Today is.................

[Alikado]

World Creativity and Innovation Day

753 BC Romulus and Remus found Rome (traditional date)

1506 – The three-day Lisbon Massacre comes to an end with the slaughter of over 1,900 suspected Jews by Portuguese Catholics.

1509 – Henry VIII ascends the throne of England on the death of his father

1654 England & Sweden sign trade agreement

1689 William III & Mary Stuart proclaimed King & Queen of England

1820 Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted is the first to identify electromagnetism, when he observes a compass needle

1857 Alexander Douglas patents the bustle

1914 – Ypiranga incident: A German arms shipment to Mexico is intercepted by the U.S. Navy near Veracruz.

1916 Ulster Protestant and Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement lands at Tralee Bay, Ireland from a German submarine; discovered at McKenna's Fort and arrested by the Royal Irish Constabulary

1916 The Aud, carrying a cargo of 20,000 rifles to assist Irish republicans in staging what would become the 1916 Rising, is captured by the British Navy and forced to sail towards Cork Harbour

1918 German fighter ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen "The Red Baron", shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France, Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown credited with the kill

1934 – The "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1999, it is revealed to be a hoax).

1935 King Boris of Bulgaria forbids all political parties

1945 – Soviet forces south of Berlin at Zossen attack the German High Command headquarters.

1945 US 7th Army reaches Nuremberg

1952 BOAC begins 1st passenger service with jets (London-Rome route)

1954 Georgi Malenkov becomes premier of USSR

1956 Elvis Presley's 1st hit record, "Heartbreak Hotel", becomes #1

1959 Alf Dean using a rod & reel hooks a 2,664lb, 16' 10" great white shark off the coast of Ceduna, Australia

1967 Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana arrives in New York City after defecting to the US

1969 The Ministry of Defence in London announces that British troops would be used in Northern Ireland to guard key public installations following a series of bombings

1976 Swine Flu vaccine, for non-epidemic, enters testing

1983 £1 pound coin introduced

1984 After 37 weeks Michael Jackson's album "Thriller" is knocked off as top album by "Footloose"

1987 Dow Jones Average soared 664.7; 2nd biggest one-day gain in history

1988 1st four-day games in County Cricket Championship commence

1989 – Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: In Beijing, around 100,000 students gather in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang.

1989 – Nintendo launched the original Game Boy in Japan. The portable video game system had four Japanese launch titlesl; Super Mario Land, Alleyway, Baseball, and Yakuma

2019 Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at a Extinction Rebellion protest in London amid city-wide climate protests where Waterloo Bridge was occupied over four days

Born Today ;-

1816 – Charlotte Brontë, novelist (Jane Eyre) and poet, eldest of the sisters

1913 Norman Parkinson, English fashion photographer (Harper's Bazaar)

1915 Antonio "Anthony" Quinn, Mexican actor (Zorba the Greek, Lawrence of Arabia, Lust for Life), born in Chihuahua

1923 John Mortimer, English barrister and writer

1926 – Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor II, Queen

1947 Iggy Pop [James Osterberg], American rocker (Zombie Birdhouse), born in Muskegon, Michigan

1973 – Steve Backshall, English naturalist, writer, and television presenter

Died Today ;-

1509 Henry VII, 1st Tudor king of England (1485-1509), dies at 52, Henry VIII succeeds him aged 17

1910 Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens], American author (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), dies at 74

1918 Manfred von Richthofen [The Red Baron], dies at 25

1946 John Maynard Keynes, English economist whose ideas changed the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, dies of a heart attack at 62

1952 Stafford Cripps, Labour politician held several Cabinet positions, dies at 62

1971 François Duvalier "Papa Doc", Dictator of Haiti (1957-71), dies at 64

1977 Milton "Gummo" Marx, American comic (Marx Brothers), dies at 84

2003 Nina Simone [Eunice Waymon], American singer and civil rights activist (I Loves You, Porgy), dies of breast cancer at 70

2016 Prince [Rogers Nelson], American singer-songwriter and musician (1999, Purple Rain), dies at 57

[Alikado]

International Mother Earth Day

1509 Henry VIII became king of England following the death of his father, Henry VII.

1692 Edward Bishop is jailed for proposing flogging as a cure for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts

1804 Gioacchino Rossini (12) performs in Imola

1817 Curacao prohibits use of white paint due to fierce sunlight

1838 English steamship "Sirius" docks in NYC after crossing the Atlantic, first transatlantic steam passenger service

1876 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky completes his ballet "Swan Lake"

1915 The Second Battle of Ypres begins on the Western Front n WW I

1915 – The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.

1943 German counter attack in North-Tunisia

1943 RAF shoots down 14 German transport planes over Mediterranean Sea

1944 Allies land near Hollandia, New-Guinea

1945 Concentration Camp at Sachsenhausen liberated

1945 – Prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp revolt. Five hundred twenty are killed and around eighty escape.

1945 Battle of Berlin: Upon being informed that a planned counter-attack never happened, Adolf Hitler flies into a rage, denounces the German Army and concedes World War II is lost and states that suicide is his only recourse.

1969 1st human eye transplant performed

1969 – British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston wins the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race and completes the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world

1991 Intel releases 486SX chip

1970 – The first Earth Day is celebrated

1977 – Optical fiber is first used to carry live telephone traffic.

1983 – The German magazine Stern claims the "Hitler Diaries" had been found in wreckage in East Germany; the diaries are subsequently revealed to be forgeries.

1993 – Eighteen-year-old Stephen Lawrence is murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Well Hall, Eltham.

Born Today ;-

1444 – Elizabeth of York, Duchess of Suffolk, a sister of King Edward IV and of King Richard III

1870 Vladimir Lenin [Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov], Marxist Revolutionary and Soviet Leader, born in Simbirsk, Russia

1904 Robert Oppenheimer, American theoretical physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb (Manhattan Project), born in NYC, New York

1916 – Yehudi Menuhin, violinist and conductor

1925 George Cole, actor (Minder, Vampire Lovers), born in London

1936 – Glen Campbell, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor

1937 Jack Nicholson, American actor (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shining), born in Neptune City, New Jersey

1944 – Steve Fossett, American businessman, pilot, and sailor, the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon and in a fixed-wing aircraft, set more than one hundred records in five different sports. born in Jackson, Tennessee (disappeared 2007)

1957 – Donald Tusk, Polish journalist and politician, 14th Prime Minister of Poland, President of the European Council 2014-), born in Gdansk, Poland

1960 Gary Rhodes, British restaurateur and television chef

1986 Amber Heard, American actress (Aquaman), born in Austin, Texas

1987 David Luiz Moreira Marinho, Brazilian football player (Chelsea, Brazil national team), born in Diadema, Brazil

Died Today ;-

1355 Eleonora Plantagenet, daughter of King Edward II, dies at 36

1616 Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra, Spanish author (Don Quixote), dies of a cirrhosis at 68

1778 James Hargreaves, inventor (spinning jenny),

1782 Anne Bonny, Irish pirate, dies in prison

1908 Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister (Liberal: 1905-08), dies at 71

1933 Henry Royce, English industrialist and automobile founder (Rolls-Royce), dies at 70

1994 Richard Nixon, 37th President (1969-75), dies of a stroke at 81

2002 – Linda Lovelace (Linda Susan Boreman) , porn actress (nicknamed "Miss Holy Holy" in high school)

[Alikado]

UN English Language Day

St George's Day

International Creator Day

World Book and Copyright Day

World Book Night

World Laboratory Day

German Beer Day

Impossible Astronaut Day

International Nose Picking Day

International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

1016 – Edmund Ironside succeeds his father Æthelred the Unready as King of England.

1348 – The founding of the Order of the Garter by King Edward III is announced on St. George's Day

1445 Margaret of Anjou weds King Henry VI of England in Titchfield, Hampshire

1516 Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria endorses "The German Beer Purity Law" (Reinheitsgebot) and adds to it standards for the sale of beer, stating beer should be brewed from only three ingredients – water, malt and hops

1597 William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is first performed, with Queen Elizabeth I of England in attendance

1661 – King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland is crowned in Westminster Abbey.

1702 Queen Anne is crowned at Westminster Abbey

1849 Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky and members of the Petrashevsky Circle are arrested in St. Petersburg

1851 Canada issues its 1st postage stamps

1867 Queen Victoria & Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel

1879 – Fire burns down the second main building and dome of the University of Notre Dame, which prompts the construction of the third, and current, Main Building with its golden dome.

1891 Jews are expelled from Moscow

1918 – The British Royal Navy makes a raid in an attempt to neutralise the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge.

1924 British Empire Exhibition opens at Wembley

1927 – Cardiff City defeat Arsenal in the FA Cup Final, the only time it has been won by a team not based in England.

1941 Greece Army surrenders to German Nazis RAF brings Greek king George II to Egypt

1942 4-day allied bombing on Rostock begins

1942 – Baedeker Blitz: German bombers hit Exeter, Bath and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lübeck.

1943 British & US offensive directed at Tunis and Bizerta

1945 Concentration camp Flossenburg liberated

1968 1st decimal coins issued in Britain (5 & 10 new pence, replacing shilling and two-shilling pieces)

1969 The Unionist Parliamentary Party votes by 28 to 22 to introduce universal adult suffrage in local government elections in Northern Ireland; the demand for 'one man, one vote' had been one of the most powerful slogans of the civil rights movement

1979 Fighting in London between the Anti-Nazi League and the Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Group results in the death of protester Blair Peach.

