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

[Alikado]

Nelson Mandela International Day

World Listening Day

64 Great Fire of Rome begins under the Emperor Nero

1290 – King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England; this was Tisha B'Av on the Hebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities. This edict will remain in place for 350 years

1716 Decree orders all Jews expelled from Brussels

1806 – A gunpowder magazine explosion in Birgu, Malta, kills around 200 people

1870 – The First Vatican Council decrees the dogma of papal infallibility.

1872 The Ballot Act introduces the secret ballot in elections in Britain; previously votes made openly

1892 First human test of a vaccine against cholera; Ukrainian bacteriologist Waldemar Huffkine risks his life by testing it on himself

1896 Indian born K S Ranjitsinhji completes an unbeaten 154 on Test cricket debut for England in 2nd Test against Australia at Old Trafford

1923 British House of Lords passes new divorce law

1925 Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf (original title was the catchy "Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice")

1932 Belgium, Luxembourg & Netherlands sign Ouchy Convention, a customs treaty - Benelux

1938 Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan arrives in Ireland after a 28 hours flight, supposedly left NY flying for California, he had been refused permission to make a transatlantic flight.

1941 SS drowns 40 Jews in Dvina River, Belorussia

1942 – During the Beisfjord massacre in Norway, 15 Norwegian paramilitary guards help members of the SS to kill 288 political prisoners from Yugoslavia.

1942 Test flight of German Messerschmitt Me-262 using only its jet engines for the first time

1943 British assault on Catania, Sicily

1944 7:45 Operation Goodwood: British assault east of Caen

1944 Allies air raid railways at Vaires, Paris

1944 Arne Andersson runs world record 1 mile (4:01.6)

1944 RAF Mosquitos attack Cologne and Berlin

1944 British air raid on German convoy SW of Heligoland

1944 British troops occupy Bourquebus hill range, Normandy

1944 Polish troops under General Anders occupy Ancona Italy

1944 – Hideki T?j? resigns as Prime Minister of Japan because of numerous setbacks in the war effort

1944 US troop march into St Lo

1947 British seize "Exodus 1947" ship of Jewish immigrants to Palestine

1947 King George VI signs Indian Independence Act

1951 Jersey Joe Walcott at 37 becomes oldest to win heavyweight champion

1955 280 mm rain in Martinstown, Dorset (UK-record)

1967 Silver hits record $1.87 an ounce in NY

1968 The Intel Corporation is founded in Santa Clara, California

1971 58th Tour de France: Eddy Merckx of Belgium wins third straight Tour general classification as well as points and combination categories

1972 Egyptian president Anwar Sadat throws out 20,000 Russian military aides

1972 Mike Procter 8-73 inc hat-trick, plus scores 51 and 102, Gloucs v Essex

1972 The 100th British soldier to die in the Northern Ireland "troubles" is shot by a sniper in Belfast

1974 World's tallest structure, 646 metre Polish radio mast, completed

1976 Nadia Com?neci becomes the first gymnast in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 score (total 7) at Montreal Games

1979 Gold hits record $303.85 an ounce in London

1988 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Lytham & St. Annes: Spaniard Seve Ballesteros wins his 3rd Open title by 2 shots from Nick Price of Zimbabwe

1994 – Rwandan genocide: The Rwandan Patriotic Front takes control of Gisenyi and north western Rwanda, forcing the interim government into Zaire and ending the genocide

2012 Kim Jong-un is officially appointed Supreme Leader of North Korea and given the rank of Marshal in the Korean People's Army

2015 "The Sun" newspaper in Britain controversially publishes old picture and video of Queen Elizabeth giving Nazi salute in 1933

2015 PayPal is spun off from eBay as a separate publicly traded company on the NASDAQ

2018 Elon Musk apologises for calling British caver diver in Thai rescue "pedo guy" after widespread criticism and fall in Tesla stock price

2018 Seventeen men charged with the gang-rape of a 12-year old girl in Chennai, India

2018 Google fined record $5.1 billion by the EU for abusing its power in mobile phone market

2018 Cliff Richard wins privacy case against the BBC, for reporting he was being investigated over historic child sexual assaults

2019 One of world's earliest mosques at 1,200 years old discovered by archaeologists in Israel's Negev Desert

2019 June 2019 was the hottest June on record with average worldwide temperature of 61.6F (16.4C) according to The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Born Today ;-

1811 – William Makepeace Thackeray, English author and poet - Vanity Fair, born in Kolkata, India

1848 W. G. Grace, English cricket all-rounder and captain (22 Tests; 54,896 runs over record 44 first class seasons; Gloucestershire), born in Bristol

1887 – Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian military officer and politician, puppet President of Norway under Nazis, Executed

1918 – Nelson Mandela, South African lawyer and politician, 1st President of South Africa, Nobel Prize laureate

1921 – John Glenn, American colonel, astronaut, and politician (1st American to orbit the earth)

1930 Burt Kwouk, English actor (Pink Panther movies, Last of the Summer Wine), born in Warrington

1938 John Connelly, Burnley, Blackburn & Man U & England footballer (20 English caps) 1966 World Cup Squad, born in St Helens

1944 David Hemery, English 400m-hurdler (Olympic gold 1968), born in Cirencester

1949 – Dennis Lillee, Australian cricketer and coach

1950 – Richard Branson, businessman, founded Virgin Group

1957 – Nick Faldo, English golfer and sportscaster Open winner 87,90,92, SPOTY 1989

1959 Pauline Quirke, British actress (Birds of a Feather), born in London

1985 – James Norton, English actor

1994 Ricardo Dela Corte, Italian test tube baby born to oldest (62) mother

Died Today ;-

1610 Caravaggio [Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio], Italian painter, (Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy), dies at 38

1792 John Paul Jones, U.S. first well-known naval hero ("I have not yet begun to fight"), dies at 45

1817 Jane Austen, English novelist (Pride and Prejudice), dies at 41

1831 Thomas Greatorex, English composer, dies at 72

1892 Thomas Cook, British founder and CEO of Thomas Cook & Son travel agency (Cook Travel Bureau), dies at 83

1907 Ted Pooley, English cricket wicket-keeper (1st class records: 8 stumpings in a match 1878; 12 dismissals in a match 1868), he was supposed to be England's wicket-keeper in what would be the first Test match played; however, Pooley had been arrested in New Zealand and was unable to make the journey to Australia with his teammates. He was well known as a drinker and a gambler. In 1873, he had been suspended by Surrey for taking a bet on a match he was playing in. After his cricket career, Pooley, as with so many of his contemporary cricketers, struggled financially and his gambling and drinking eventually led to the Lambeth workhouse, died at 65 His brother Fred also played for Surrey.

1973 Jack Hawkins, British actor (Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur Just Men, Zulu, Malta Story), dies of post-operative complications at 62

1986 Stanley Rous, British soccer official, 6th President of FIFA (1961-74) Was an International Referee and rewrote the the Laws of the Game in 1938 He was also the first to employ the diagonal system of control for referees as a standard practice, dies at 91

2009 Henry Allingham, British supercentenarian and World War I veteran, dies at 113, oldest man in the world for 1 month.

[Alikado]

Global Hug Your Kids Day

Stick Out Your Tongue Day

AD 64 – The Great Fire of Rome causes widespread devastation and rages on for six days, destroying half of the city.

1510 38 Jews are burned at stake in Berlin

1545 King Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose sinks at Portsmouth under his very eyes; 73 die, in 1982 the wreck is salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.

1553 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey deposed as England's Queen after 9 days

1816 Survivors of French frigate Medusa rescued off Senegal after 17 days

1821 – Coronation of George IV of the United Kingdom.

1832 – The British Medical Association is founded as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association by Sir Charles Hastings at a meeting in the Board Room of the Worcester Infirmary.

1843 The steamship SS Great Britain is launched, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and the largest vessel afloat in the world

1845 – Great New York City Fire of 1845: The last great fire to affect Manhattan began early in the morning and was subdued that afternoon. The fire killed four firefighters, 26 civilians, and destroyed 345 buildings.

1877 1st Wimbledon Men's Tennis: 27-year-old English rackets player Spencer Gore wins inaugural event; beats William Marshall 6-1, 6-2, 6-4

1879 Doc Holliday kills for the first time after a man shoots up his New Mexico saloon

1884 Wimbledon Women's Tennis: Maud Watson becomes inaugural female champion by beating her sister Lillian Watson 6–8, 6–3, 6–3

1900 – The first line of the Paris Métro opens for operation

1903 – Maurice Garin wins the first Tour de France and was stripped of his title in the second Tour in 1904 along with eight others, for cheating

1916 – Battle of Fromelles: British and Australian troops attack German trenches as part of the Battle of the Somme.

1918 German armies retreat across Marne River in France

1919 Following Peace Day celebrations marking the end of World War I, ex-servicemen rioted and burnt down Luton Town Hall.

