On This Day

[Altobelli]

21 JANUARY

1807 Streets in London were first illuminated by gaslight when Pall Mall was lit up.

1846 The publication of the first edition of the Daily News, edited by Charles Dickens. It merged with the Daily Chronicle to form the News Chronicle in 1930, and was ultimately absorbed by the Daily Mail in 1960.

1903 Harry Houdini escapes from Halvemaansteeg police station in Amsterdam

1908 New York City regulation makes it illegal for a woman to smoke in public

1919 The birth, in Leith, of Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown, former Royal Navy officer and test pilot who flew more types of aircraft than anyone else in history. He is also the Fleet Air Arm’s most decorated pilot and holds the world record for aircraft carrier landings - around 1,500 deck landings on 22 different aircraft carriers.

1925 The birth of the comedian Benny Hill, in Southampton, Hampshire. One of his biggest fans was the silent film star, Charlie Chaplin.

1941 The British communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, was suppressed in wartime London.

1944 447 German bombers attack London

1944 649 British bombers attack Magdeburg

1950 The British writer George Orwell died after a three year battle against tuberculosis. His books included 1984 and Animal Farm. They were controversial and 1984, like Animal Farm, was widely viewed as an attack on the Communist system.

1966 The Monte Carlo rally ended in uproar over the disqualification of the British cars expected to fill the first four places. They were all ruled out of the prizes, along with six other British cars, for alleged infringements of regulations about the way their headlights dipped.

1966 'Beatle', George Harrison, married Patti Boyd who he met in the film 'A Hard Day's Night'.

1976 The first Concorde jets carrying commercial passengers simultaneously took off, at 11:40 a.m. from Heathrow Airport and Orly Airport outside Paris. The London flight was to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and the Paris flight was to Rio de Janeiro. Nearly 3 hours was knocked off the normal flying time to Bahrain by the British Concorde but the Air France Concorde arrived 38 minutes late.

1987 B.B. King donates his 7,000 record collection to the University of Mississippi

1994 Lorena Bobbitt found temporarily insane when she cut off her husband's *****

1997 More than 80 people were named as child abusers in statements to a North Wales inquiry into claims of abuse of children in care in Clwyd and Gwynedd over20 years.

2008 Black Monday on the world's stock markets saw the FTSE 100 have its biggest ever one-day fall. European stocks closed with their worst result since 11th September 2001, and Asian stocks dropped as much as 14%.

2008 The Eyak language in Alaska becomes extinct as its last native speaker dies

2014 Pub chain JD Wetherspoon opened a new £1m pub, at junction 2 of the M40 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in spite of fierce criticism from road safety and alcohol campaigners. The Hope and Champion became Britain's first pub ever to be opened at a motorway service area.

2017 More than 2 million people protest worldwide in the 'Women's March' against Donald Trump, with 500,000 marching in Washington D.C.

Famous Birthday's

Stonewall Jackson
(1824 - 1863)

Christian Dior
(1905 - 1957)



1922 Telly Savalas, American actor (Kojak), born in Garden City New Jersey, (d. 1994)



1924 Benny Hill [Alfred Hawthorn Hill], British comedian (The Benny Hill Show), born in Southampton, Hampshire, England (d. 1992)

Jack Nicklaus
78th Birthday

Billy Ocean, [Leslie S Charles], Trinidad, singer (Caribbean Queen)
67th Birthday

Famous Weddings

1966 Beatle George Harrison marries model Patti Boyd

1973 Actress Jane Fonda weds activist Tom Hayden

1975 Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor (57) weds toy inventor Jack Ryan (48) (div. 1976)

1989 "Falcon Crest" actor Lorenzo Lamas (31) weds actress Kathleen Kinmont (23) at the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas

2015 "One Tree Hill" star Chad Michael Murray (33) weds actress Sarah Roemer (30)

Famous Divorces

2011 Actress Jaime Pressly (35) divorces entertainment lawyer Simran Singh (33) due to irreconcilable differences after more than 1 year of marriage

Famous Deaths

Louis XVI
(1754 - 1793)



Vladimir Lenin
(1870 - 1924)



George Orwell
(1903 - 1950)

1959 Cecil B. DeMille, American filmmaker (The Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah), dies of heart failure at 77

1984 Jackie Wilson, American soul singer-songwriter and performer (I Get the Sweetest Feeling), dies at 49

1997 Colonel Tom Parker, manager (Elvis Presley), dies at 87

1998 Jack Lord, American actor (Hawaii FIVE-O), dies at 77

2008 Marie Smith Jones, last native speaker of the Eyak language (b. 1918)

2013 Michael Winner, English film director and producer (Death Wish), dies at 77

2015 Pauline Yates, English actress (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin), dies at 85