1982 The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is released.

1984 AIDS-virus identified as HTLV-III (acquired immune deficiency syndrome)

1985 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.

1992 British Princess Anne (the Princess Royal) and her 1st husband Captain Mark Phillips divorce after 19 years

1992 McDonald's opens its 1st fast-food restaurant in China

1996 Sotherby begins 4 day auction of Jackie O stuff-take in $34.5 million

2003 Beijing closes all schools for two weeks because of the SARS virus.

2005 – The first ever YouTube video, titled "Me at the zoo", was published by user "jawed"

2012 Rangers F.C. owner, Craig Whyte, is banned for life from any involvement in Scottish football

2019 Southampton striker Shane Long scores fastest goal in Premier League history when he nets after 7.69 seconds in 1-1 draw at Watford

2019 World's first malaria vaccine, giving partial protection to children, begins in Malawi by the WHO

Born Today ;-

1141 King Malcolm IV of Scotland, nicknamed Virgo "the Maiden" King of Scots (1141 April-May)

1564 William Shakespeare, Poet and playwright (Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth), born in Stratford upon Avon

1775 J. M. W. Turner, Landscape painter (Shipwreck, Rain, Steam and Speed), born in Covent Garden

1889 Charles Warrell, English schoolteacher and creator of the I-Spy books, born in Farmborough, Somerset

1895 Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand detective writer and producer, born in Christchurch, New Zealand

1899 Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American novelist (Lolita, Ada), born in St Petersburg

1911 Simone Simon, French actress (All Money Can Buy, Ladies in Love), born in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône

1915 Arnold Hall, British aeronautical engineer, born in Liverpool Director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, a post held until 1955, became Technical Director of the Hawker Siddeley Group and remained at Hawker Siddeley until its conversion to British Aerospace in 1977

1928 Shirley Temple, American actress, famous 1930s child star (Bright Eyes, Heidi) and diplomat, born in Santa Monica, California

1928 Sir William "Bill" Cotton, British television producer and executive (Noel Gay TV), born in London

1936 Roy Orbison, American rock musician (Pretty Woman), born in Vernon, Texas

1939 Lee Majors [Harvey Lee Yeary], American film and TV actor ($6,000,000 Man, The Fall Guy), born in Wyandotte, Michigan

1941 Ed 'Stupot' Stewart, British DJ and broadcaster (Crackerjack), born in Exmouth, Devon (d. 2016)

1941 Ray Tomlinson, American computer programmer (invented email and the @ sign), born in Amsterdam , New York

1947 – Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Irish republican activist; co-founder, Irish Republican Socialist Party (1974); British MP Mid Ulster (1969–74)

1955 Mike Smith, English TV and radio presenter, born in Romford

1962 – John Hannah, Scottish actor and producer

1988 Alistair Brownlee, British triathlete (Olympic gold 2012, 16), born in Dewsbury

2018 Prince Louis of Cambridge, English son of Prince William and Duchess of Cambridge

Died Today ;-

34 Christ, crucified, according to Isaac Newton

725 Wihtred, King of Kent (c. 692-725)

871 Ethelred I, King of Wessex and brother of Alfred the Great, dies aged around 24

1014 Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, dies in battle at Clontarf

1016 Æthelred II "the Unready", king of England (979-1016), son of Edgar the Peaceful

1124 Alexander I, King of Scots (1107-24), dies at 47

1151 Queen Adeliza of England, 2nd wife of Henry I

1616 William Shakespeare, English poet and playwright (b. 1564) (Julian calendar) dies on 52nd birthday

1702 Margaret Fell, English founder of the Religious Society of Friends known as the "mother of Quakerism," dies at about 87

1850 William Wordsworth, English Romantic poet (The Prelude), dies at 80

1915 Rupert Brooke, British WW I poet (Lithuania, The Soldier), dies at 27

1975 William Hartnell, English actor (first Doctor in Dr Who), dies at 67

1979 Blair Peach, New Zealand-born anti-fascist, murdered by Police

1983 Clarence "Buster" Crabbe, American swimmer (Olympic gold 1932) and actor (Tarzan the Fearless, Flash Gordon), dies of a heart attack at 75

1986 Jim Laker, English cricket spin bowler (46 Tests; world best 19-90 4th Test v Australia 1956), dies from complications of gall bladder surgery at 64

1997 Dennis Compton, England cricket batsman & footballer (5,807 Test runs, Arsenal 1950 FA Cup), dies at 78

2005 Sir John Mills, British actor (Ryan's Daughter, Big Sleep, King Rat, War & Peace), dies from a chest infection at 97

2007 Boris Yeltsin, Russian politician and 1st President of Russian Federation (1991-99), dies of congestive heart failure at 76

2011 John Sullivan, British comedy writer
2010–2011 Rock & Chips
2005–2009 The Green Green Grass
1996–2003 Roger Roger
1986–1987 Dear John
1983–1986 Just Good Friends
1981–2003 Only Fools and Horses
1977–1980 Citizen Smith

[Alikado]

World Day for Laboratory Animals

World Meningitis Day

World Healing Day

World Tai Chi and Qigong Day

World Veterinary Day

International Marconi Day

1288 Jews of Troyes France are accused of ritual murder

1558 – Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris.

1801 1st performance of Joseph Haydn's oratorio "Die Jahreszeiten"

1833 Jacob Evert & George Dulty patent 1st soda fountain

1872 Volcano Mt Vesuvius erupts in Italy

1880 Amateur Athletic Association, governing body for men's athletics in England & Wales, is founded in Oxford

1888 Eastman Kodak founded by George Eastman

1913 Skyscraper, the Woolworth Building in New York City is opened - world's tallest building at the time

1914 A shipment of 35,000 rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition are landed at Larne for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland

1915 German army fires chloroform gas in Ypres (Leper)

1915 Massacre of Armenians by Turks starts (Armenian Martyrs Day)

1916 – Easter Rising: Irish rebels, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, launch an uprising in Dublin against British rule and proclaim an Irish Republic.

1916 Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for ice-trapped ship Endurance

1918 – First tank-to-tank combat, during the second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux. Three British Mark IVs meet three German A7Vs.

1932 – Benny Rothman leads the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, leading to substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom

1933 – Nazi Germany begins its persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses by shutting down the Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg.

1941 British army begins evacuation of Greece

1941 Dutch Prince Bernhard becomes an RAF pilot

1942 2nd night Exeter bombed by German Luftwaffe

1944 – The SBS launches a raid against the garrison of Santorini in Greece

1953 Winston Churchill knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

1957 – Suez Crisis: The Suez Canal is reopened following the introduction of UNEF peacekeepers to the region.

1962 Massachusetts Institute of Technology sends TV signal by satellite for 1st time: California to Massachusetts

1963 – Marriage of Princess Alexandra of Kent to Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey in London.

1967 – Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open. He is the first human to die during a space mission.

1969 US B-52's drop 3,000 ton bombs at Cambodian boundary

1969 Car firm British Leyland launch the Austin Maxi in Oporto Portugal

1969 Loyalist members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) explode a bomb at a water pipeline between Lough Neagh and Belfast

1981 Willy Shoemaker wins his 8,000th race, 2000 more than any other jockey

1990 Gruinard Island, Scotland, is officially declared free of the anthrax disease after 48 years of quarantine.

1993 The IRA explodes a 1000kg car bomb in Bishopsgate, London, killing a news photographer and injuring 44 others

1995 Dow Jones Index hits record 4303.98

2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is inaugurated as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church taking the name Pope Benedict XVI

2007 Iceland announces that Norway will shoulder the defense of Iceland during peacetime

2011 – WikiLeaks starts publishing the Guantanamo Bay files leak.

2013 Deadliest structural failure in history when 1,134, mostly garment workers killed and 2,500 injured after the Rana Plaza building collapses in Savar Upazila, Bangladesh

Born Today;-

1743 Edmund Cartwright, English inventor (power loom), born in Marnham, Nottinghamshire

1856 Philippe Pétain, French marshal and Chief of the French State (1940-44), born in Cauchy-à-la-Tour, France

1882 – Hugh Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding, Scottish-English air marshal during Battle of Britian

1889 – Stafford Cripps, English academic and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer, several Cabinet posts.

1906 – William Joyce, American-born Irish-British Nazi propaganda broadcaster 'Lord Haw-Haw'

1924 – Clement Freud, German born radio host, academic, Chef and politician, Sigmund Freud (grandfather), Lucian Freud (brother)

1928 – Tommy Docherty, Scottish footballer and manager

1934 – Shirley MacLaine, American actress, singer, and dancer

1936 – Jill Ireland, English actress

1942 – Barbra Streisand, American singer, actress, activist, and producer

1943 – Gordon West, Everton & England footballer British Record signing for a Goalkeeper £27,000 from Blackpool.