1940 – Battle of Cape Spada: The Royal Navy and the Regia Marina clash; the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni sinks, with 121 casualties.

1940 Adolf Hitler orders Great Britain to surrender

1940 Nazi occupiers imprison 231 prominent Dutch citizens in Buchenwald

1940 Nazi occupiers in Netherlands forbid anti-nazi films

1940 – Army order 112 forms the Intelligence Corps of the British Army.

1941 BBC World Service begins playing V(ictory) ("...-" in Morse code) (opening of Ludwig van Beethoven's 5th symphony)

1941 British PM Winston Churchill launches his "V for Victory" campaign

1941 Tom and Jerry first appear under their own names in cartoon "The Midnight Snack" by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera

1942 US première of Dmitri Shostakovich' 7th Symphony in NYC by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini in a concert broadcast nationwide on NBC radio

1942 German occupiers confiscate bicycles in Rotterdam and The Hague

1942 – The Second Happy Time of Hitler's submarines comes to an end, as the increasingly effective American convoy system compels them to return to the central Atlantic.

1943 500 allied air forces raid Rome by more than 500 Allied aircraft, inflicting thousands of casualties.

1944 1,200+ 8th US Air Force bombers bomb targets in SW Germany

1944 500 15th US Air Force Liberators/Flying Fortresses bomb Munich vicinity

1944 Allied troops occupy Faubourg de Vaucelles, at Caen

1944 Danish resistance fails in assault on Taarbaek Fort near Copenhagen

1944 Japanese aircraft carriers Taiho and Shokaku sink in Marianas

1945 USS Cod saves 51 sailors from Dutch sub in only sub-to-sub rescue

1952 Freddie Trueman takes 8-31 (9-40), India all out 58 at Old Trafford, India all out 82 in 2nd innings Bedser takes 5-27 (7-45)

1963 NASA civilian Test pilot Joe Walker in X-15 reaches 105 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.

1969 – Chappaquiddick incident: U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy crashes his car into a tidal pond at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, killing his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne

1977 – The world's first Global Positioning System (GPS) signal was transmitted from Navigation Technology Satellite 2 (NTS-2) and received at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 12:41 a.m. Eastern time (ET)

1979 The oil tanker SS Atlantic Empress collides with another oil tanker, causing the largest ever ship-borne oil spill. Off Tobago-260,000 tons of oil spill

1981 – In a private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, French President François Mitterrand reveals the existence of the Farewell Dossier, a collection of documents showing the Soviet Union had been stealing American technological research and development.

1993 Glen Chapple (Lancs) scores fastest F-C century, 27 balls in 21 minutes

1996 Jason Gallian scores 312 in 683 mins for Lancashire v Derbyshire

1997 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army resumes a ceasefire to end their 25-year paramilitary campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

1998 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Birkdale GC: Mark O'Meara wins his 2nd major championship of the year (Masters) and first Open title by 2 in a 4-hole aggregate playoff with fellow American Brian Watts

2001 Michael Brunet discovers the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis in the Djurab Desert, Chad. One of the oldest known species in the human family tree, 6-7 million years ago years old

2015 World Health Organization puts world's Ebola death toll at 11,284

2017 US scientists calculate total amount plastic ever produced - 8.3 billion tonnes, equal to weight of 1 billion elephants

2017 Archaeological dig in Kakadu National Park extends Aboriginal peoples time in Australia to 65,000 to 80,000 years ago

2017 BBC publishes salaries of its top-earning journalists and presenters, two-thirds male, Chris Evans highest at over £2.2 million

2018 Israel's parliament passes controversial "nation state" law giving only Jews self-determination, relegating Arabic to "special status"

2018 Brazilian soccer international goalkeeper Alisson transfers from Roma to Liverpool for a world record keeper's fee of £66.8m

2018 Largest intact sarcophagus of its kind ever found (2000 years old) opened in Alexandria, contains 3 skeletons, not a curse as feared

2018 Airbus Beluga XL, painted to look like the whale, makes its first flight, landing in Toulouse-Blagnac, France

2020 Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani says 25 million Iranians already infected with COVID-19, 35 million at risk (official figure just 269,440)

2021 UK lifts most COVID-19 restrictions on so-called 'Freedom Day" despite 50,000 new daily infections

Born Today ;-

1814 Samuel Colt, American inventor and industrialist (Colt 6 shot revolver), born in Hartford, Connecticut

1834 Edgar Degas, French impressionist painter, sculptor and artist (The Bellelli Family), born in Paris

1896 – A. J. Cronin, Scottish physician and novelist, In 1930 Cronin was diagnosed with a chronic duodenal ulcer and told to take six months' complete rest in the country on a milk diet and was finally able to indulge a lifelong desire to write a novel, having previously "written nothing but prescriptions and scientific papers. He never returned to medicine, his book 'Country Doctor' was turned into the Tv Series 'Dr Finlays Casebook', he wrote over 30 books many best sellers and some turned into films. born in Cardross

1919 Patricia Medina, British actress She is perhaps best known for her roles in the films Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) and Mr. Arkadin (1955), born in Liverpool was married to Richard Greene ( The Adventures of Robin Hood)

1937 George Hamilton IV, American country musician, born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

1946 Ilie N?stase, Romanian tennis player (US Open 1972), born in Bucharest

1947 – Brian May, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and astrophysicist

1950 Simon Cadell, English actor (Hi-De-Hi, Pride & Extreme Prejudice), born in London

1965 Evelyn Glennie, Scottish marimba player, percussionist, and bagpiper, born in Methlick, Aberdeenshire, Glennie has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12, having started to lose her hearing at the age of 8, she performed at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in London 2012, leading a thousand drummers in the opening piece of music, and then playing the Aluphone during the ceremony for lighting the Olympic cauldron.[

1970 – Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish lawyer and politician, First Minister of Scotland, born in Irvine

1971 Vitali Klitschko, Ukrainian boxer (3-time world heavyweight champion; only heavyweight to reign as world champion in 3 different decades), born in Belovodskoye, Kyrgyzstan

1976 – Benedict Cumberbatch, actor (12 Years a Slave, Sherlock), born in London

1983 – Helen Skelton, English television host and actress - Blue Peter, Countryfile

Died Today ;-

1543 Lady Mary Boleyn, mistress of King Henry VIII of England sister of Anne

1545 Roger Grenville, English captain of Mary Rose, drowns

2013 Bert Trautmann, Man City & German footballer, dies from heart failure at 89

2013 Mel Smith, English comedian and author, dies from a heart attack at 60

2014 – James Garner,(born James Scott Bumgarner) American actor - Maverick, The Rockford Files, The Great Escape

[Alikado]

International Chess Day

1304 Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle - King Edward I of England takes the last rebel stronghold of the war

1402 Timur, his army and 32 elephants win the Battle of Ankara, during his invasion of Anatolia, capturing the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I

1712 The Riot Act takes effect in Great Britain.

1749 Earl of Chesterfield says "Idleness is only refuge of weak minds"

1807 – Nicéphore Niépce is awarded a patent by Napoleon for the Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, after it successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Saône in France

1808 Napoleon decrees all French Jews adopt family names

1837 Euston railway station opens in London as the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR), the city's 1st intercity railway station

1849 Start of 1st Lancashire-Yorkshire cricket match at Hyde Park, Sheffield

1881 Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull, surrenders to US federal troops

1885 – The Football Association legalizes professionalism in association football under pressure from the British Football Association

1890 "Gibbons Stamp Monthly" begins publishing

1914 Armed resistance against British rule begins in Ulster

1928 The government of Hungary issues a decree ordering Gypsies to end their nomadic ways, settle permanently in one place, subject themselves to the same laws and taxes as other Hungarians

1933 In London, 500,000 march against anti-Semitism

1933 Germany: Two-hundred Jewish merchants are arrested in Nuremberg and paraded through the streets

1940 Billboard publishes its 1st singles record chart (#1 is "I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey)

1944 Canadian Cameron Highlanders conquer St Andre

1944 Death March of 1,200 Jews from Lipcani Moldavia begins

1944 Japanese aircraft carrier Hijo sunk by US air attack

1944 US invades Japanese-occupied Guam

1944 Violent battles in Verrieres-hill (Normandy)

1944 Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German army officer Claus Von Stauffenberg

1944 US 15th Air Force attacks Friedrichshaven Memmingen

1944 Flying Fortresses of US 8th Air Force attack Leipzig/Dessau

1944 US 9th Air Force bombs railroad at Chaulnes Sable-sur-Sarthe/Dreux

1944 US invades Japanese-occupied Guam

1952 Emile Zatopek runs Olympic Record 10K (29:17.0)

1954 American tennis champion Maureen'Little Mo' Connolly's right leg is crushed in a horse riding accident ending a brilliant career at just 19

1956 Great Britain refuses to lend Egypt money to build Aswan Dam

1960 USSR recovers 2 dogs; 1st living organisms to return from space

1962 Dmitri Shostakovich completes his 13th Symphony

1964 Dmitri Shostakovich completes his 10th String quartet

1969 Apollo 11 lunar module carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin allegedly lands on the surface of the Moon; Aldrin and Armstrong allegedly walk on the moon seven hours later; Michael Collins remains in orbit in the lunar module

1974 Turkey invades Cyprus

1977 The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments

1981 England set for innings loss v Aust, Botham hits 100 in 87 balls scored 199 runs & took 7 wickets Willis took 8 wkts in second Aust innings Eng won 18 runs.

