers.

1927 BBC radio broadcast the first live commentary of a rugby match. Captain Teddy Wakelam narrated the match at Twickenham, between Wales and England. The following Saturday Wakelam provided the first football commentary from Highbury, where Arsenal was playing Sheffield United.

1934 While robbing the First National Bank in East Chicago, Indianapolis, Dillinger is shot several times by officer William O'Malley, but survives because he is wearing a bullet proof vest.

1962 The centigrade, or Celsius, scale was used in the British Meteorological Office weather forecasts for the first time, more than 200 years after the death of the Swedish scientist who invented it.

1965 Rock group Who releases first album "I Can't Explain"

1971 George Harrison releases "My Sweet Lord"

1981 "Hill Street Blues" premieres on NBC-TV

1987 Police officer who mistakenly shot and paralysed an innocent woman in Brixton, UK, is cleared of all criminal charges

1994 Queen Elizabeth falls off her horse & breaks her left wrist

2001 Wikipedia a free Wiki or content encyclopedia is launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger

2011 The death of Nathaniel (Nat) Lofthouse, OBE, English professional footballer who played for Bolton Wanderers for his whole career. He was capped 33 times for the England national football team between 1950 and 1958, scoring 30 goals and having one of the greatest goals per game ratios of any player to represent England at the highest level.

2014 The death, aged 69, of actor Roger Lloyd-Pack, who played Trigger in Only Fools And Horses. He appeared in dozens of TV shows and films, including Dr Who, The Vicar Of Dibley, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire.

2015 The death of Ethel Lang, aged 114. At the time of her death she was the oldest person in Britain and the last living British person to have been born during the reign of Queen Victoria. She lived to see six UK monarchs and 22 prime ministers.

2018 The construction giant, Carillion, went into liquidation. The company employed 43,000 people including almost 20,000 in the UK. Carillion also used thousands of smaller companies to help provide its services.

Famous Birthday's



Joan of Arc
(1412 - 1431)



1913 Lloyd Bridges, American comedic actor (Sea Hunt, Roots, Airplane!), born in San Leandro, California (d. 1998)



Martin Luther King Jr.
(1929 - 1968)

Charo
67th Birthday

Famous Weddings

1930 Businesswoman Estée Lauder (23) weds businessman Joseph Lauder

1953 Cricketer Richie Benaud (22) weds Marcia Lavender at the Wesley Church in Sydney, Australia

1955 Film director Stanley Kubrick (26) weds theatrical designer Ruth Sobotka (29)

2011 PGA golfer Hunter Mahan (28) weds former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Kandi Harris in Dallas, Texas

2013 "Gomer Pyle" actor Jim Nabors (82) weds retired performer Stan Cadwallader (64) at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle

Famous Deaths

Elizabeth Short
(1924 - 1947)

Meyer Lansky
(1902 - 1983)

Seán MacBride
(1904 - 1988)



1990 Gordon Jackson, actor (Hamlet), dies after a short illness at 66

1994 Harry Nilsson, rock vocalist (Everybody's Talkin'), dies at 52

2011 Nat Lofthouse, English Footballer (b. 1925)

Dolores O'Riordan
(1971 - 2018)

[Altobelli]

25 JANUARY

1759 The birth in this cottage at Alloway of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. He lived at this house in Dumfries from 1793 until his death. His birthday is celebrated as ‘Burns Night’ by Scotsmen all over the world. Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) Auld Lang Syne is often sung on New Year's Eve, or Hogmanay, as it's known in Scotland.

1874 The birth of William Somerset Maugham, English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s.

1899 The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company began manufacture of the first radio sets, at Chelmsford.

1911 The Daily Herald was launched. It was the first newspaper to sell two million copies.

1919 The founding of The League of Nations, forerunner of the United Nations. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.

1972 The world's first kidney and pancreatic tissue transplant was carried out in London

1980 Paul McCartney is released from Tokyo jail & deported

1981 ‘The Gang of Four’ (Roy Jenkins, Dr. David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers) split from the British Labour party to form the Social Democrats.

1989 Actor John Cleese won damages for libel at the High Court over an article in the Daily Mirror, which claimed he had become like Basil Fawlty in his comedy series Fawlty Towers

1990 The so called Burns' Day Storm occurred on this day over north-western Europe, and was one of the strongest storms on record. It started on the birthday of poet Robert Burns, lasted for two days, caused widespread damage and was responsible for 97 deaths.

2003 During the Iraq invasion, a group of people left London for Baghdad, to serve as human shields and thus prevent the U.S. led coalition troops from bombing certain locations.

2013 Thorpe Park ordered experts to redesign its £20m new rollercoaster 'The Swarm', due to open on 15th March, after dummies lost limbs during dry run tests.

2014 Sixteen schoolgirls made history by ending a tradition of male-only choral singing at Canterbury Cathedral stretching back more than a thousand years. The girls' choir had their first public performance 'On This Day', at evensong. "The girls will initially only be singing at services when boy choristers, boarders at St Edmund's school, take their twice-termly breaks. There are no women in the cathedral's adult choir."

Famous Birthday's



1759 Robert Burns, Scottish poet (Auld Lang Syne), born in Alloway, Scotland (d. 1796)



Virginia Woolf
(1882 - 1941)

Corazon Aquino
(1933 - 2009)

Alicia Keys
37th Birthday

Famous Weddings

1533 England's King Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn, his 2nd wife

1871 US President William McKinley (27) weds Ida Saxton (23) at the First Presbyterian Church in Canton

1964 Comedian and actor Bill Cosby marries Camille Olivia Hanks

1964 MLB outfielder Pete Rose (22) weds first wife Karolyn Englehardt

1981 Actor Bill Murray (30) weds Margaret Kelly on Super Bowl Sunday in Las Vegas

Famous Deaths



Al Capone
(1899 - 1947)



Ava Gardner
(1922 - 1990)

Mary Tyler Moore
(1936 - 2017)

2017 John Hurt, English actor (Elephant Man, Alien, Midnight Express), dies at 77