1952 – Jean Paul Gaultier, French fashion designer

1960 Paula Yates, English TV personality (The Big Breakfast), born in London

1973 Lee Westwood, English golfer (British Open, US Masters 2010 runner-up), born in Worksop

1973 Sachin Tendulkar, Indian cricketer (prodigy at 16, Indian captain at 23, highest run scorer in international cricket), born in Mumbai

1973 Gabby Logan, British television presenter, born in Leeds

1992 – Laura Kenny, English cyclist

Died Today ;-

1731 Daniel Defoe, English novelist (Robinson Crusoe), dies at about 70

1942 Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian author (Anne of Green Gables), dies at 67

1974 Bud Abbott, American comedian (Abbott & Costello), dies at 78

1986 Wallis Simpson [Duchess of Windsor], American divorcee whom British King Edward VIII abdicated his throne to marry, dies at 89

2004 Estée Lauder, American cosmetics entrepreneur (Estée Lauder cosmetics), dies of cardiopulmonary arrest at 97

2006 Brian Labone, Everton & England footballer, one club man, 534 appearances, 2 goals & 2 bookings, 26 caps

[Alikado]

Anzac Day

DNA Day

International Financial Independence Awareness Day

International Marconi Day

World Healing Day

World Malaria Day

World Penguin Day

World Tai Chi and Qigong Day

World Veterinary Day

World Pinhole Photography Day

1507 German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller first to use the name America on his world map "Universalis Cosmographia"

1541 Liege flooded after heavy down pour

1644 Last Ming Emperor Chongzhen hangs himself from a tree on Jing Mountain, Beijing, rather than be captured by forces of Li Zicheng

1660 English Convention Parliament meets and votes to restore Charles II

1684 Patent granted for thimble

1719 Daniel Defoe publishes "Robinson Crusoe"

1742 Elizabeth of Russia crowns herself Empress in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow

1792 Guillotine first used in France, executes highwayman Nicolas Pelletier

1792 "La Marseillaise", later the national anthem of France, is composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg

1829 Charles Fremantle arrives in HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the United Kingdom

1850 Paul Julius Reuter sets up carrier-pigeon service, using 40 pigeons to carry stock market prices between Aachen and Brussels

1881 250,000 Germans petition to bar foreign Jews from entering Germany

1886 Sigmund Freud opens practice at Rathausstrasse 7, Vienna

1915 – The Battle of Gallipoli begins: The invasion of the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula by British, French, Indian, Newfoundland, Australian and New Zealand troops, begins with landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles

1925 Paul von Hindenburg is elected the President of Germany

1926 Giacomo Puccini's opera "Turandot" premieres in Milan

1942 Beginning of a 3 night bombing blitz on Bath by German Luftwaffe - 417 killed

1945 Allied air raid on Surabaja, Java

1945 Last Boeing B-17 attack against Nazi Germany

1945 Soviet forces complete their encirclement of Berlin, cutting off all access points west of the German capital

1945 "Elbe Day" - US and Soviet forces meet at Torgau, Germany on the Elbe River during the invasion of Germany in WWII

1945 – The last German troops retreat from Finland's soil in Lapland, ending the Lapland War. Military acts of Second World War end in Finland.

1951 – Korean War: Assaulting Chinese forces are forced to withdraw after heavy fighting with UN forces, primarily made up of Australian and Canadian troops, at the Battle of Kapyong.

1953 Francis Crick and James Watson's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA is published in "Nature" magazine

1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories made from silicon. It has about 6% efficiency.

1954 British troops raid Nairobi, Kenya (25,000 Mau Mau suspects arrested)

1959 St Lawrence Seaway linking Atlantic and the Great Lakes opens to shipping

1961 Robert Noyce patents integrated circuit

1969 5,400th & last episode of BBC Radio serial "The Dales" (formerly "Mrs Dale's Diary" )

1988 – In Israel, John Demjanjuk is sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II.

1990 Hubble space telescope is placed into orbit by shuttle Discovery

1993 Russia elects Boris Yeltsin leader

2007 Boris Yeltsin's funeral - the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894.

2012 The United Kingdom dips back into recession after the economy shrank 0.2% in the first quarter of 2012

2015 7.8-magnitude earthquake near Kathmandu in Nepal, killing 8000, leaving over 100,000 homeless, destroying many historic sites

Born Today ;-

1284 Edward II, King of England (1307-27), born in Caernarfon Castle

11599 Oliver Cromwell, Puritan lord protector of England (1653-58), born in Huntingdon

1776 Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh, born in Buckingham Palace

1843 Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Grand Duchess of Hesse, born in Buckingham Palace

1872 – Charles Burgess Fry, England cricketer, England footballer, world record for the long jump, educator, and politician. He also reputedly turned down the throne of Albania

1874 Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor and electrical engineer who pioneered work on long distance radio transmission (Nobel 1909), born in Bologna, Italy

1895 Stanley Rous, British soccer official, 6th President of FIFA (1961-74), born in Mutford, East Suffolk

1897 Mary [Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary], Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood, born in York Cottage, Sandringham, the Queens Aunt

1917 – Ella Fitzgerald, American singer

1935 April Ashley, model and one of the earliest British people known to have had sex reassignment surgery, born in Liverpool

1940 Al Pacino, American actor (And Justice For All, The Godfather, Scorpio), born in NYC, New York

1957 Eric Bristow MBE ['The Crafty Cockney'], darts player (BDO World Champion 1980-81, 84-86), born in Hackney

1943 – Tony Christie, singer-songwriter and actor "(Is This The Way To) Amarillo", born Conisbrough, Yorkshire,

1944 – Len Goodman, ballroom dancer & judge

1947 – Johan Cruyff, Dutch footballer and manager

1960 – Robert Peston, journalist, Political editor ITV, Business Editor BBC

1963 – David Moyes, Scottish footballer and Everton Manager, played & managed Preston NE

Died Today ;-

1744 Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer (proposed the Celsius temperature scale), dies at 42

1873 Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy, Russian painter (VP: Imperial Academy of Arts 1828-68), dies at 90

1995 Ginger Rogers, American actress, dancer and singer (Top Hat, Stage Door), dies at 83

2007 Alan Ball, Everton & England footballer, World Cup Winner born Farnworth. At age 17 years and 98 days, he became Blackpool's youngest League debutant. He was eventually sold to Everton for a fee of £112,000 in August 1966, at the time a record transfer fee paid to an English club.Arsenal paid a record fee of £220,000 to take Ball to Highbury, his father (James) Alan Ball played and managed Southport and his son Jimmy became a third genertion manager at Forest Green

2007 Arthur Milton, England footballer and cricketer, the last surviving double international.

[Alikado]

World Intellectual Property Day

World Pinhole Photography Day

International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day

1654 Jews are expelled from Brazil

1814 King Louis XVIII lands at Calais from England

1819 Odd Fellows Lodge forms

1835 Frederic Chopin's "Grand Polonaise Brillante" premieres in Paris

1923 English prince Albert Duke of York (George VI) (27) marries Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (22) at Westminster Abbey

1928 Madame Tussaud's waxwork exhibition reopens in London after a fire

1933 Jewish students are barred from school in Germany

1937 German Luftwaffe destroys Basque town of Guernica in Spain

1938 Austrian Jews required to register property above 5,000 Reichsmarks

1941 Potatoes rationed in Holland

1942 Coal mine explosion kills 1,549 at Honkeiko, Manchuria

1945 Marshal Philippe Pétain, leader of France's Vichy collaborationist regime during World War II, arrested for treason

1945 Battle of Bautzen - last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht

1982 Argentina surrenders to Great Britain on South Georgia Island, near the Falkland Islands

1983 Dow Jones Industrial Avg breaks 1,200 for 1st time

1984 Liverpool's Cavern Club reopens (different Premises)

1986 World's worst nuclear disaster: 4th reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in USSR explodes, 31 die, radioactive contamination reaches much of Western Europe

1991 Soccer star Diego Maradona, suspended for using cocaine, arrested in Argentina for possession & distribution of illegal narcotics

2008 Police in Austria arrested Josef Fritzl accused of holding his daughter captive in a windowless cellar for 24 years, fathering her seven children and killing one of them

Born Today ;-

570 Muhammed, founder of Islam, according to the Shi'a sect. Other sources suggest April 20. Observed according to the Islamic lunar calendar

11894 Rudolf Hess, German Nazi official (Deputy Fuhrer who dramatically escaped to Britain in 1941), born in Alexandria, Egypt

1918 – Fanny Blankers-Koen, Dutch sprinter and long jumper, The flying Housewife won 4 Golds at 1948 Olympics aged 30

1926 David Coleman, British sports commentator (worked for the BBC for 46 years), born in Alderley Edge

1956 – Koo Stark, American actress and photographer

1970 – Melania Trump, Slovene-American model; First Lady of the United States; wife of United States President Donald Trump

1947 Warren Clarke, English actor (Clockwork Orange, Dalziel and Pascoe), born in Oldham

Died Today ;-

1865 John Wilkes Booth, American stage actor and assassin of US President Abraham Lincoln, shot at 26 by Union soldier Boston Corbett

1970 Gypsy Rose Lee [Rose Hovick], American actress, striptease dancer, and writer, dies of lung cancer at 56

1976 Sid James [Solomon Joel Cohen], South African-born British character and comedy actor (Hancock's Half Hour, Carry On), dies from a heart attack at 62

1984 – Count Basie, American pianist, composer, and bandleader

1989 Lucille Ball, comedienne (I Love Lucy), dies of heart attack at 78

1999 Jill Dando, British television presenter murdered on her own doorstep.

[Alikado]

World Design Day

World Tapir Day

1124 David I becomes King of Scots

1296 – First War of Scottish Independence: John Balliol's Scottish army is defeated by an English army commanded by John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey at the Battle of Dunbar.

1650 The Battle of Carbisdale: Royalist army under Marquess of Montrose invades mainland Scotland from Orkney; defeated by a Covenanter army.