1982 – Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings: The Provisional IRA detonates two bombs in Hyde Park and Regent's Park in central London, killing eight soldiers, wounding forty-seven people, and leading to the deaths of seven horses.

1989 Burma government puts author Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest

2001 The London Stock Exchange goes public.

2002 Bartenders doing tricks with fire start a major fire in a night club in Lima, Peru that kills 25 and injures 100

2008 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Birkdale GC: Irishman Pádraig Harrington successfully defends his Open title; shoots 4-under par over the final 9 to be 4 strokes clear of runner-up Ian Poulter

2014 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Liverpool GC: Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland wins wire-to-wire by 2 from Sergio Garcia & Rickie Fowler

2017 China announces a plan against “foreign garbage” banning 24 categories of plastic and recyclable waste from 2018

2020 Announcement that a COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) is able to trigger immune response and antibodies

2020 United Kingdom suspends extradition treaty with Hong Kong in wake of new Chinese security laws for the territory

2020 Scientists find evidence of volcanoes on Venus, showing the planet is not as dormant as previously thought (Nature Geoscience)

Born Today ;-

1919 Edmund Hillary, Explorer and Mountaineer (1st to scale Mt Everest with Tenzing Norgay), born in Auckland, New Zealand (

1935 Ted Rogers, comedian (Aladdin, Cinderella, 321), born in London

1938 – Roger Hunt, Liverpool & England footballer World Cup Winner

1938 – Diana Rigg, actress, (Emma Peel-Avengers, Game of Thrones) born Doncaster

1938 Natalie Wood [Natasha Gurdin], American actress (Gypsy, Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story), born in San Francisco

1943 – Wendy Richard, English actress

1971 – Sandra Oh, Canadian actress - Grey's Anatomy, Killing Eve, born in Nepean, Ontario

Died Today ;-

1881 Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, 1st baron of Hesketh
Also 8th Baron of Rufford

1937 Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor and electrical engineer who pioneered work on long distance radio transmission (Nobel 1909), dies of a heart attack at 63

1973 Bruce Lee [Lee Yuen Kam], Hong Kong and American martial artist and actor (Enter the Dragon), dies at 32

2011 Lucian Freud, German-British artist (Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, Boy With a Rat), dies at 88

2012 Sir Alastair Burnet [James William Alexander Burnet], British journalist and broadcaster (News at Ten), dies at 84

[Alikado]

365 Crete Earthquake followed by tsunami around the Eastern Mediterranean allegedly destroys Alexandria

1320 Count Louis of Nevers marries 8-year old daughter of Philips V

1403 Battle of Shrewsbury: Army led by the Lancastrian King of England, Henry IV defeats a rebel army led by Henry "Harry Hotspur" Percy of Northumberland thus ending the Percy challenge to the throne. Also the first battle English archers fought each other on English soil.

1545 The first landing of French troops onto the coast of the Isle of Wight during the French invasion

1588 First engagement between the English fleet and the Spanish Armada off the Eddystone Rocks

1798 Napoleon Bonaparte wins Battle of Pyramids in Egypt (Battle of Embabeh) against Mamluk rulers, wiping out most of the Egyptian army

1865 In market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first true western showdown

1866 Cholera epidemic kills hundreds in London

1873 Jesse James and James Younger gang's 1st train robbery (Adair Iowa)

1884 1st Test Cricket match played at Lord's

1897 Tate Gallery opens in England

1904 – Louis Rigolly, a Frenchman, becomes the first man to break the 100 mph (161 km/h) barrier on land. He drove a 15-liter Gobron-Brillié in Ostend

1920 Irish Nationalist and Loyalists engage in street fighting over the issue of Irish independence from Britain, though Loyalist are reinforced by 1500 British Auxiliaries and 5800 British troops

1925 – Malcolm Campbell becomes the first man to exceed 150 mph (241 km/h) on land. At Pendine Sands in Wales, he drives Sunbeam 350HP built by Sunbeam at a two-way average speed of 150.33 mph (242 km/h).

1940 Soviet Union annexes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

1941 200 Jewish Torahs are burned in Ukraine

1941 Himmler orders building of Majdanek concentration camp

1942 8 die as coal waste heap slides in river valley near Oakwood, Virginia

1944 – Battle of Guam: American troops land on Guam (Operation Forager), starting a battle that will end on August 10.

1944 – Claus von Stauffenberg and fellow conspirators are tortured and executed in Berlin, Germany, for the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

1949 US Senate ratifies North Atlantic Treaty by a vote of 82-13 (NATO)

1951 Dalai Lama returns to Tibet

1960 Francis Chichester arrives in NY aboard Gypsy Moth II, setting record of 40 days for a solo Atlantic crossing

1964 Arnold Long takes 11 catches in the match for Surrey v Sussex

1969 Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong allegedly becomes the first person to step on the Moon at 2:56:15 AM (GMT)

1970 Aswan High Dam opens in Egypt, enables human control of the flooding of the Nile

1970 Libya orders confiscation of all Jewish property

1972 In New York 57 murders occur in 24 hours

1972 Bloody Friday: within the space of seventy-five minutes, the Provisional Irish Republican Army explode twenty-two bombs in Belfast; six civilians, two British Army soldiers and one UDA volunteer were killed, 130 injured

1972 2 passenger trains collide head-on killing 76 (Seville, Spain)

1973 – In Lillehammer, Norway, Mossad agents kill a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre.

1974 61st Tour de France: Eddy Merckx of Belgium wins 5th Tour that he enters; equals Jacques Anquetil record for Tour victories

1979 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Lytham & St. Annes: Spaniard Seve Ballesteros wins by 3 from Jack Nicklaus & Ben Crenshaw; Nicklaus runner-up for record 7th time

1981 Australia set 130 to win, all out 111 at Headingley Willis 8-43 - The Botham Test

1983 World's lowest-ever natural temperature recorded ?89.2 °C (?128.6 °F; 184.0 K) at Soviet Vostok Station, Antarctica

1991 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Birkdale GC: Australian 1-2 with Ian Baker-Finch winning his only major championship, 2 strokes ahead of runner-up Mike Harwood

1994 Tony Blair is declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party, paving the way for him to become Prime Minister in 1997

1996 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Lytham & St. Annes: American Tom Lehman wins his only major championship by 2 strokes from Mark McCumber and Ernie Els; first American to win at Lytham since Bobby Jones 70 years earlier

2005 Four terrorist bombers target London's public transportation system, exactly two weeks after the July 7 bombings. All four bombs fail to detonate leading to the capture of all the bombers.

2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series by J. K. Rowling is published worldwide. 11 million copies sell in 24 hrs

2012 – Erden Eruç completes the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world.

2014 After 3 weeks, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has struck about 2,800 targets in Gaza, while Gaza has fired 1,497 rockets at Israel

2019 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Portrush GC: Playing in torrential rain, Irishman Shane Lowry wins his first major title by 6 strokes from Tommy Fleetwood of Southport

2020 European Union agrees huge €750 billion ($859 billion) post-COVID-19 stimulus bill

Born Today ;-

1816 – Paul Reuter (born as Israel Beer Josaphat), German journalist, founded Reuters

1899 Ernest Hemingway, American author (The Old Man and the Sea, Nobel 1954), born in Oak Park, Illinois

1922 – Mollie Sugden, actress - Mrs Slocombe 'Are you being served', born Keighley

1926 – Bill Pertwee, actor - Warden Hodges 'Dads Army', born in Amersham

1926 Queenie Watts [Mary Spenton], British singer and actress (Up the Junction, Holiday on the Buses), born in London

1935 Julian Pettifer, English TV journalist, born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. He was President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and is Vice President of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB. He was voted BAFTA 'Reporter of the Year' for his coverage of the war in Vietnam in 1968.

