On This Day

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08 JANUARY

1800 London opened its first soup ******** for the poor.

1815 Britain lost the last battle it ever fought against the US in the War of 1812 when General Sir Edward Pakenham and his men were defeated at New Orleans.

1877 Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain (Montana Territory).

1942 The birth of Stephen Hawking, possibly the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Albert Einstein. He wrote A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. His book sold at least 25,000,000 copies, was no doubt read by many thousands but maybe understood by only hundreds! In 2014 the film 'The Theory of Everything' was released. It dealt with his former wife's relationship with her ex-husband, his diagnosis of motor neuron disease, and his success in physics.

1966 The Who & the Kinks perform on the last "Shindig" TV show on ABC

1979 512 die as oil tanker Bantry Bay blows up

1982 Spain reopened the frontier of the British colony of Gibraltar. In return, Britain agreed to open negotiations on Gibraltar’s future, and ended its opposition to Spain joining the EEC.

1989 47 people were killed and over 80 injured when a British Midland 737-400 jet crashed on the M1 motorway. Remarkably nobody travelling on the motorway was hurt. The plane had developed a problem in its left engine shortly after it took off from Heathrow. The pilots mistakenly believed that the fault was in the right hand engine which they shut down, leading to the crash, just yards from the runway of East Midlands Airport.

2001 The High Court ruled that the identities and whereabouts of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who murdered toddler James Bulger in 1993 would be kept secret for the rest of their lives. Venables was subsequently returned to prison in March 2010 for other offences and it was decided that he would stay in prison 'for the foreseeable future', as he would be likely to reveal his identity if released. A mere 18 months later it was reported that the Parole Board for England and Wales had approved the release of Venables, who was subsequently released from prison on 3rd September 2013.

2015 Oldham Athletic abandoned a controversial attempt to sign the convicted rapist Ched Evans, claiming that a backlash from sponsors and death threats caused it to withdraw the offer.

Famous Birthday's

Elvis Presley
(1935 - 1977)

1941 Graham Chapman, English comedian (Monty Python's Flying Circus), born in Leicester, England (d. 1989)

Shirley Bassey
80th Birthday

Stephen Hawking
76th Birthday

Kim Jong-in
35th Birthday

David Bowie
(1947 - 2016)

Famous Deaths



Marco Polo
(1254 - 1324)



Galileo Galilei
(1564 - 1642)

Eli Whitney
(1765 - 1825)

1941 Robert Baden-Powell, British founder of the Boy Scout movement, dies at 83



2017 Peter Sarstedt, British musician (Where do you go to my lovely), dies at 75

Famous Weddings

1811 US Vice President John C. Calhoun (28) weds Floride Bonneau (19)

1930 Belgium Princess Marie-Jose marries Italian's crown prince Umberto

1951 Actor Burgess Meredith (43) weds ballerina Kaja Sundsten



1973 Actor Michael Caine (40) weds model Shakira Baksh (25) at Candlelight Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada

2005 Rapper and actor Nas (32) weds R&B singer Kelis (25) at Morningside Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia

Famous Divorces

1499 Louis XII of France after papal divorce marries Anne, Duchess of Brittany to keep duchy for the crown

1998 Roseanne files for divorce from 3rd husband Ben Thomas

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Nice Find 59_60

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05 FEBRUARY

1782 The Spanish defeated British forces and captured the island of Minorca.

1788 The birth, in Bury, Lancashire, of Sir Robert Peel, the first commoner to become British Prime Minister, although he was hardly from humble beginnings, as his father was a cotton millionaire. This statue of Robert Peel (see ©BB picture) is in Bury. Peel was the founder of the Metropolitan Police, first nicknamed ‘Peelers’, then ‘Bobbies’, after his name.

1811 The Regency Act was passed in Britain, allowing Prince George of Wales to rule because his father, King George III, was considered insane. He later became George IV.

1840 The birth of Scottish vet. John Boyd Dunlop, inventor of the pneumatic bicycle tyre which he tested on his son's tricycle and patented in 1888. Two years after he was granted the patent, Dunlop was officially informed that it was invalid, as Scottish inventor Robert William Thomson had patented the idea in France in 1846 and in the US in 1847.

1852 The embankment of the Bilberry reservoir in West Yorkshire collapsed, releasing 86 million gallons of water down the River Holme and into Holmfirth, the location for the BBC's Last of the Summer Wine. It caused 81 deaths and is recorded as the 23rd most serious, worldwide, in terms of loss of life from floods and landslides.

1881 The death of Thomas Carlyle, Scottish philosopher and a satirical writer who was considered one of the most important social commentators of his time. He was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire.

1918 The SS Tuscania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by the German U-boat UB-77. She sank with the loss of 210 lives and was the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.

1920 Founding of the RAF Training College at Cranwell, in Lincolnshire.

1924 The BBC time signals, ('pips' from Greenwich Observatory) broadcast on the hour, were heard for the first time.

1953 Sweets were taken 'off ration' in Britain, 8 years after the 2nd World War had ended.

1954 Britain opened its first atomic power station, at Harwell.

1958 Parking meters first appeared on the streets, in London's exclusive Mayfair district. The meters were first used in America in 1935.

1967 A ban by the Musicians' Union, 'in the cause of decency', stopped The Rolling Stones' latest record Let's Spend the Night Together, from being performed on television.

1968 Another trawler from Hull sank off the coast of Iceland. Over a period of three weeks 60 fishermen lost their lives in Iceland's worst storms since 1925.

1982 The small, independent Laker Airlines, created by former British pilot Sir Freddy Laker to cut prices and make air travel more accessible, collapsed with debts of £270m.

1993 In the Antarctic, British explorers Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr Michael Stroud broke the record for longest unsupported polar march.

1996 Two British supermarket chains (Safeway and Sainsbury) became the first to stock genetically modified food when they sold GM tomato puree.

1998 Prime Minister Tony Blair, announced that veteran US entertainer Bob Hope, who was born in England, would receive an honorary knighthood.

2004 Twenty-three Chinese people drowned when a group of 35 cockle-pickers were trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire.

2014 Overnight storms caused the loss of the sea wall and railway line at Dawlish, between Exeter and Cornwall. Around 30 residents had to be evacuated from their homes in the seaside town, while beach huts that once stood on the sea wall were destroyed. The line reopened on 4th April 2014, in time for the Easter holidays.

2016 The general release of "Dad's Army", based on the BBC television sitcom Dad's Army. Much of it was filmed in Bridlington Old Town and at North Landing, Flamborough.

2017 Heavy metal band Black Sabbath play their last concert in their home town Birmingham, England

Famous Birthday's

1920 Frank Muir, British comedian (d. 1998)

Sven-Göran Eriksson, Swedish football manager
70th Birthday

Cristiano Ronaldo
33rd Birthday

Neymar
26th Birthday

Famous Weddings

1826 Future US President Millard Fillmore (26) weds Abigail Powers (27)

1971 Actress Judi Dench (36) weds actor Michael Williams (35) at St Mary's Catholic Church in Hampstead, London

1990 Actor Rowan Atkinson (35) weds Sunetra Sastry in New York

2007 "Rudo y Cursi" Mexican actor Diego Luna (28) weds actress and model Camila Sodi (21) in Mexico City

Famous Deaths



Thomas Carlyle
(1795 - 1881)



George Arliss
(1868 - 1946)

Gnassingbé Eyadéma
(1935 - 2005)



2010 Ian Carmichael, British actor (Private's Progress, I'm All Right Jack), dies at 89