1667 Blind and impoverished, English poet John Milton sells the copyright of "Paradise Lost" for £10

1749 First performance of George Frideric Handel's Fireworks Music in Green Park, London

1773 Parliament passes Tea Act (Boston won't like this)

1810 Ludwig van Beethoven composes his famous piano piece "Für Elise"

1828 Zoological Gardens at Regent's Park in London opens

1857 Establishment of Jewish congregations in Lower Austria prohibited

1859 "Pomona" sinks in North Atlantic drowning all 400 aboard

1865 Steamboat "SS Sultana" explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. Most were paroled Union POWs on their way home.

1881 Pogroms against Russian Jews start in Elisabethgrad

1904 The Australian Labor Party under Prime Minister Chris Watson becomes the first Labor government in the world

1916 The British renew their assault on the Irish Volunteer position in Mount Street; shelling also sets the buildings on fire

1940 Himmler orders establishment of Auschwitz Concentration Camp

1941 German troops occupy Athens, Greece

1942 Belgian Jews are forced to wear stars

1943 Witold Pilecki Polish Resistance Fighter escapes from Auschwitz after having voluntarily been imprisoned there to gain information about the Holocaust

1945 Italian partisans capture Benito Mussolini at Dongo (Lake Como)

1945 – The last German formations withdraw from Finland to Norway. The Lapland War and thus, World War II in Finland, comes to an end and the Raising the Flag on the Three-Country Cairn photograph is taken.

1945 US 5th army enters Genoa

1946 1st radar installed aboard a commercial ship

1956 Undefeated world heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano, retires from the ring

1965 RC Duncan patents "Pampers" disposable nappy

1966 Dmitri Shostakovich completes his 2nd Cello Concert

1992 Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history.

2005 The superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse, France

Born Today ;-

1791 – Samuel Morse, American painter and inventor, co-invented the Morse code

1891 Sergei Prokofiev, Russian composer (Peter and the Wolf), born in Sontsovka, Ukraine

1944 – Michael Fish, meteorologist and journalist

1959 Sheena Easton, [Shirley Orr], singer (Sugar Walls), born in Glasgow

1969 – Darcey Bussell, ballerina (Strictly Come Dancing

1971 Tess Daly, television presenter (Strictly Come Dancing), born in Stockport

1986 Jenna Coleman, Actress (Doctor Who), born in Blackpool

Died Today ;-

1521 Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese explorer, killed by Filipino natives at 50 while on voyage to circumnavigate the world

1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist poet and philosopher (Concord Hymn), dies of pneumonia at 78

1994 Lynne Frederick, actress (Trail of Pink Panther), dies at 39

1999 Cyril Washbrook, England cricketer (stalwart Lancs & England opener), dies at 84

[Alikado]

International Noise Awareness Day

International Pay it Forward Day

Workers' Memorial Day

World Day for Safety and Health at Work

1376 Parliament demands supervision of royal spending

1770 Captain James Cook, aboard the Endeavour, lands at Botany Bay in Australia

1789 Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against its captain William Bligh in the South Pacific, William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island.

1869 – Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad lay ten miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched.

1881 Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico

1923 Wembley Stadium opens - Bolton Wanderers vs West Ham United (FA Cup), named initially as the Empire Stadium.

1925 Kurdish rebels surrender to Turkish army

1941 Last British troops in Greece surrender

1942 German Luftwaffe estimated to have flown over 11 thousand sorties against Malta since 20th March

1942 "WW II" titled so, as result of Gallup Poll

1943 German-Italian counter offensive in North Africa

1944 Exercise "Tiger" ends with 946 US & British soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats off Slapton Sands, Devon.

1945 US 5th army reaches Swiss border

1945 British commandos attack Elbe & occupy Lauenburg

1945 US 5th army reaches Swiss border

1947 Thor Heyerdahl and the crew of the "Kon-Tiki" set sail from Peru to Polynesia

1948 – Igor Stravinsky conducted the premiere of his American ballet, Orpheus at the New York City Center.

1965 Luciano Pavarotti makes his debut at La Scala, Milan in Franco Zeffirelli's production of "La bohème"

1967 Muhammad Ali refuses induction into army & stripped of boxing title

1967 The Douglas Aircraft Company behind schedule with deliveries of the DC-8 and DC-9 and close to bankruptcy agrees to merge with the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to form McDonnell Douglas

1968 11 year-old Mary Bell strangles 4 year-old

1969 Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France

1973 – The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, recorded in Abbey Road Studios goes to number one on the US Billboard chart, beginning a record-breaking 741-week chart run.

1973 Over 6000 Mk. 82 500 pound bombs detonate over 18 hrs in a railyard in northern California. 5500 structures damaged, town of Antelope destroyed, with every building reduced to foundations. Leads to Transportation Safety Act (1974)

1996 In Australia's worst massacre in modern history, Martin Bryant shoots and kills 35 in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Leads to a compulsory gun buy back program and major changes to gun control laws.

2001 Millionaire Dennis Tito becomes the world's first space tourist

2003 Apple Computer Inc. launched the iTunes store.

2004 Shrek the sheep from Tarras, Central Otago, New Zealand, is finally shorn live on TV after 6 years avoidance; the fleece weighed 27 kg (60 lb)

2018 World's largest child sacrifice, 140 remains uncovered by archaeologists near Trujillo, Peru, dating back 550 years to Chimú civilisation

2018 Indian government announces electricity has now reached every Indian village

Born Today ;-

1442 Edward IV, King of England (1461-70, 71-83), born in Rouen, Normandy

1908 – Oskar Schindler, businessman, saved over 1,000 from the Holocaust, born in Zwittau, Austria-Hungary

1922 Alistair MacLean, Scottish novelist (The Guns of Navarone), born in Shettleston, Glasgow

1924 Kenneth Kaunda, 1st President of Zambia (1964-91), born in Chinsali, Northern Rhodesia

1926 [Nelle] Harper Lee, American author (To Kill a Mockingbird), born in Monroeville Alabama

1937 – Saddam Hussein, Iraqi general and politician, 5th President of Iraq

1937 – John White, Spurs & Scotland footballer, killed by lightening whilst playing golf aged 27.

1938 Fred Dibnah, steeplejack and television personality, born in Bolton

1941 – Ann-Margret (Olson), Swedish-American actress, singer, and dancer

1942 – Mike Brearley, England cricketer and psychoanalyst

1948 – Terry Pratchett, journalist, author, and screenwriter

1950 – Steve Rider, journalist and sportscaster

1956 Jeremy John Beadle, critic, writer and broadcaster, born in York

1960 – Ian Rankin, Scottish author (Rebus)

1980 – Bradley Wiggins, Olympic cyclist

Died Today ;-

1721 Mary Read, English pirate who operated in the Caribbean, dies of a violent fever while in prison and likely still pregnant aged 35 or 36

1865 Samuel Cunard, Canadian-British shipping magnate and founder (1st regular Atlantic steamship line), dies at 77

1918 Gavrilo Princip, Bosnian-Serb assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, dies of tuberculosis at 23

1945 Benito Mussolini [Il Duce], Fascist Italian dictator (1922-43), executed by communist partisans at 61

1945 Claretta Petacci, mistress of Mussolini, executed

1992 Francis Bacon, Irish-British abstract painter (Study for a Pope), dies at 82

1999 Sir Alf Ramsey, England football manager 1966 World Cup

[Alikado]

We Jump the World Day

World Stationery Day

World Wish Day

Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare

International Dance Day

International Guide Dog Day

International Noise Awareness Day

1429 – Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orléans.

1553 Flemish woman introduces practice of starching linen into England

1587 Sir Frances Drake sails into Cadiz Spain & sinks Spanish fleet ("singeing the King of Spain's beard")

1707 English and Scottish parliaments accept Act of Union; creates the United Kingdom of Great Britain (comes into being 1st May)

1769 Scottish engineer James Watt's patent for a steam engine with a separate condenser enrolled (Patent 913)

1784 Premiere of Mozart's Sonata in B flat, K454 (Vienna)

1813 Ist US Rubber patent granted to Jacob F Hummel

1852 1st edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus published

1864 Battle of Gate Pa (Pukehinahina): 1,700 British troops suffer their worst defeat of the New Zealand Wars at the hands of 230 entrenched Maori warriors in Tauranga

1882 The "Elektromote" - forerunner of the trolleybus - is tested by Werner von Siemens in Berlin

1901 Antisemitic riot in Budapest

1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People's Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public.

1916 – The UK's 6th Indian Division surrenders to Ottoman Forces at the Siege of Kut in one of the largest surrenders of British forces up to that point.

1916 – Easter Rising: After six days of fighting, Irish rebel leaders surrender to British forces in Dublin, bringing the Easter Rising to an end.

1930 Telephone connection Britain-Australia goes into service

1942 Jews forced to wear a Jewish Star in Netherlands & Vichy-France

1944 Raid by Dutch Resistance on the National Printing Office in The Hague to procure 10,000 Dutch identity cards.

1944 – British agent Nancy Wake, a leading figure in the French Resistance and the Gestapo's most wanted person, parachutes back into France to be a liaison between London and the local maquis group.

1945 First food drop by RAF above Nazi-occupied Holland (Operation Manna)

1945 Japanese army evacuates Rangoon

1945 German armies in Italy sign an unconditional surrender to the Western Allies to be carried out on 2 May

1945 US Army liberates 31,601 people from the Dachau Nazi concentration camp in Germany

1945 Venice & Mestre captured by the Allies

1945 Adolf Hitler (56) marries Eva Braun (33) in the Führerbunker, Berlin and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor; Hitler and Braun both commit suicide the following day.