1945 John Lowe, English darts player (BDO world champion 1979, 87, 93), born in New Tupton, Derbyshire

1948 – Cat Stevens (born Steven Demetre Georgiou; Yusuf Islam), singer-songwriter and guitarist - "Matthew and Son"

1951 Robin Williams, American actor and comedian (Mork & Mindy, Jumanji, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting), born in Chicago, Illinois

1964 – Ross Kemp, actor and producer - Eastenders

1981 – Paloma Faith, English singer-songwriter and actress, born in Hackney

1986 – Rebecca Ferguson, singer-songwriter - X Factor, is a qualified legal secretary, having studied at Hugh Baird College, Bootle, born in Liverpool,

Died Today ;-

1403 Henry Percy [Harry Hotspur], English Knight, killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury at 39

1796 Robert Burns, Scottish poet (Auld Lang Syne), dies at 37

1957 Bernard Spooner, US inventor (bulletproof jacket)

1967 Basil Rathbone, actor (Sherlock Holmes)

1998 Alan Shepard, American astronaut and 1st American in space

2005 Long John Baldry, British blues musician (Don't try to Lay No Boogie), dies at 64

2012 – Angharad Rees, English-born Welsh actress - Demelza - Poldark (1970's)

2020 Mike Sleman, English rugby union winger (31 caps, England; 1 cap British & Irish Lions 1980; Liverpool RUFC), dies at 69

[Alikado]

Ratcatcher's Day

Spoonerism Day

Hammock Day

1298 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Falkirk: King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeat William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons outside the town of Falkirk.

1306 King Phillip the Fair, orders expulsion of Jews out of France

1484 Battle of Lochmaben Fair - a 500-man raiding party led by Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany and James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas are defeated by Scots forces loyal to Albany's brother James III of Scotland; Douglas is captured

1515 Anna of Bohemia (12) marries Karel van Ferdinand of Austria

1515 Louis of Hungary (9) marries Maria of Bohemia & succession to Hungarian throne

1598 – William Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice, is entered on the Stationers’ Register. By decree of Queen Elizabeth, the Stationers’ Register licensed printed works, giving the Crown tight control over all published material.

1648 10,000 Jews of Polannoe murdered in Chmielnick massacre during Khmelnytsky Uprising

1793 Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada

1812 Duke of Wellington defeats French at Battle of Salamanca, Spain

1859 Underarm slow right arm bowler V E Walker takes 10-74 in 1st innings for an All-England Cricket XI v Surrey CCC at The Oval

1865 Underarm slow right arm bowler V E Walker takes 10-104 in an innings for Middlesex v Lancashire in a county cricket match at Old Trafford

1894 – The first ever motor race is held in France between the cities of Paris and Rouen. The fastest finisher was the Comte Jules-Albert de Dion, but the 'official' victory was awarded to Albert Lemaître driving his 3 hp petrol engined Peugeot.

1901 House of Lords, in its role as court, rules trade unions can be sued for actions of its members - in Taff Vale Case

1912 In the face of ever-increasing German naval power, the British Admiralty decides to recall British warships from the Mediterranean and base them in the North Sea

1916 A bomb explodes during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco killing 10

1917 British bomb German lines at Ypres, 4,250,000 grenades

1918 Lightning kills 504 sheep in Utah's Wasatch National Park

1933 – Aviator Wiley Post returns to Floyd Bennett Field in New York City, completing the first solo flight around the world in seven days, 18 hours and 49 minutes.

1937 Irish premier Eamon de Valera wins elections

1942 Warsaw Ghetto Jews (300,000) are sent to Treblinka Extermination Camp

1943 – Allied forces capture Palermo during the Allied invasion of Sicily.

1943 – Axis occupation forces violently disperse a massive protest in Athens, killing 22.

1946 – King David Hotel bombing: A Zionist underground organisation, the Irgun, bombs the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, site of the civil administration and military headquarters for Mandatory Palestine, resulting in 91 deaths and injuring 46

1959 Natural gas found at Slochteren, Groningen, Netherlands

1963 Sonny Liston KOs Floyd Patterson in 1 for heavyweight boxing title to retain the world heavyweight boxing title

1965 Edward Heath succeeds Alec Douglas-Home as leader of the British Conservative party

1992 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes from his luxury prison fearing extradition to the United States.

2001 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Lytham & St Annes: David Duval wins his only major title by 3 shots from Niclas Fasth of Sweden

2002 Israel assassinates Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas's military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, along with 14 civilians

2003 Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay's 14-year old son, and a bodyguard

2005 Jean Charles de Menezes is killed by police as the hunt begins for the London Bombers. See 7 July 2005 London bombings and 21 July 2005 London bombings

2011 Norway is the victim of twin terror attacks, the first a bomb blast targeting government buildings in central Oslo, second a massacre at a youth camp on island of Utøya by Anders Behring. Combined, the attacks in Oslo and Utøya left 77 dead, with 69 killed on the island, 33 of whom were under the age of 18

2012 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Lytham & St. Annes: South African Ernie Els wins his 2nd Claret Jug, 1 stroke ahead of runner-up Adam Scott of Australia

2012 Hashim Amla smashes 311 not out in South Africa's inning and 12 run 1st Test win over England at The Oval; first South African to score a triple-century in Test cricket

2014 Both the United Arab Emirates and the USA announce aid packages to besieged Gaza

2014 News broadcaster Al Jazeera claim that its office in Gaza is under attack by the Israeli Defence Force

2014 European Union claim that Israel 'has the right to defend itself', but say civilian casualties in Gaza are unacceptable

2015 'Oldest' Qur'an fragments discovered in collection of Birmingham University, radiocarbon testing dates to AD568 - AD645

2016 Japan’s Funai Electric announce they will manufacture world's last videocassette this month

2017 10 die in over-heated tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas in human-trafficking incident

2017 South African golfer Branden Grace records lowest round for a men's major championship - 62 in 3rd round at British Open, Royal Birkdale

2018 Heatwave in Japan kills 11 in one day

2018 US President Donald Trump threatens Iran in an all-caps tweet of "consequences" in response to speech by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

2019 French submarine Minerve rediscovered off coast of Toulon, France, after disappearing in 1968 with loss of 52 crew

2019 US President Donald Trump says US could win war in Afghanistan in a week "I just don't want to kill 10 million people. If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth"

2020 California passes New York total for COVID-19 cases (415,763 vs 415,094), though NY death toll much higher

Born Today ;-

1210 – Joan of England, Queen of Scotland, spouse of Alexander II, King of Scots

1596 Michael I, first Russian Tsar of the House of Romanov (1613-45), born in Moscow

1890 Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, American matriarch, mother of JFK, RFK & Ted, born in Boston, Massachusetts

1892 John MacBryan, cricketer, one Test Eng v South Africa 1924 remains the only Test cricketer who neither batted, bowled nor dismissed anyone in the field was also a field hockey international and won a gold medal at the 1920 Olympic Games with the Great Britain and Ireland team. In 1914, a month after the outbreak of World War I, he was captured at the battle of Le Cateau, and he was a prisoner for the rest of the war.

1916 Marcel Cerdan, Algerian born French boxer was considered by many boxing experts and fans to be France's greatest boxer his record was 110 wins and 4 losses, with 65 wins by knockout. He had an affair with the famous singer Édith Piaf and Piaf dedicated one of her most famous songs, Hymne à l'amour, to Cerdan. He was to die in an Air Crash while approaching the intermediate stop airport at Santa Maria, Azores

1928 – Jimmy Hill, footballer, manager, and sportscaster

1929 Vivien Merchant [Ada Thompson], British actress (Alfie, The Homecoming, The Offence), born in Manchester

1930 Sonny Liston, American boxer (world heavyweight champion 1962-64), born in Johnson Township, Arkansas

1938 Terence Stamp, English actor (The Collector, Billy Budd), born in London

1947 – Don Henley, American singer-songwriter and drummer - The Eagles - "Desperado"; "Hotel California"; solo - "Boys Of Summer"), born in Linden, Texas

1949 – Lasse Virén, Finnish runner and police officer winner of four gold medals at the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics.

