On This Day

[Altobelli]

18 JANUARY

1779 The birth of Peter Mark Roget, English doctor and lexicographer, who produced his Roget's Thesaurus in 1852 after 47 years’ work. It was originally called 'Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition.'

1788 A British fleet of eleven ships and 800 convicts landed at Botany Bay, Australia. They created the first British penal colony, in Port Jackson - Sydney.

1879 The first edition of Boy’s Own Paper was published. The editor was S.O. Beeton, the husband of Mrs. Beeton, the cookery book writer.

1919 Bentley Motors Limited was founded by Walter Owen Bentley, but the manufacturer did not make a complete car for 27 years, only engines and chassis. Bentley had been previously known for his range of rotary aero-engines in World War I. He also designed and made production cars that won the Le Mans 24 hours in the 1920s. Bentley was purchased by Rolls-Royce in 1931, which itself was purchased by the Volkswagen Group of Germany in 1998, although the business is still based in Crewe.

1934 The first arrest was made in Britain as a result of issuing pocket radios to police. A Brighton shoplifter was arrested just 15 minutes after stealing three coats.

1944 The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosts a jazz concert for the first time. The performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.

1958 Bunty was launched by publishers D.C. Thompson. It was the first comic aimed at a young female readership.

1973 John Cleese's final episode on "Monty Python's Flying Circus" on BBC TV

1976 British Labour MPs Jim Sillars and John Robertson launched the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) to campaign for greater devolution for Scotland.

1978 Geoff Boycott captains England for the 1st time, v Pakistan at Karachi

1980 Pink Floyd's album "The Wall" hits #1

2005 The world's largest commercial jet, the Airbus A380, is unveiled in France

2014 UKIP councillor David Silvester blamed the recent storms and heavy floods across Britain on the Government's decision to legalise gay marriage.

2014 Lewis Clarke, a 16-year-old boy from Bristol set a new record by becoming the youngest person to trek to the South Pole. He spent 48 days at temperatures as low as -50C (-58F) and winds of up to 120 mph (193 kmh), covering a distance of 702 miles.

Famous Birthday's

Daniel Williams
(1858 - 1931)



A. A. Milne
(1882 - 1956)



1892 Oliver Hardy, American comic actor (Laurel & Hardy), born in Harlem, Georgia (d. 1957)

1904 Cary Grant [Archibald Alexander Leach], British-born American actor (Arsenic & Old Lace, North by Northwest), born in Horfield, Bristol, England (d. 1986)

1913 Danny Kaye, American comedian and actor (Danny Kaye Show), born in Brooklyn, New York (d. 1987)

1941 David Ruffin, Whynot Mississippi, early lead singer for The Temptations ("My Girl") (d. 1991)

David Bellamy
84th Birthday

Bob Latchford
66th Birthday

Kevin Costner
63rd Birthday

Peter Beardsley
57th Birthday

Famous Weddings

1486 King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV

1893 British Poet and writer Rudyard Kipling (26) marries Carrie Balestier (29) in London

1949 South African Rev Andries P Treurnicht marries Engela Dreyer

1974 Author Maya Angelou (45) weds Paul Bernard Du Feu

1989 Candace Thomas marries Steve Garvey

Famous Divorces

1996 Lisa Marie Presley files for divorce from Michael Jackson in NY

Famous Deaths

John Tyler
(1790 - 1862)



Rudyard Kipling
(1865 - 1936)



1954 Sydney Greenstreet, British actor (Casablanca, Maltese Falcon), dies at 74

1980 Cecil Beaton, British photographer, dies at 76

2009 Tony Hart, British artist and TV presenter (b. 1925)

[Acido]

Really interesting thread this Alto, I cant understand why Ive never noticed it on here before. I must pay more attention!.

[Altobelli]

He was a goodun alf, very versatile

[Altobelli]

02 FEBRUARY

1665 British forces captured New Amsterdam, the centre of the Dutch colony in North America. The trading settlement on the island of Manhattan was renamed New York in honour of the Duke of York, its new governor.