1945 – The Captain-class frigate HMS Goodall (K479) is torpedoed by U-286 outside the Kola Inlet becoming the last Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the European theatre of World War II.

1946 28 former Japanese leaders indicted in Tokyo as war criminals

1977 British Aerospace forms

1981 Peter Sutcliffe admits he is the Yorkshire Ripper (murdered 13 women)

1986: The Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, is laid to rest alongside her husband, the abdicated King Edward VIII, at Frogmore in Windsor.

1986 800,000 books destroyed by fire in Los Angeles Central Library

1992 – Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 63 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.

1995 Longest sausage ever, at 28.77 miles, made in Kitchener, Ontario

2011 Royal wedding of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Catherine [Kate] Middleton held at Westminister Abbey

2015 German Measles is declared eradicated from North and South America - 1st world region to do so

2018 UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigns amid immigration scandal involving the Windrush generation

2018 Sweden's official Twitter account confirms Swedish meatballs actually originated in Turkey

2019 Over 300 people declared to have died through overwork in Indonesia's one-day election on April 17th, with over 2,000 fallen sick

2019 Over 700 people infected with measles in the US, highest number for 25 years

Born Today ;-

1818 Alexander II, Tsar of Russia (1855-81), born in the Moscow Kremlin in Russia

1863 – William Randolph Hearst, American Newspaper publisher and politician, founded the Hearst Corporation

1879 – Thomas Beecham, English conductor several leading orchestras inc Halle & RLPO, born in St Helens,

1895 – Malcolm Sargent, English organist, composer, and conductor, inc Halle & RLPO

1901 Hirohito, 124th Emperor of Japan (1926-89), born in Aoyama Palace, Tokyo

1914 Deryck Guyler, British actor (Please Sir!, Sykes), born in Wallasey

1929 – Jeremy Thorpe, Disgraced English lawyer and politician

1931 – Lonnie Donegan, Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist, the King of Skiffle

1938 Bernard "Bernie" Madoff, American fraudster and financier who committed the largest fraud in US history, born in Queens, New York

1942 – Lynda Chalker, Baroness Chalker of Wallasey, English politician, Minister of State for Europe

1944 – Francis Lee, England footballer and businessman

1945 Tammi Terrell [Thomasina Montgomery], singer (Ain't No Mountain High Enough), born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1949 Anita Dobson, England, actress (Annie Watts-EastEnders)

1952 – David Icke, footballer, sportscaster, Politician (greens) & professional conspiracy theorist

1957 – Daniel Day-Lewis, Irish actor

1958 – Michelle Pfeiffer, American actress

Died Today ;-

1864 Abraham Gesner, Canadian geologist (inventor of kerosene), dies at 66

1921 Arthur Mold, Lancs & England cricket fast bowler (England 3 Tests; 1,673 1st class wickets), dies at 57

1980 Alfred Hitchcock, English director (Psycho, Birds, Rear Window), dies of renal failure at 80

1988 Andrew Cruickshank, actor (Body in Library, Murder Most Foul, Dr Finlay)

2012 – Roland Moreno. French engineer, invented the smart card

2014 Bob Hoskins, English actor (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), dies from pneumonia at 71

[Alikado]

Day of the Child

International Jazz Day

1349 Jewish community of Radolfzell, Germany, exterminated

1492 Spain announces it will expel all Jews

1513 – Edmund de la Pole, Yorkist pretender to the English throne, is executed on the orders of Henry VIII.

1527 Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France sign the Treaty of Westminster, pledging to combine their forces against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in attempt to win War of the League of Cognac

1563 Jews are expelled from France by order of Charles VI

1763 Member of Parliament and journalist John Wilkes confined in the Tower of London, charged with seditious libel

1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.

1808 1st practical typewriter finished by Italian Pellegrini Turri

1859 Charles Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities" is first published in literary periodical "All the Year Round" (weekly installments until Nov 26)

1885 Boston Pops Orchestra forms

1888 1888 Moradabad hailstorm: hail stones allegedly as big as oranges kill 246 people and some 1600 sheep and cattle in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh

1900 165 lb English boxer Bob Fitzsimmons KOs 305 lb American Ed Dunkhost in round 2 of a lop-sided bout in Brooklyn, New York

1900 Casey Jones dies heroically in a train wreck at Vaughn, Mississippi, while driving Cannonball Express (immortalized in"Ballad of Casey Jones")

1902 Claude Debussy's only completed opera "Pelléas et Mélisande" premieres in Paris

1904 Ice cream cone makes its debut

1938 The first televised FA Cup Final takes place between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End

1943 Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp for Jews forms

1943 Dutch strike against forced labor in Nazi Germany's war industry

1943 – World War II: The British submarine HMS Seraph surfaces near Huelva to cast adrift a dead man dressed as a courier and carrying false invasion plans.

1945 Concentration camp Munchen-Allag freed

1945 Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) calls for crusade against the Bolsheviks

1945 Red Army occupies Demmin

1945 Soviet Army frees Ravensbruck concentration camp

1945 US troops attack the Elbe

1945 Record 48 U-boats sunk by the Allies this month

1945 Adolf Hitler commits suicide along with his new wife (of 40 hours) Eva Braun in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin as the Red Army captures the city

1945 – World War II: Stalag Luft I prisoner-of-war camp near Barth, Germany is liberated by Soviet soldiers, freeing nearly 9000 American and British airmen.

1952 Mr Potato Head is 1st toy advertised on television

1963 – The Bristol Bus Boycott is held in Bristol to protest the Bristol Omnibus Company's refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, drawing national attention to racial discrimination in the United Kingdom.

1967 Ostankino Tower, the then highest free-standing structure in the world at 540m is finished in Moscow

1975 North Vietnamese troops capture Saigon, ending the Vietnam War

1988 33rd Eurovision Song Contest: Celine Dion for Switzerland wins singing "Ne partez pas sans moi" in Dublin

1989 World Wide Web (WWW) is first launched in the public domain by CERN scientist Tim Berners-Lee

1993 The World Wide Web source code is released by CERN, making the software freely available to all

1993 Virgin Radio broadcasts for the first time in the United Kingdom.

1997 Big Ben stops at 12:11 PM for 54 minutes

2001 US Vice President Cheney calls for increased domestic production of fossil fuels and increased usage of nuclear power to meet America's energy demand

2008 – Two skeletal remains found near Yekaterinburg, Russia are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei and Anastasia, two of the children of the last Tsar of Russia, whose entire family was executed at Yekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks.

Born Today ;-

1383 – Anne of Gloucester, English countess, granddaughter of King Edward III of England

1662 Mary II, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, born in St James's Palace

1893 Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi foreign minister and war criminal, born in Wesel, Rhine Province, German Empire

1920 Capt Tom Moore, sponsored walk raised £29monly Octogenarian to top the music charts

1923 Alan Wharton, Lancashire & England cricketer (England batsman once v NZ 1949, scored 7 & 13), born in Heywood

1947 Leslie Grantham, actor (Eastenders)

1990 – Jonny Brownlee, English triathlete (Olympic bronze 2012, silver 16), born in Dewsbury, Brother of Alistair who famously sacrificed a winning position to push him over the line for a silver and gained a bronze at the final race of the 2016 World Triathlon Series

Died Today ;-

1655 – Eustache Le Sueur, French painter

1857 Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh, dies at 81

1883 Édouard Manet, French impressionist painter (Olympia, The Luncheon on the Grass) dies at 51

1900 Casey Jones, American railroad engineer

1936 A. E. Housman, English poet (A Shropshire Lad), dies at 77

1974 Agnes Moorehead, American actress (Endora in Bewitched), dies of uterine cancer at 73

1983 Muddy Waters, US blues singer/guitarist (Mad Love), dies at 70

2015 – Ben E. King, American singer-songwriter and producer The Drifters, "Stand by Me"

[Alikado]

International Drone Day

International Workers' Day

International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day

1169 – Norman mercenaries land at Bannow Bay in Leinster, marking the beginning of the Norman invasion of Ireland.

1328 Wars of Scottish Independence end: Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton - the Kingdom of England recognises the Kingdom of Scotland as an independent state.

1707 Acts of Union comes into force, uniting England and Scotland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain

1759 – Josiah Wedgwood founds the Wedgwood pottery company in Great Britain.

1776 – Establishment of the Illuminati in Ingolstadt, Upper Bavaria, by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt.

1786 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera "Marriage of Figaro" premieres in Vienna with Mozart himself directing

1807 – The Slave Trade Act 1807 takes effect, abolishing the slave trade within the British Empire.