1964 – Bonnie Langford, actress and dancer

2013 – Prince George of Cambridge son of Prince William and Catherine, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, England (3rd in line to the English throne)

Died Today ;-

1870 Josef Strauss, Austrian composer (Dynamids), dies at 42

1934 John Dillinger, Notorious American bank robber, shot dead at 31 by federal agents at the Biograph Theater in Chicago

1937 Ted McDonald, Nelson, Cacup, Lancashire & Austrailia cricketer (43 wickets for Australia), also played Australian rules football for Launceston, Essendon Football Club and Fitzroy Football Club, dies in car crash near Blackrod, Bolton

1969 – Judy Garland, american actress, singer, dancer, and vaudevillian

1992 Wayne McLaren, American stuntman, rodeo performer, model and actor best known for playing the Marlboro Man, dies of lung cancer at 51

1995 Harold Larwood, England cricket fast bowler (21 Tests, Bodyline Series v Australia 1932-33), dies at 90

2004 Sacha Distel, French singer (Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head cover), dies at 71

2005 Jean Charles de Menezes, Brazilian electrician mistakenly killed by Scotland Yard at Stockwell Tube station

[Alikado]

Gorgeous Grandma Day

World Sjögren's Day

636 Arabs gain control of most of Palestine from the Byzantine Empire

1253 Jews are expelled from Vienne France by order of Pope Innocent IV

1298 Rindfleisch ("Beef") Persecutions - Jewish community in Wurzburg Germany massacred

1745 Charles Edward Stuart, "the Young Pretender", lands at Eriskay Island, Hebrides

1803 Republican Robert Emmet leads Irish rebellion against the British Crown in Dublin

1858 Jewish Disabilities Removal Act passed by British Parliament

1868 All England Lawn Tennis Club is founded as The All England Croquet Club; 1877 name changed to The All England Croquet & Lawn Tennis Club

1888 John Boyd Dunlop applies to patent pneumatic tyre

1900 The Canadian government reviews immigration policy, prohibiting criminals and paupers from landing in Canada

1904 Ice cream cone created during St Louis World Fair - the 1st cone reputedly by Charles E. Menches

1906 Pogroms against Jews in Oddessa

1931 France announces it can't afford to send a team to 1932 Los Angeles Olympics

1934 Australian cricket batting legend Don Bradman completes 304 in drawn 4th Test vs England at Leeds; 430 minutes, 43 x fours, 2 x sixes

1938 Australian cricketer Don Bradman scores 103 in 178 mins on a Headingley sticky, 3rd Test

1942 Operation Edelweiss (a German plan to gain control over the Caucasus) begins.

1943 Battle of Koersk, USSR ends in Nazi defeat (6,000 tanks)

1943 US 45th Infantry division occupies north coast of Termini

1944 Soviet Army marches into Lublin, Poland

1944 US forces invade Japanese-held Tinian in WW II

1944 US troops occupy Pisa, Italy

1946 Menachem Begin's Zionist militant group Irgun bombs the King David Hotel, the then British administrative headquarters for Palestine

1949 Test Cricket debut of England's Brian Close aged 18 years 149 days

1955 English speed ace Donald Campbell drives Bluebird K7 to new water speed record at Ullswater in English Lakes District; first boat past 200 mph: 202.32 mph (325.60 km/h)

1956 Bell X-2 rocket plane sets world aircraft speed record of 3,050 kph

1964 Egyptian munition ship "Star of Alexandria" explodes at dockside in Bone, Algeria. 100 die, 160 injured, $20 million damage

1967 First successful liver transplant, on 19 month old Julie Rodriguez by Dr Starzl at the University of Colorado

1970 A ban on parades and public processions until January 1971 is announced by the Stormont government

1971 The British Army carry out early morning raids across Northern Ireland and arrest 48 people

1978 Israeli government rejects Sadat's call for return of 2 Sinai areas

1982 International Whaling Commission votes for total ban on commercial whaling (starting 1985)

1986 Prince Andrew weds Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey

1992 A Vatican commission, led by Joseph Ratzinger, establishes that limiting certain rights of homosexual people and non-married couples is not equivalent to discrimination on grounds of race or gender.

1993 Chris Boardman bicycles world record 1 hour distance (52,270 km)

1994 British Senior Open Men's Golf, Royal Lytham & St Annes GC: American Tom Wargo wins by 2 strokes from Bob Charles and Doug Dalziel

2000 87th Tour de France: no winner (Lance Armstrong disqualified)

2000 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Lytham & St. Annes: Tiger Woods beats Thomas Bjorn and Ernie Els by 8 shots to win his first Open title; becomes youngest player at 24 to win all 4 major titles

2006 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Liverpool GC: Tiger Woods wins his 2nd consecutive Open Championship title and 3rd overall; holds off fellow American Chris DiMarco by 2 strokes

2017 British Open Men's Golf, Royal Birkdale GC: American Jordan Spieth wins by 3 strokes from countryman Matt Kuchar

2018 Japan records its highest ever temperature at 41.1 degrees (105.98F) in Kumagaya

2018 Environmental reports finds China on track to reach new emission targets, but carbon dioxide emissions risen - 9.2 billion metric tons in 2017, more than US and Europe combined

2018 A wildfire in East Attica, Greece caused the death of 102 people. It was the deadliest wildfire in history of Greece and the second-deadliest in the world, in the 21st century, after the 2009 bushfires in Australia that killed 180.

2018 International Monetary Fund predicts inflation of 1 million percent in Venezuela by end of 2018

2019 Boris Johnson is chosen the new British Prime Minister by the ruling Conservative Party to replace Theresa May

2019 Investigation launched after no girls born in three months in 132 villages in Uttarkashi district, India, with sex-selective abortions suspected as the reason

2020 US confirmed cases of COVID-19 pass 4 million with death toll over 143,000. Real number of cases likely up to 13x higher according to CDC.

2020 South Africa records more than 400,000 COVID-19 cases amid surging infections and decides to shut schools for a month

2020 US President Trump says he could send 75,000 federal agents to deal with violence in American cities like Portland, drawing backlash

Born Today ;-

1892 Haile Selassie [Ras Tafari Makonnen], Emperor of Ethiopia (1930-74), born in Ejersa Goro, Ethiopian Empire (d. 1975)

1912 Michael Wilding, actor (Stage Fright, Courtney Affair, World of Suzie Wong), born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

1913 Michael Foot, English journalist and politician, Secretary of State for Employment former Labour Leader, born in Plymouth

1921 Peter Twiss, British test pilot (breaking the World Air Speed Record and being the first person to exceed 1,000 mph in flight), born in Lindfield, Sussex

1942 Myra Hindley, English murderess (murdered 5 small children with Ian Brady), born in Manchester

1947 David Essex [Cook], English rock vocalist ("Rock On"), and actor (That'll Be The Day), born in Plaistow, Essex

1953 Graham Gooch, English cricketer, captain of England, opening batsman and prolific run scorer, born in London

1957 Jo Brand, comedienne, actress, and screenwriter

1973 Monica Lewinsky, American White House intern (improper relationship with Bill Clinton), born in San Francisco

1989 Daniel Radcliffe, actor ? Harry Potter

1992 Danny Ings, Liverpool & England footballer

Died Today ;-

1875 Isaac Singer, American inventor (1st practical home sewing machine), dies at 63

1885 Ulysses S. Grant, 18th US President (1869-77) and Union general, dies of esophageal cancer in Mount McGregor NY

1942 Andrew Ducat, England cricketer only 1 Test in 1921 when he was unlucky to only make 3 and 2. He was "doubly" out in the first innings: his bat disintegrated when he played a ball bowled by Ted McDonald, the ball looping to slip where it was caught, and part of the bat dislodging a bail. He was given out caught rather than hit wicket. As a Footballer played over 300 League games and 6 times for England. He died suddenly in 1942 during a game at Lord's Cricket Ground of an apparent heart attack after lunch whilst playing in a wartime cricket match between teams from his unit of the Home Guard from Surrey against another from Sussex. The match was immediately abandoned as a mark of respect for Ducat. He was aged 56, and is the only person to have died while playing in a match at Lord's

1951 Philippe Pétain, French marshal and Chief of the French State (Vichy Government 1940-44), dies at 95

1996 Jessica "Decca" Mitford, English author, activist and one of the Mitford sisters, dies at 78

2002 Reginald "Leo" McKern, Australian actor (Blue Lagoon, Help, Mouse that Roared), dies of health complications at 82

2011 Amy Winehouse, singer songwriter, dies from alcohol poisoning at 27

2013 Emile Griffith, American boxer, (world welterweight, middleweight & junior middleweight champion), dies of dementia complications at 75

2014 Dora Bryan [Broadhurst], actress (Taste of Honey), dies at 91 was born Southport, once owned Clarges Hotel at 115–119 Marine Parade on Brighton's seafront, which was used as an exterior location in the films Carry On Girls and Carry On at Your Convenience. She and her husband ( Lancashire and Cumberland cricketer Bill Lawton) lived there for more than 40 years but were forced to sell the bulk of the building because of bankruptcy, but they retained a flat with a sea view on the first floor for many years.

[Alikado]

International Save the Vaquita Day

1304 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle: King Edward I of England takes the stronghold using the War Wolf believed to be the largest trebuchet ever made.

1411 – Battle of Harlaw nr Inverurie, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place, over 1500 dead.

1567 Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate; her 1-year-old son becomes King James VI of Scots

1847 Brigham Young and his Mormon followers arrive at Salt Lake City, Utah

1847 Rotary-type printing press patents received by Richard March Hoe, NYC

1851 Window tax abolished in Britain

1915 – The passenger ship SS Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.

