On This Day

[Altobelli]

20 JANUARY

1783 Great Britain signed a peace treaty with France and Spain, officially ending hostilities in the American Revolutionary War (also known as the American War of Independence).

1850 The opening of the Penny Savings Bank, to encourage thrift amongst the poor.

1936 George V died and was succeeded by Edward VIII who abdicated 325 days later because of his insistence on marrying American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

1983 American gangster Roy DeMeo is found murdered in his car trunk after disappearing a few days earlier

1986 Mrs. Pauline Williams of Luton won her three year fight to prosecute the man who injected her drug addict son with a fatal painkiller. She was the first person to bring a private prosecution for manslaughter to a Crown Court trial.

1986 France and Britain finally decided to undertake the Channel Tunnel project, promising that trains would run under the Channel by 1993. When it eventually opened, on 6th May 1994, it left Eurotunnel with debts of £925m a year later.

1987 The Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy to Lebanon, Terry Waite, was kidnapped in Beirut whilst attempting to win freedom for Western hostages.

1991 The death of Alfred Wainwright, whose books for walkers did much to popularise the Lake District. His ashes are scattered on Haystacks, Cumbria and there is a memorial plaque in nearby Buttermere Church. Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk, starts here at St. Bees in Cumbria and ends here at Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire

1997 Her Majesty's Royal Yacht Britannia began her final voyage, to Hong Kong, before being decommissioned. She is now based in Edinburgh, as a visitor attraction.

2009 Barack Obama, inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America, becomes the United States' first African-American president

2014 Dr. Michael Ramscar and a team of scientists suggested that the brains of older people only appear to slow down because they have so much information to compute, much like a full-up hard drive. “The brains of older people do not get weak. On the contrary, they simply know more.�

2015 A six-day-old baby became Britain's youngest organ donor when her kidneys were transplanted into a patient with renal failure, and liver cells were transfused into a second recipient.

2017 Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America and Mike Pence as the 48th Vice President

Famous Birthday's

Joy Adamson
(1910 - 1980)

Patricia Neal
(1926 - 2010)



Buzz Aldrin
88th Birthday

Gary Barlow
47th Birthday

Famous Weddings

1382 King Richard II of England marries Anne of Bohemia and daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor at Westminster Abbey. Anne died of plague in 1394.

1800 Napoleon I's sister Carolina marries King Joachim Murat of Naples

1968 Actress Sharon Tate (24) weds actor/director Roman Polanski (34) in Chelsea, London

2001 "Fast Lane" actor Peter Facinelli (27) weds actress and director Jennie Garth (28) at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Montecito, California

Famous Deaths

1900 John Ruskin, English writer (Dearest Mama Talbot), dies of flu at 81



George V
(1865 - 1936)



1990 Barbara Stanwyck, [Ruby Stevens], actress (Big Valley), dies at 82



Audrey Hepburn
(1929 - 1993)

1994 Matt Busby, Scottish soccer coach (Manchester United), dies at 84