1820 – Execution of the Cato Street Conspirators, who plotted to kill the British Cabinet and Prime Minister Lord Liverpool. On 28 April most of the accused were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason. All sentences were later commuted, at least in respect of this medieval form of execution, to hanging and beheading. 5 were sentenced to be transported to Austrailia, 5 were hanged at Newgate Prison on the morning of 1 May 1820 in front of a crowd of many thousands, some having paid as much as three guineas for a good vantage point from the windows of houses overlooking the scaffold. After the bodies had hung for half an hour, they were lowered one at a time and an unidentified individual in a black mask decapitated them against an angled block with a small knife

1840 "Penny Black", the world's first adhesive postage stamp issued by Great Britain

1841 First emigrant wagon train leaves Independence, Missouri, for California

1851 Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, London


1851 First public flushing toilets the 'Monkey Closets' unveiled by George Jennings as part of The Great Exhibition at Hyde Park, London, costing one penny

1866 – The Memphis Race Riots begin. In three days, 46 blacks and two whites were killed many were injured, over 100 black persons robbed, 5 black women raped, and 91 homes, 4 churches and 8 schools (every black church and school) burned in the black community. Reports of the atrocities influenced passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

1869 Folies Bergère opens in Paris

1873 Alexandra Palace opens on Queen Victoria's 54th birthday with a grand celebration including concerts, recitals and fireworks

1875 Alexandra Palace, London, reopens after being burnt down in 1873

1889 2nd International Congress calls for 1st International Workers Day 1st May 1890 to mark protests in Chicago in 1886

1908 World's most intense shower (2.47" in 3 minutes) at Portobelo, Panama

1915 British liner Lusitania leaves NY for Liverpool on her 202nd, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives

1923 Adolf Hitler and Ernst Rohm attempt to break up socialist May Day demonstrates, inviting Nazis from as far away as Nuremberg to take part in the violence

1926 British coal miners go on strike

1930 Cricket master batsman Don Bradman scores 236 for Australia v Worcestershire in his first 1st class innings in England

1936 Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie leaves Ethiopia as Italy invades

1941 "Citizen Kane", directed by Orson Welles and starring himself, Joseph Cotten and Dorothy Corningore, premieres at the Palace Theater in New York City

1941 General Mills introduces CheeriOats (renamed Cheerios in 1945) an oat-based, ready-to-eat cold cereal

1941 German assault on Tobruk

1943 Food rationing begins in the United States during World War II

1943 German Wehrmacht deployed in order to break Dutch strikes

1943 German plane sinks the British ship SS Erinpura in the Mediterranean with the loss of 799 lives

1943 SS General Hanns Albin Rauter announces that all Jews will be 'removed' from the occupied Netherlands

1944 Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel, 1st jet bomber, makes 1st flight

1944 – Two hundred Communist prisoners are shot by the Germans at Kaisariani, Athens in reprisal for the killing of General Franz Krech by partisans at Molaoi.

1945 – A German newsreader officially announces that Adolf Hitler has "fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany". The Soviet flag is raised over the Reich Chancellery, by order of Stalin.

1945 – Forces of the Soviet Red Army liberate Allied prisoners of war imprisoned at Stalag Luft I near Barth, Germany.

1945 – Up to 2,500 people die in a mass suicide in Demmin following the advance of the Red Army.

1945 – Yugoslav Partisans liberate Trieste.

1945 Admiral Karl Doenitz forms German government

1945 Australian & Dutch troops land on Tarakan

1945 Soviet army reaches Rostock

1946 Start of 3 year Pilbara strike of Indigenous Australians.

1951 600,000 march for peace & freedom in Germany

1952 Mr Potato Head introduced

1954 Preston North End defender Joe Marston becomes the first Australian to play in an FA Cup Final, a 3-2 loss to WBA

1956 – The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public.

1956 A doctor in Japan reports an "epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system", marking the official discovery of Minamata disease

1959 Floyd Patterson scores 11th round KO of Englishman Brian London in Indianapolis; his 4th World Heavyweight Boxing title defence

1960 Russia shoots down Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk

1963 First one-day cricket competition is played (Gillette Cup); Lancashire beats Leicestershire by 101 at Old Trafford

1964 1st BASIC program runs on a computer

1966 Last British concert by Beatles (Empire Pool in Wembley)

1971 Rolling Stones release "Brown Sugar"

1982 – Operation Black Buck: The Royal Air Force attacks the Argentine Air Force during Falklands War. Operations Black Buck 1 to Black Buck 7 were a series of seven extremely long-range ground attack missions by Royal Air Force (RAF) Vulcan bombers. The raids, at almost 6,600 nautical miles (12,200 km) and 16 hours for the return journey, were the longest-ranged bombing raids in history at that time. A total of eleven tankers were required for two Vulcans (one primary and one reserve). Of the five Black Buck raids flown to completion, three were against Stanley Airfield's runway and operational facilities, while the other two were anti-radar missions. The raids did minimal damage to the runway and damage to radars was quickly repaired. A single crater was produced on the runway, rendering it impossible for the airfield to be used by fast jets. Argentine ground crew repaired the runway within twenty-four hours, to a level of quality suitable for C-130 Hercules transports. It was estimated that for the same quantity of fuel expended by Black Buck One to drop 21 bombs, which was estimated at 1,800,000 litres (400,000 imp gal) at a cost of £3.3 million, the Sea Harriers of the carrier force could have carried out 785 sorties that would have delivered 2,357 bombs.

1986 Russian news agency Tass reports Chernobyl nuclear power plant 'mishap'

1991 West Indian batsman Gordon Greenidge plays his last Test cricket innings on his 40th birthday scoring 43 vs Australia in Antigua; 7,558 runs @ 44.72; 19 x 100s

1994 Three-time World Formula 1 Drivers champion Ayrton Senna of Brazil is killed in a 309 kmh crash whilst leading the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola in Italy

1997 Tony Blair elected Prime Minister

1999 – The body of British climber George Mallory is found on Mount Everest, 75 years after his disappearance in 1924

2002 – OpenOffice.org released version 1.0, the first stable version of the software.

2003 – Invasion of Iraq: In what becomes known as the "Mission Accomplished" speech, on board the USS Abraham Lincoln (off the coast of California), U.S. President George W. Bush declares that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended"

2004 Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia join the European Union, celebrated at the residence of the Irish President in Dublin.

2009 Carol Ann Duffy is appointed British Poet Laureate - first Scot and woman Laureate

2018 Liverpool's Egyptian soccer forward Mohamed Salah becomes the first African to be named England Football Writers' Footballer of the Year.

2018 Chinese authorities label British cartoon "Peppa Pig" subversive and it is removed from the Douyin video website

2018 Scotland is the first country in the world to introduce a minimum price on alcohol

2019 Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson fired over leaking information about Huawei deal from a UK National Security Council meeting by Theresa May

2019 Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail conditions in London

2019 Argentine forward Lionel Messi scores twice for his 600th goal for FC Barcelona in a 3-0 home win over Liverpool in a Champions League semi final

2019 Evidence revealed that early humans from ancient Denisovan species lived at high altitudes in Tibet 160,000 years ago

2020 Canadian PM Justin Trudeau announces ban on 1,500 types of assault-style weapons in response to recent Nova Scotia shooting

2020 Tweets by Elon Musk saying Tesla's share price is too high wipe $14 billion off the carmaker's value

Born Today ;-

1769 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington and British Prime Minister (Tory: 1828-30), born in Dublin

1831 Emily Stowe, Canadian suffragist and first woman licensed to practise medicine in Canada, born in Norwich Township, Oxford County, Ontario

1839 Hilaire de Chardonnet, French industrialist and inventor (rayon), born in Besançon

1850 Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, Governor General of Canada (1911-16), born in Buckingham Palace

1852 Calamity Jane [Martha Jane Canary], American frontierswoman, born in Princeton, Missouri

1889 John Evans, Kent, Hant & England cricket batsman (1 Test) and author ('The Escaping Club'), born in Newtown, Hampshire, Escaped several times during WWI after being shot down and captured over France and later over Egypt was awarded Military Cross and Bar for his feats. During the Second World War Evans was called into service in MI9, the branch of the War Office responsible for coordinating resistance activities and assisting airmen shot down behind enemy lines and escaping POWs. He helped develop guidelines for the escape of POWs, drawing on his experiences during the First World War

1909 Ethel Jane Cain, British telephonist and original UK Speaking Clock voice

1916 Glenn Ford, actor (Cade's County, Big Heat, Midway), born in Sainte-Christine-d'Auvergne, Quebec,

1923 Joseph Heller, American novelist (Catch-22, 1963 Arts & Letters Award), born in Brooklyn, New York

1929 – Sonny Ramadhin, Legendary Trinidadian, Lancs & West Indies cricketer, FiL of Lancs Willie Hogg& Gradfather of Kyle Hogg also Lancs

1932 – Sandy Woodward, English admiral, Comander of Falklands Task Force

1937 – Una Stubbs, English actress and dancer (Till Death Us Do Part, Worzal Gummidge), born in Welwyn Garden City

1946 Joanna Lumley, British actress (Absolutely Fabulous, OHM's Secret Service), born in Kashmir, India

1951 Antony Worrall Thompson, English celebrity chef

1954 Michael Scott, reporter (Entertainment Tonight, Scene at 6-30)

1964 Sarah Armstrong-Jones, daughter of princess Margaret & Lord Snowdon

1975 Marc-Vivien Foé, Cameroon soccer midfielder (62 caps; fatally collapsed during international match, Lens, West Ham, Lyon), born in Yaounde, Cameroon (d. 2003)

1975 Jodhi May, British actress (A World Apart, The Other Boleyn Girl), born in London

1999 "SpongeBob SquarePants", debuts on Nickelodeon

Died Today ;-

1118 Matilda of Scotland [Edith], first wife of Henry I of England, dies at 38

1700 John Dryden, English poet and playwright, first Poet Laureate (1668-1688)

1731 Johann Ludwig Bach, German composer

1873 David Livingstone, British physician/explorer (Africa)

1904 Antonín Dvorák, Czech composer (Slavic Dancing, New World Symphony)

1978 Aram Katchaturian, Russian composer (The Earth)

1985 – Denise Robins, English journalist and author (AKA Denise Chesterton, Eve Vaill, 'Anne Llewellyn', Hervey Hamilton, Francesca Wright, Ashley French, Harriet Gray and Julia Kane)

1986 Hylda Baker, comedy actress - Nearest and Dearest , Farnworth born

2011 – Ted Lowe, English sportscaster (Pot Black, BBC)

2011 Henry Cooper, boxer who was undefeated in British and Commonwealth heavyweight championship contests for twelve years, and held the European heavyweight title for three years. In 1966 he fought Ali, by then world heavyweight champion, a second time and was again stopped on cuts without being off his feet. Cooper twice was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and after retiring in 1971 following a controversial loss remained a popular public figure. He is the only boxer to have been awarded a knighthood. Cooper represented Great Britain as a light heavyweight boxer at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

2015 Geoff Duke, English motorcycle racer (world 500cc champion 1951, 1953-55), dies at 92

2018 Robert B. Kennedy, American politician (Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1975–1979), dies at 78


2019 Argentine forward Lionel Messi scores twice for his 600th goal for FC Barcelona in a 3-0 home win over Liverpool in a Champions League semi final

[Alikado]

World Laughter Day

International Bereaved Mother's Day

International Permaculture Day

World Tuna Day

International Scurvy Awareness Day

1497 John Cabot's expedition departs Bristol searching for new lands across the Atlantic

1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft and taken to the Tower of London

1568 – Mary, Queen of Scots, escapes from Loch Leven Castle

1611 – The King James Version of the Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker.