1917 Trial of Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari begins in Paris for allegedly spying for Germany and thus causing the deaths of 50,000 soldiers

1927 The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres

1931 Paavo Nurmi runs world record 2 mile (8:59.6)

1931 A fire at a home for the elderly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania kills 48 people.

1935 1st greetings telegram sent in Britain

1941 Nazis kill entire Jewish population of Grodz, Lithuania

1942 German troops occupy Rostov-on- Don in Southern Russia for the 2nd time

1943 Operation Gomorrah: RAF begins bombing Hamburg (till 3rd August), creating a firestorm and killing 42,600 people and destroying 280,000 buildings.

1944 300 allied bombers drop fire bombs on Allied/German positions

1944 Soviet forces liberate concentration camp Majdanek

1944 US troops land on Tinian

1945 US destroyer Underhill torpedoed West of Guam

1952 Emile Zatopek runs Olympic record 5K (14:06.6)

1967 Norway requests European Common Market membership

1967 First modern hospice St Christopher's founded by Dr. Cicely Saunders in London, England, beginning of modern palliative care and the hospice movement

1967 Chinese army/air force/fleet repress uprising in Wuhan City

1987 IBM-PC DOS Version 3.3 (updated) released

2001 – Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.

2005 92nd Tour de France: no winner; Lance Armstrong retires after winning a record seventh consecutive victory but disqualified in 2012 for doping

2013 – A high-speed train derails in Spain rounding a curve with an 80 km/h (50 mph) speed limit at 190 km/h (120 mph), killing 78 passengers.

2017 Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner says he did not collude with Russia after meeting with Senate investigators

2019 New UK PM Boris Johnson drastically reshapes cabinet in his first day in office, appointing Dominic Raab as Foreign Secretary, Priti Patel as Home Secretary and Sajid Javid as Chancellor

2019 Special counsel Robert Mueller reports to the US Senate that President Trump was not exonerated of obstruction of justice and that Russia interfered in US election to benefit Trump

2019 Global warming is the fastest in 2,000 years and scientific consensus that humans are the cause is at 99%, according to three major reports published in journals "Nature" and "Nature Geoscience"

2019 Facebook agrees to pay $5 billion fine, largest ever for violating consumer privacy, to the US Federal Trade Commission

2019 10th million Mini car produced during its 60th anniversary year in Oxford

Born Today ;-

1689 – Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, son of Queen Anne of Great Britain and Prince George of Denmark

1783 Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan political and military leader (freed 6 Latin American republics from Spanish rule), born in Caracas

1802 Alexandre Dumas, French author (The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo), born in Aisne

1897 Amelia Earhart, American aviator (1st woman to fly solo across the Atlantic), born in Atchison, Kansas

1915 Egon Ronay, Hungarian food critic, born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary

1951 Lynda Carter, American actress (Wonder Woman, Sky High) and Miss USA (1973), born in Phoenix, Arizona

1966 – Martin Keown, Everton & England footballer

1969 Jennifer Lopez, actress and pop singer (Selena), born in The Bronx, New York

1977 Danny Dyer, English actor and television presenter

Died Today ;-

1883 Capt Matthew Webb, First English Channel swimmer, drowns at Niagara Falls whirlpool at 35

1980 Peter Sellers, English actor and comedian (The Goon Show, Pink Panther), dies at 54

1997 Brian Glover, British actor and wrestler (Alien 3, Kes), dies of a brain tumour at 63

2010 Alex Higgins, Legendary Champion snooker player

2012 – Robert Ledley, American physiologist and physicist, invented the CT scanner

[Alikado]

International Red Shoe Day

1360 Jews are expelled from Breslau, Silesia

1521 About 300 heretics burned in Vrijdagmarkt Gent

1554 Mary I of England (37) marries Prince Philip of Spain (27) (later Philip II) at Winchester Cathedral,

1603 – James VI of Scotland is crowned king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would occur in 1707.

1609 – The English ship Sea Venture, en route to Virginia, is deliberately driven ashore during a storm at Bermuda to prevent its sinking; the survivors go on to found a new colony there.

1745 Jacoibite Rising Bonnie Prince Charlie lands on Eriskay, Hebrides

1788 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor

1795 The first stone of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct near Llangollen is laid

1797 Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife

1814 English engineer George Stephenson introduces his first steam locomotive, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway named Blücher

1837 The first commercial use of an electric telegraph successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone between Euston and Camden Town in London

1854 Walter Hunt is awarded the first U.S. patent for a paper shirt collar

1900 Gloucestershire captain Gilbert Jessop hits his second century (139 in 95 minutes) before lunch in same County Cricket match (104 previous day); Yorkshire wins by 40 runs

1901 Emily Hobhouse addresses public meetings in Britain on the concentration camps during the South African War

1909 France's Louis Bleriot, makes 1st airplane flight across English Channel

1914 Last day of club cricket for English legend W. G. Grace at age 66: makes unbeaten 69 runs for Eltham against Grove Park

1917 Sir Thomas Whyte introduces the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

1923 German mark devalued to 600,000 Mark=$1

1934 Failed Nazi coup in Austria

1938 Jewish artisans not allowed in Germany

1942 German troops strike at Tsym Lyanskaja

1943 RAF bombs Fokker airplane factory in Amsterdam

1944 Japanese banzai-attack on Guam

1944 1st jet fighter used in combat (Messerschmitt 262)

1944 Operation Cobra: US forces begin major offensive in Normandy with air bombardment

1944 Operation Spring - one of Canada's bloodiest days, 18,444 casualties and 5,021 killed

1959 SR-N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours.

1964 Australian cricket captain and opening batsman Bob Simpson hits 311 v England in the drawn 4th Test in Manchester

1969 Edward Kennedy pleads guilty to leaving scene of an accident a week after the Chappaquiddick car accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne

1972 US health officials concede African American were used as guinea pigs in 40 year syphilis experiment

1978 – Birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilisation, or IVF.

1981 Anti-apartheid protesters in Hamilton, New Zealand, force the cancellation of a rugby test between New Zealand's All Blacks and South Africa’s Springboks by invading the pitch during the game

1985 Steve Cram runs world record mile (3:46.32)

1993 Israeli offensive in South Lebanon

1997 Scientists announce the first human stem cells to be cultured in a laboratory using tissue taken from aborted human embryos

2000 Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde supersonic passenger jet, F-BTSC, crashes just after takeoff from Paris killing all 109 aboard and 4 on the ground.

2002 17th Commonwealth Games open in Manchester, England

2010 – WikiLeaks publishes classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history.

2012 The UK economy returns to recession with a fall of 0.2% in GDP in the first quarter of 2012 following a fall of 0.3% in the last quarter of 2011

2012 The double dip recession in the UK economy continues with a fall of 0.7% in GDP in the second quarter of 2012

2014 Palestinian officials call for a "Day of Rage" in the West Bank and within Israel against Israel's operation against Gaza; Israeli Defence Force prepares for protests

2016 Lancs & England fast bowler Jimmy Anderson becomes first quick to take 50 wickets against all other 7 major Test cricket-playing nations during 2nd Test against Pakistan in Manchester

2017 Wildfires on France's Mediterranean coast near Bormes-les-Mimosas prompts evacuation of 12,000 people

2018 Multiple suicide bombings and attacks by the Islamic State in Sweida and surrounding areas of Syria kill more than 200

2018 Somalia’s attorney general announces country's first prosecution of female genital mutilation after death of a 10-year-old girl

2019 Worst Mediterranean migrant drownings this year when boat carrying 250 people capsizes off Libyan coast, with over 100 feared drowned

2019 Highest ever UK temperature of 38.7C (101.6F) recorded in Cambridge, High temperature records set across Europe just one day after previous records set, Paris 42.6C (108.7F), Germany 42.6C (108.6F), Netherlands 40.7C (105.2F), Belgium 40.6C (105.2F)

2020 North Korea reports first 'suspected' case of COVID-19 in city of Kaesong

Born Today ;-

1394 – James I, king of Scotland

1874 Sergey Vasilyevich Lebedev, Russian Chemist who invented the first commercially viable and mass-produced synthetic rubber, born in Lublin, Poland

1894 Gavrilo Princip, Bosnian-Serb assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, born in Obljaj, Bosnia

1913 John Cairncross, British civil servant and spy (5th man - Cambridge Five), born in Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire

1915 David Napley, High profile solicitor, Over the years his clients included Jeremy Thorpe, Princess Michael of Kent, actress Maria Aitken, the Foreign Office clerk Sarah Tisdall, former member of parliament Harvey Proctor, the Queen's bodyguard Commander Michael Trestrail, the family of the Italian banker Roberto Calvi and musician Adam "Ad-Rock" Horowitz from the Beastie Boys, born in London

1920 Rosalind Franklin, English chemist and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

1943 Jim McCarty, drummer (Yardbirds - "For Your Love"; Renaissance, 1969-70), born in Liverpool

1945 Labi Siffre, singer-songwriter, born in London

1950 Mark Clarke, bassist (Colosseum; Tempest; Uriah Heep), born in Liverpool

1954 Lynne Frederick, actress (Schizophrenia), born in Hillingdon, Middlesex was married to both Peter Sellars & David Frost

1970 Lord Nicholas Windsor, youngest son of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, born in King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London

1974 Gareth Thomas, Welsh ruby player 100 test match appearances he was the most capped Welsh rugby union player and leading try scorer also won four rugby league caps for Wales, scoring three tries. born in Sarn Mid Glamorgan

1978 Louise Brown, English woman who was the first person to be born through in vitro fertilization, born in Oldham

Died Today ;-

1834 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British romantic poet (Rime of Ancient Mariner), dies of heart failure at 61

1843 Charles Macintosh, Scottish chemist and inventor of waterproof fabric. The Mackintosh raincoat is named after him.

1995 Charlie Rich, American country singer (Lonely Weekends), dies at 62

2003 – John Schlesinger, English actor, director, producer, and screenwriter - Midnight Cowboy

2009 – Harry Patch, English soldier - "the Last Fighting Tommy" the last surviving combat soldier of the First World War from any country. Died aged 111 years, 1 month, 1 week and 1 day old and was the worlds 3rd oldest man.