1852 1st British public men's toilet opens in Fleet St, London

1914 The very first Cub Scout pack was formed in England, the first pack being in Robertsbridge, Sus***, although the Cub Scout movement was not formally founded until 1916. By the end of that year there were 6,000 Cub Scouts and now there are 137,000 in the UK. Girls were allowed to become Cub Scouts in 1991.

1920 The birth of Hughie Green, who became a 'household name' with his TV shows Double Your Money and Opportunity Knocks.

1922 It was 2:22:22 on 2/2/22

1940 The birth of Sir David John White OBE, better known by his stage name David Jason. He is best remembered as the main character Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter in the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses. He also played detective Jack Frost on the ITV crime drama A Touch of Frost, Granville in the sitcom Open All Hours, and Pop Larkin in the comedy drama The Darling Buds of May.

1943 The half-starved remnants of the German 6th Army gave themselves up after their five months of bloody fighting for Stalingrad ended in defeat.

1972 Angry demonstrators burned the British Embassy in Dublin to the ground in protest at the shooting dead of 13 people in Londonderry on the previous Sunday, known as Bloody Sunday.

1976 The Queen opened the National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham. It is the largest and busiest exhibition centre in the UK and the seventh largest in Europe.

1987 Reports from Lebanon said that Church of England envoy Terry Waite had been kidnapped by an Islamic militia group.

1993 The Queen's solicitors began proceedings against the Sun newspaper for publishing the text of her 1992 Christmas Day broadcast two days before its transmission.

1995 The death of Fred Perry, English tennis and table tennis player. He won three consecutive Wimbledon Championships between 1934 and 1936 and was World No. 1 four years in a row.

1999 Glenn Hoddle was sacked as England's football coach after his comments that disabled people were reaping the punishment for something done in a previous life.

2014 'The ruddy ducks with nowhere left to hide.' The Government wants to exterminate the entire British population, and in January 2014, having already spent £4 million on the job, announced that another £120,000 would be made available to track down and shoot the final few. The ducks’ downfall has been their fondness for breeding with an endangered Spanish species, the white-headed duck. The British Birding Association said 'It’s a total waste of public money, and all that will happen when the cull stops is that new ducks will fly over from the Continent, and we’ll be back to square one.'

2015 Bristol became the first city in the UK to ban smoking in some outdoor public places and Millennium Square and Anchor Square became no smoking zones. The project, by Smokefree South West, was inspired by 33-year-old mother Kirsty Vass, who was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease a year previously.

Famous Birthday's



James Joyce
(1882 - 1941)



Farrah Fawcett
(1947 - 2009)

David Jason, English actor
78th Birthday

Shakira
41st Birthday

Famous Weddings

1870 American writer (Huckleberry Finn) Samuel Langhorne Clemens, pen name Mark Twain, (34) marries Olivia Langdon (24) in Elmira, NY

1904 US blues singer Gertrude Pridgett marries comic William Rainey

1936 Physicist Emilio G. Segrè (31) weds jewish woman Elfriede Spiro at the Great Synagogue of Rome in Italy

1957 Actress Elizabeth Taylor (24) marries for the 3rd time to producer Mike Todd (47)

1963 Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (23) weds documentary filmmaker Eleanor Jessie Neil (26) in Las Vegas, Nevada

Famous Deaths

Dmitri Mendeleev
(1834 - 1907)

Sid Vicious
(1957 - 1979)




1995 Fred Perry, English tennis star (Wimbledon 1934-36), dies at 85



1995 Donald Pleasence, British actor (You Only Live Twice, Escape from New York, Halloween), dies from heart failure at 75

1996 Gene Kelly, American actor and dancer (Singin' in the Rain), dies at 83


Philip Seymour Hoffman
(1967 - 2014)