1885 "Good Housekeeping" magazine is 1st published

1887 Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film (used in Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope)

1929 Billie Holiday (14) and her mother are arrested for prostitution following a raid of a brothel in Harlem

1933 In Germany, Adolf Hitler bans trade unions

1934 Nazi Germany begins People's Court

1936 Sergei Prokofiev's musical "Peter and the Wolf" premieres in Moscow

1941 Nazi occupied Netherlands lays off Jewish journalists

1942 Japanese troops occupy Mandalay, Burma

1943 German troops vacate Jefna, Tunisia

1945 Allies occupy Wismar, Northern Germany

1945 More than 1,000,000 German soldiers officially surrender to the Western Allies in Italy and Austria

1945 Battle of Berlin ends as Soviet army takes Berlin and General Weidling surrenders

1945 – The US 82nd Airborne Division liberates Wöbbelin concentration camp finding 1000 dead prisoners, most of whom starved to death.

1945 – A death march from Dachau to the Austrian border is halted by the segregated, all-Nisei 522nd Field Artillery Battalion of the U.S. Army in southern Bavaria, saving several hundred prisoners.

1952 1st scheduled jet airliner passenger service began with a BOAC Comet

1962 European Cup Final, Amsterdam: Eusébio scores twice as defending champions Benfica beat Real Madrid, 5-3; Puskás, hits all 3 for Madrid

1963 Children's crusade begins in Birmingham, Alabama. More than 600 African American school children arrested for marching against segregation

1965 Early Bird satellite goes into commercial service

1969 Liner Queen Elizabeth II leaves Southampton on maiden voyage to NY

1982 Argentine cruiser General Belgrano sunk by British submarine Conqueror, killing more than 350 men

2011 Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man is killed by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan

2012 Barcelona football player Lionel Messi breaks the European goal-scoring record with 68 goals

2016 Leicester City win the English Premier League title after starting the season at 5,000-1 odds

2019 A clean-up on Mt Everest has removed three metric tons (6,613 pounds) of rubbish and four bodies in just two weeks

Born Today ;-

1729 Catherine the Great [Catherine II], German Empress of Russia (1762-96), born in Stettin, Kingdom of Prussia

1859 – Jerome K. Jerome, English author and playwright (Three men in a Boat, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow) born in Walsall, Staffordshire

1892 – Manfred von Richthofen, German captain and pilot (The Red Baron) born in Wroclaw, Poland

1903 Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician (Common Sense Book of Baby Care), born in New Haven, Connecticut

1915 Margaret "Peggy" Mount, British actress (Oliver!, Panic in the Parlor), born in Southend-On-Sea

1936 Engelbert Humperdinck [Arnold George Dorsey], British singer, born in Madras, India

1945 – Judge Dread, English singer-songwriter

1945 – Bianca Jagger, Nicaraguan-American model, actress, and activist

1946 – David Suchet, actor, (Poiroit), brother of newscaster John Suchet

1947 – James Dyson, businessman, founded the Dyson Company

1949 – Alan Titchmarsh, gardenerTv & Radio Presenter and author

1952 – Isla St Clair, Scottish singer and actress

1962 Jimmy White, English professional snooker player, born in Tooting

1969 – Brian Lara, Legendary Trinidadian & W Indies cricketer

1975 – David Beckham, English footballer, coach, and model

1985 – Lily Allen, English singer-songwriter and actress

2015 – Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, British royal, and fourth in line to the throne

Died Today ;-

1519 Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, scientist and visionary, dies at 67

1934 Sergey Vasilyevich Lebedev, Russian Chemist who invented the first commercially viable and mass-produced synthetic rubber, dies at 59

1945 Martin Bormann, German Nazi leader (Hitler's secretary, chief of the Party Chancellery), most likely commits suicide age 44 [remains identified in 1972]

1964 Nancy Astor, American born British politician, 1st female MP in UK House of Commons, dies at 84

1995 Michael Hordern, American actor (Watership Down, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), dies from kidney disease at 83

1998 Justin Fashanu, English footballer

1999 Oliver Reed, English actor

2001 Ted Rogers, comedian & Tv Presenter - 3-2-1

2010 Lynn Redgrave, actress (Gods and Monsters, Georgy Girl), dies of cancer

2011 Osama bin Laden, Islamic militant and founder of al-Qaeda, shot and killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan by navy seals during Operation Neptune Spear at 54

2015 Ruth Rendell, English thriller writer (Inspector Wexford novels)

[Alikado]

International Bereaved Mother's Day

International Permaculture Day

World Laughter Day

World Press Freedom Day

1481 – The largest of three earthquakes strikes the island of Rhodes and causes an estimated 30,000 casualties.

1830 – The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway is opened; it is the first steam-hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.

1845 Fire kills 1,600 in popular theater in Canton, China

1851 Sixth major fire in San Francisco destroys 1500-2000 buildings

1901 Fire destroys 1,700 buildings in Jacksonville, Florida

1915 John McCrae writes the poem "In Flanders Fields"

1916 Irish Nationalists Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas Clarke are executed by firing squad following their involvement in the Easter Rising

1934 Bradman scores 206 Aust v Worcestershire, 210 mins, 27 fours

1938 Concentration camp at Flossenburg goes into use

1941 German air raid on Liverpool

1942 Japanese troop attack Tulagi, Gavutu & Tanambogo, Solomon Islands

1942 German Luftwaffe again bombs Exeter, destroying its town centre

1942 Nazis execute 72 OD'ers in reprisial in Sachsenhausen, Netherlands

1942 Nazis require Dutch Jews to wear a Jewish star

1945 Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay, East Sea, 5,800 killed - one of largest maritime losses of life

1947 Japan's post-war constitution goes into effect, granting universal suffrage, stripping Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power and outlawing Japan's right to make war

1951 – Royal Festival Hall opens with the Festival of Britain.

1960 The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam

1968: Surgeons conduct UK's first heart transplant
Britain's first heart transplant at the National Heart Hospital in Marylebone, later named as Frederick West, he died 46 days after receiving the donor heart

1971 Nixon administration arrests 13,000 anti-war protesters in 3 days

1973 – The 108-story Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out at 1,451 feet as the world's tallest building.

1978 First unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail ("spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the US west coast

1997 42nd Eurovision Song Contest: Katrina and the Waves for United Kingdom wins singing "Love Shine a Light" in Dublin

1999 The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 11,000 for the first time in its history at 11,014.70.

2000 The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.

2007 – The 3-year-old girl Madeleine McCann disappears in Praia da Luz, Portugal, starting "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history".

2015 – Two gunmen launch an attempted attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was held in response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting.

2016 – Eighty-eight thousand people were evacuated from their homes in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada as a wildfire ripped through the community, destroying approximately 2,400 homes and buildings.

Born Today ;-

1415 – Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, the mother of two kings of England, Edward IV and Richard III.

1446 – Margaret of York, daughter of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the sister of two kings of England, Edward IV and Richard III.

1768 – Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and businessman, discovered Bleach.