2020 Peter Green [Greenbaum], English guitarist (Fleetwood Mac -"Albatross"), dies at 73

2020 Olivia de Havilland, American actress (All the King's Men, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gone with the Wind), dies at 104

[Alikado]

World Tofu Day

Esperanto Day

1745 – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place near Guildford

1755 Giacomo Casanova is arrested in Venice for affront to religion and common decency and imprisoned in the Doge's Palace

1803 The Surrey Iron Railway, argued by some to be the world's first public railway, opens in south London

1805 Naples/Calabria struck by Earthquake; about 26,000 die

1858 Baron Lionel de Rothschild becomes the 1st Jewish person elected to the British Parliament

1882 Richard Wagner's opera "Parsifal" premieres in Bayreuth, Germany

1902 Australia beat England by 3 runs at Old Trafford

1914 Irish Volunteers unload a shipment of 1,500 rifles and 45,000 rounds of ammunition arrive from Germany aboard Erskine Childers' yacht the Asgard; British troops fire on jeering crowd on Bachelors Walk, Dublin, killing three citizens

1944 – The Red Army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.

1944 Japanese suicide attacks on US lines in Guam

1944 The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain (nicknamed "gasometer").

1945 – The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power in favour of Clement Atlee

1945 – HMS Vestal is the last British Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the war.

1945 Declaration of Potsdam: US, Britain and China demand the unconditional surrender of Japan during WWII

1979 Estimated 109 cm (43") of rain falls in Alvin, Texas (national record)

2005 Mumbai, India receives 99.5cm of rain (39.17 inches) within 24 hours, bringing the city to a halt for over 2 days

2014 While Israel reject long-term ceasefire that does not include destroying the Hamas tunnels, they agree to 12 hour ceasefire; Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip now exceeds 1000

2014 The Chinese government suspends a Shanghai meat dealer and makes arrests after the company sold out-of-date meat to fast food chains, including McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken

2015 102nd Tour de France won by Chris Froome of Great Britain

2017 US President Donald Trump announces policy to ban transgender people from the military, overturning Obama era changes

2017 Great Britain announces it will ban petrol and diesel cars by 2040

2018 Facebook has the single worst day of any public company on the stock market - losing 19% or $119 billion market value

2018 Over 700 immigrant children still separated from their parents in the US as court-imposed deadline to reunite them passes

2018 Sir Paul McCartney performs a secret gig at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, where the Beatles began

2021 Dominant British breaststroke swimmer Adam Peaty successfully defends his 100m title at the Tokyo Olympics beating Arno Kamminga of the Netherlands and Italian Nicolò Martinenghi, Diver Tom Daley gains his first Gold at his fourth Olympics in men's synchronised 10m platform


Born Today ;-

1856 George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist (Pygmalion, Nobel Prize for Literature 1925), born in Dublin

1875 Carl Jung, Swiss Psychiatrist (founded analytic psychology), born in Kesswil, Switzerland

1894 Aldous Huxley, author (Brave New World, Island), born in Godalming

1895 Jane Bunford, Britain's tallest-ever person measuring 2.41 metres (7 ft 11 in) at the time of her death, born in Bartley Green, Northfield, Birmingham

1928 Stanley Kubrick, American director (2001 A Space Odyssey, Dr Strangelove, Lolita), born in The Bronx NY

1933 Lance Percival, actor and comedian (That Was The Week That Was), born in Sevenoaks, Kent

1943 – Mick Jagger, singer-songwriter, producer, and actor, (Rolling Stones - "Let's Spend the Night Together"; "Sympathy For The Devil"), actor (Performance), and knight, born in Dartford, Kent

1945 Helen Mirren [Ilyena Lydia Vasilievna Mironoff], English actress (The Queen, The Madness of King George), born in London

1949 Roger Taylor, rock drummer (Queen - "Bohemian Rhapsody"), born in Norfolk

1950 Susan George, English actress (Straw Dogs, Mandingo), born in London

1959 Kevin Spacey, American actor (American Beauty, House of Cards), born in South Orange, New Jersey

1969 – Tanni Grey-Thompson, Welsh baroness and wheelchair racer

1973 – Kate Beckinsale, actress

1980 Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand (2017-present), born in Hamilton

1993 Stormzy [Michael Owuo Jr.] English rapper (Shut Up), born in London

Died Today ;-

796 Offa, king of Mercia (75.-796)

1533 Atahualpa, last Sapa Inca Emperor, garroted by order of Francisco Pizarro at about 52

1684 Elena Cornaro Piscopia, Italian mathematician and the 1st woman to receive an academic degree from a university, dies of tuberculosis at 38

1925 Antonio Ascari, Italian racing driver was killed while leading the 1925 French Grand Prix

1939 Billy Murphy, New Zealand boxer (world featherweight champion 1890; first world champion in any class from NZ), dies at 75

1952 Eva Perón [Evita], Argentine First Lady (1946-52) actress, suffragette, unionist and humanitarian who was inspiration for A.L. Webber's musical "Evita", dies of cancer at 33

1984 George Gallup, American survey sampling pioneer and inventor of the Gallup poll, dies of a heart attack at 82

1992 Mary Wells, US soul singer (My Guy), dies at 49

1994 Owen "Terry" Scott, British actor and comedian (Terry and June, Carry On Films), dies of cancer at 67

2015 Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, dies in a coma at 22

[Alikado]

Norfolk Day

Bagpipe Appreciation Day

National Scotch Day

150 Shopping Days to C********$

1054 – Siward, Earl of Northumbria, invades Scotland and defeats Macbeth, King of Scotland somewhere north of the Firth of Forth.

1377 First example of quarantine in Rugusa (now Dubroknik); city council passes law saying newcomers from plague areas must isolation for 30 days (later 40 days, quaranta in Italian)

1566 Tribunal convicts Agnes Waterhouse of witchcraft, and sentences her to be first British woman executed for the crime (Chelmsford)

1586 Walter Raleigh brings the 1st tobacco to England from Virginia

1643 Oliver Cromwell defeats Royalists at Battle of Gainsborough

1689 Battle of Killicrankie: Jacobite Scottish Highlanders under Viscount Dundee defeat royalist force under General MacKay 2500+ dead during the First Jacobite Rising

1714 British Queen Anne dismisses premier Robert Haley

1794 Maximilien Robespierre is overthrown in a coup in Paris after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 "enemies of the Revolution".

1816 – Battle of Negro Fort: The battle ends when a hot shot cannonball fired by US Navy Gunboat No. 154 explodes the Fort's Powder Magazine, killing approximately 275. It is considered the deadliest single cannon shot in US history.

1862 Hurricane hits Canton; about 40,000 die

1866 Atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid (1,686 miles long) stretching from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Heart's Content, Newfoundland. The steamship SS Great Eastern designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel laid the cable and arrived at Heart's Content on the 27th July. The first message across the Atlantic was delivered the next day.

1890 Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh shoots himself in Auvers-sur-Oise, dies of injuries 2 days later

1909 Orville Wright tests 1st US Army airplane, flying 1h12m40s

1909 British ship SS Waratah is last seen en-route from Durban to Cape Town; 211 on board are missing and no trace of the ship ever found

1917 Allied troops reach the Yser Canal in the prelude to the Battle of Passchendaele

1928 Tich Freeman becomes only bowler ever to take 200 first-class wickets before end of July

1929 – The Geneva Convention of 1929, dealing with treatment of prisoners-of-war, is signed by 53 nations.