1898 Golda Meir [Mabovitch], Israeli teacher, stateswoman and 4th Prime Minister of Israel (1969-74) known as the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics, born in Kiev, Ukraine

1903 Bing Crosby [Harry Lillis Crosby], American actor and singer (White Christmas, Going My Way), born in Tacoma, Washington

1921 Sugar Ray Robinson [Walter Smith], American middle/welterweight boxer (1946-52, 55, 58), born in Ailey, Georgia

1933 – James Brown, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (Hot Pants, Living in America, The Famous Flames and The J.B.'s) - "Godfather of Soul" originator of funk music, born in Barnwell, South Carolina

1934 – Henry Cooper, Champion boxer and sportscaster

1934 Frankie Valli [Francesco Stephen Castelluccio], American singer (Four Seasons-Sherry), born in Newark, New Jersey

1949 Ken Hom, Chinese-American chef, author and BBC TV presenter (OBE for "services to culinary arts" 2009), born in Tucson, Arizona

1950 Mary Hopkin, Welsh folk singer (Those Were the Days), born in Pontardawe, Wales

1958 – Sandi Toksvig, Danish born comedian, author, and radio host

1959 – Ben Elton, actor, director, and screenwriter

1965 Rob Brydon, Welsh comedian and actor (Marion & Geoff), born in Baglan, Glamorgan,

1996 – Alex Iwobi, Everton & Nigerian football player

Died Today ;-

1989 Christine Jorgensen, 1st transsexual, dies at 62

1995 Michael Horden, actor (Fool, Green Man, Scoop), dies at 83

2002 Barbara Castle, politician, MP for Blackburn, Government Minister

[Alikado]

World Asthma Day

Anti-Bullying Day

Star Wars Day

World Give Day

World Naked Gardening Day

International Firefighters Day

International Respect for Chickens Day

1471 Battle of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, final battle between the Houses of Lancaster and York: Prince of Wales, Edward of Westminster killed and King Edward IV restored to his throne

1535 Five Carthusian monks from London Charterhouse monastery hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, London, for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as head of the Church of England

1728 George Frideric Handel's opera "Tolomeo, re di Egitto" premieres in London

1839 The Cunard Steamship Company Ltd forms San Bonifacio

1859 The Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge linking the counties of Devon and Cornwall

1893 Cowboy Bill Pickett invents bulldogging, the skill of grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground

1896 1st edition of London Daily Mail (halfpenny)

1897 Fire in Paris bazaar at Rue Jean Goujon kills 200

1904 Charles Stewart Rolls meets Frederick Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England. Go on to form Roll-Royce

1917 A flotilla of US destroyer ships arrive in Queenstown, Ireland, to aid in convoying ships to England

1924 German Republic election: fascists & communists win

1926 The United Kingdom general strike begins.

1932 Al Capone enters Atlanta Penitentiary convicted of income tax evasion

1938 Douglas Hyde (a protestant) becomes 1st president of Eire

1942 Battle of Coral Sea begins (1st naval battle fought solely in air) between Japanese, US and Australian navies and air forces

1942 Food 1st rationed in US

1942 German occupiers imprison 450 prominent Dutch as hostages

1944 "Gaslight", starring an 18-year-old Angela Lansbury in her film debut, is released

1945 German forces in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands surrender unconditionally to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Luneburg Heath

1945 Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg is liberated by the British Army.

1945 German forces in Bavaria surrender unconditionally to American commander Jacob L. Devers

1948 The Hague Court of Justice convicts Nazi SS officer in the Netherlands Hans Rauter of Crimes against Humanity (executed 24 March 1949)

1949 The entire Torino football team except for two players who did not take the trip: Sauro Tom, due to an injury and Renato Gandolfi, because of coach request are killed in a plane crash.

1953 Pulitzer Prize for Literature awarded to Ernest Hemingway for "The Old Man & The Sea"

1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to be elected Prime Minister

1982 Destroyer HMS Sheffield hit by Exocet rocket off Falkland Islands: 20 of her crew died.

1990 Angela Bowie reveals that ex-husband David slept with Mick Jagger

1994 Arsenal win 34th European Cup Winner's Cup against Parma of Italy 1-0 in Copenhagen

2000 Ken Livingstone becomes the first Mayor of London

2007 The Scottish National Party wins the Scottish general election and becomes the largest party in the Scottish Parliament for the first time ever

Born Today ;-

1852 Alice Liddell, English schoolgirl model for Alice in Wonderland

1923 Eric Sykes, English writer, actor and director (Goon Show, Sykes and A...), born in Oldham

1927 Owen "Terry" Scott, British actor and comedian (Terry and June, Carry On Films), born in Watford

1928 - Wolfgang Alexander Albert Eduard Maximilian Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips , also known simply as Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips and nicknamed 'Taffy' was a German F1 racing driver

1929 Audrey Hepburn, actress and humanitarian (Breakfast at Tiffany's, My Fair Lady), born in Brussels

1930 Ronald "Ron" Pickering, British athletics coach and BBC sports commentator, born in Hackney

1936 El Cordobas, Legendary Spanish bullfighter

1958 Jane Kennedy, politician, Merseyside Police Commissioner

1961 Jay Aston, English singer-songwriter and dancer, Bucks Fizz

1967 Kate Garraway, journalist & broadcaster

1974 Tony McCoy, Northern Irish jockey and sportscaster

1989 Rory McIlroy, Irish golfer (US Open 2011, British Open 2014, PGA C'ship 2012, 14), born in Holywood, Northern Ireland

Died today ;-

1471 Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, dies at 17, becoming the only heir apparent to the English throne to ever die in battle - Battle of Tewksbury

1916 Ned Daly, Irish rebel commander (Easter Rising) Executed
1916 Joseph Plunkett, Irish rebel and writer
1916 Willie Pearse, Irish rebel

1924 Edith Nesbit, British children books author (The Railway Children, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, Five Children and It)

1980 Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav communist revolutionary and 1st President of Yugoslavia

1984 Diana Dors [Fluck], British actress and singer (Berserk!, Steaming), dies of cancer at 52

[Alikado]

International Midwives Day

World Asthma Day

Hug a Shed and Take a Selfie Day

World Math Day

1494 – Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica and claims it for Spain.

1809 – Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread

1821 – Emperor Napoleon dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

1835 – The first railway in continental Europe opens between Brussels and Mechelen.

1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi sets sail from Genoa, leading the expedition of the Thousand to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and giving birth to the Kingdom of Italy.

1905 – The trial in the Stratton Brothers case begins in London, England; it marks the first time that fingerprint evidence is used to gain a conviction for murder

1936 – Italian troops occupy Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

1940 – W: Norwegian refugees form a government-in-exile in London.

1940 – Norwegian squads in Hegra Fortress and Vinjesvingen capitulate to German forces after all other Norwegian forces in southern Norway had laid down their arms.

1941 – Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa; the country commemorates the date as Liberation Day or Patriots' Victory Day.

1945 – Dönitz gives Löhr permission to seek an armistice with the Western Allies to preserve a communist free Austria and recognising first, from a German standpoint, the separation of Austria from Germany undoing the Anschluss.

1945 – The Prague uprising begins as an attempt by the Czech resistance to free the city from German occupation.

1945 – Six people are killed when a Japanese fire balloon explodes near Bly, Oregon. They are the only Americans killed in the contiguous US during the war.

1945 – Battle of Castle Itter, the only battle in which American and German troops fought cooperatively.

1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1961 – Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight.

1980 – Operation Nimrod: The British Special Air Service storms the Iranian embassy in London after a six-day siege.

1981 – Bobby Sands MP dies in the Long Kesh prison hospital after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27.

1992 – Armand Césari Stadium disaster in Bastia (Corsica): 18 people are killed and 2,300 are injured when one of the terraces collapses before a football match between SC Bastia and Olympique de Marseille.

Born Today ;-

1818 Karl Marx, German philosopher (Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital), born in Trier, Prussia

1882 Sylvia Pankhurst, English feminist and suffragette, born in Old Trafford, Manchester

1904 Gordon Richards, British jockey (winner of 4,870 races), born in Donnington Wood, Telford

1911 Norman Oldfield, Lancs & England cricketer (England batsman one Test v WI 1939, 80 & 19), born in Dukinfield,

1914 – Tyrone Power, American actor The Mark of Zorro, Marie Antoinette, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan, Prince of Foxes, Witness for the Prosecution, The Black Rose, and Captain from Castile

1937 Delia Derbyshire, English musician and composer (Doctor Who theme, White Noise), born in Coventry

1939 – Ray Gosling, Broadcaster, journalist, author, and activist

1942 Tammy Wynette [Virginia Pugh], American country singer (Stand by your Man), born in Itawamba County, Mississippi

1943 Michael Palin, English comedian (Monty Python, Fish Called Wanda), born in Sheffield

1957 – Richard E. Grant, Swazi-born actor, director, and screenwriter

1957 – Peter Howitt, English actor, director, and screenwriter, Joey in Bread

1963 – Simon Rimmer, English chef and author born Wallasey

1972 James Cracknell, British rowing champion (Olympic gold 2000, 04), born in Sutton, London

1981 – Craig David, English singer-songwriter, musician and producer

1988 Adele [Adele Laurie Blue Adkins], English singer (Rolling in the Deep, Someone Like You), born in Tottenham

Died Today ;-

1821 Napoleon Bonaparte, French military leader and Emperor of the French (1804-14, 1815), dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena, officially from stomach cancer but rumours of arsenic poisoning persist

1945 Elsie Mitchell and five Sunday school students become the only people to die during World War II on US soil when they are killed by a Japanese fire balloon that lands in the forest of Gearhart Mountain, near Bly, Southern Oregon

1962 Ernest Tyldesley, Prolific Lancs & England cricketer (990 runs in 14 Tests for England), brother of JT Tyldsley, His great-great-nephew is the Yorkshire and England cricketer Michael Vaughan

1971 – Violet Jessop, nurse who is known for surviving the disastrous sinkings of RMS Titanic in 1912 and her sister ship HMHS Britannic in 1916. In addition, she had been onboard RMS Olympic, the eldest of the three sister ships, when it collided with a British warship, HMS Hawke, in 1911. Was she the luckiest or the unluckiest person ever?

1981 Bobby Sands MP, Irish IRA activist dies in the 66th day of his hunger strike at 26

1985 Sir Donald Bailey, British civil engineer - Bailey Bridge

1996 Beryl Burton, Legendary cyclist, dominated for over 3 decades

1998 Syd Lawrence, British bandleader (Syd Lawrence Orchestra)