1935 Floods at Yangtzee Jiang and Hoangh, kill 200,000

1940 Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Tex Avery, Bob Givens (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series), first debuts in "Wild Hare"

1941 German army enters Ukraine

1941 Japanese forces land in Indo-China

1942 – World War II: Allied forces successfully halt the final Axis advance into Egypt.

1943 772 British bombers attack Hamburg

1944 1st British jet fighter used in combat (Gloster Meteor)

1944 Soviet Army frees Majdanek concentration camp

1944 US troops occupy le Mesnil-Herman/Hill 183 Normandy

1948 Bradman's 29th and last Test Cricket century

1949 1st jet-propelled airliner (De Havilland Comet) flies

1952 Emile Zatopek runs Olympic record marathon (2:23:03.2)

1952 Swedish race walker John Mikaelsson makes it back-to-back gold medals in the 10k event at the Helsinki Olympics, having won the corresponding race in London in 1948

1953 North Korea and the United Nations sign armistice to stop fighting and divide Korea at the 38th parallel

1954 Armistice divides Vietnam into two countries

1955 Austria regains full independence after 4-power occupation since WWII

1956 England cricket spin bowler Jim Laker takes 9-37 in Australia's 1st innings in 4th Test at Manchester; best return ever in Test cricket; bettered in 2nd innings 10-53

1962 Martin Luther King Jr. jailed in Albany, Georgia

1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill requiring cigarette makers to print health warnings on all cigarette packages about the effects of smoking

1977 John Lennon is granted a green card for permanent residence in US

1984 West Indies cricket opening batsman Gordon Greenidge smashes 223 in innings & 64 run win over England in 4th Test at Manchester; Windies lead series, 4-0

1985 Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway becomes first woman to run 10,000m in under 31 minutes; takes world record down to 30:59.42 in Oslo

1986 Iraqi jets attack central Iranian city of Arak; Iran threatens missile attack of gulf states supporting Iraq

1990 Graham Gooch scores 333 v India at Lord's

1990 Tom Moody scores 100 in 26 mins in county cricket, world record

1990 Zsa Zsa Gabor begins a 3 day jail sentence for slapping a police officer in Beverly Hills

1996 David Sales makes 210 on 1st class cricket debut for Northants v Worcs

1997 Si Zerrouk massacre in Algeria; about 50 people killed. The attack on villagers took place close to army barracks.

2002 Ukraine airshow disaster: A Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes during an air show at Lviv, Ukraine killing 85, injuring more than 100, largest air show disaster in history

2012 Queen Elizabeth II opens the 30th Olympics in London (with some help from 007)

2013 1,000 inmates escape from a prison in Benghazi, Libya

2013 100 people are killed and 1,500 injured in a crackdown against protesters in Cairo

2014 Liberia shuts down most of its borders with fears about the spread of Ebola epidemic

2014 Obama reaffirms Israel's "right to defend itself", but condemns civilian casualties in Gaza

2016 – At a news conference in Florida, U.S. Presidential Candidate Donald Trump publicly appealed to Russia to find and release private emails from Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton; a Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019) later alleged that Russian operatives began hacking into servers at the Democratic National Committee on that same day, leading to the July 13, 2018 indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers.

2017 Boy Scouts of American chief Michael Surbaugh apologies for politically motivated remarks made by President Donald Trump at rally attended by 30,000 scouts

2017 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos briefly becomes world's richest man at $91.4bn overtaking Bill Gates for half a day

2019 US President Trump, calls Baltimore a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess," calls Congress Rep Elijah Cummings responsible

2020 Google decides its employees can work from home until July 2021, the largest tech company to commit to working from home

2020 WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus states that COVID-19 is "easily the most severe" global health emergency the WHO has faced

Born Today ;-

1870 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born British writer and historian

1882 – Geoffrey de Havilland, English pilot and engineer, founded the de Havilland Aircraft Company

1929 – Jack Higgins [Harry Patterson], English author and academic, 85 novels inc 'The Eagle Has Landed', born in Newcastle upon Tyne

1930 – Shirley Williams ( Baroness Williams of Crosby), English academic and politician, Secretary of State for Education

1930 Andy White, Scottish drummer, drummed on early Beatles records ("Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You"), born in Glasgow

1958 – Christopher Dean, English figure skater and choreographer Gold Winter Olympics 1984 with Jayne Torvil

1960 – Emily Thornberry (Lady Nugee), English lawyer and politician

1960 Jo Durie, English tennis player, born in Bristol

Died Today ;-

1916 Charles Fryatt, Capt of passenger ferry SS Brussels, executed by Germans for try to ram U Boat U33

1980 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, last Shah of Iran (Persia) (1941-79), dies in Cairo of splenomegaly at 60

1984 James Mason, British actor (Lolita, North by Northwest, Bloodline, Boys From Brazil), dies of a heart attack at 75

2003 Bob Hope [Leslie Townes Hope], English-born American actor, comedian and entertainer, dies at 100

2007 Lucky(Leo) Grills, Australian actor - Bluey

2012 Geoffrey Hughes, British actor, dies from prostate cancer at 68

[Alikado]

World Nature Conservation Day

World Hepatitis Day

1540 – Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason.

1540 English King Henry VIII (49) marries Catherine Howard (16 or 17), his 5th wife

1586 Sir Thomas Harriot introduces potatoes to Europe on return to England

1794 French Revolutionary figure Maximilien Robespierre and 22 other leaders of "the Terror" guillotined to thunderous cheers in Paris

1858 First use of fingerprints as a means of identification is made by Sir William James Herschel of the Indian Civil Service

1866 Metric system becomes a legal measurement system in US

1883 Shocks triggered by volcano Epomeo (Isle of Ischia, Italy) destroyed 1,200 houses at Casamicciola killing 2,000

1900 Hamburger created by Louis Lassing in Connecticut

1914 First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill orders British Grand Fleet to Scapa Flow

1937 Eddie Paynter scores 322 for Lancashire against Sussex

1939 – The Sutton Hoo helmet is discovered.

1938 34,000-ton Cunard-White Star liner Mauretania launched at Birkenhead

1942 Nazis liquidate 10,000 Jews in Minsk Belorussia Ghetto

1943 Operation Gomorrah: RAF bombing over Hamburg causes a firestorm that kills 42,600 German civilians

1944 US 8th Army corp occupies Coutances France

1945 Japanese premier Suzuki disregards US ultimatum to surrender

1945 US Army B-25 crashes into 79th floor of Empire State Bldg, 14 die

1945 "Elevator girl" Betty Lou Oliver survives falling 75 stories after fog causes a US bomber plane to crash into the Empire State Building, breaking the cables supporting the elevator she was operating. This remains a world record for the longest survived elevator fall

1948 London's Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foils a bullion robbery in the "Battle of London Airport".

1954 "On the Waterfront", directed by Elia Kazan starring Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint, is released (Academy Awards Best Picture 1955)

1957 Heavy rain and a mudslide in Isahaya, western Ky?sh?, Japan, kill 992

1959 United Kingdom starts using postal codes

1964 England all out 611 in reply to Australia's 8-656 Match a draw

1965 LBJ sends 50,000 more soldiers to Vietnam (total of 125,000)

1974 69 die when packed bus strikes heavy truck in Belem, Brazil

1976 Tangshan Earthquake, 8.2 in magnitude kills over 242,769 and injuring 164,851 in Northern China in the largest loss of life from an earthquake in the 20th century

1977 Legendary England cricket all-rounder Ian Botham on debut takes 5 for 74 in the Australian 1st innings at Trent Bridge

1978 Price of gold tops $200-an-oz level for 1st time

1978 600,000 attend the "Summer Jam" rock festival at Watkins Glen, New York, at the time the largest ever audience at a pop festival

1986 NASA releases transcript from doomed Challenger, pilot Michael Smith could be heard saying, "Uh-oh!" as spacecraft disintegrated

2005 The Provisional Irish Republican Army call an end to their thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland

2005 A tornado touches down in a residential area in south Birmingham, England, causing £4,000,000 worth of damages and injuring 39 people.

2008 Historic Weston-super-Mare Grand Pier burns down for a second time in 80 years

2014 Israel criticizes John Kerry's proposed ceasefire, stating that no ceasefire deal will be accepted without the destruction of tunnels leading from Gaza to Israel and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip

2016 Earliest evidence of cancer found in 1.7 million-year-old toe fossil from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, published in "South African Journal of Science"

2017 US Senate vote for "skinny" repeal of Obamacare fails 51-49 when John McCain casts deciding vote against

2019 British Senior Open Men's Golf, Royal Lytham & St Annes GC: Germany's Bernhard Langer wins his 4th Senior Open by 2 strokes from Paul Broadhurst

2019 First Fortnite World Cup won by US teenager Kyle Giersdorf with largest ever e-sports prize of $3 million at Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York

2019 Meghan Duchess of Sussex, revealed as the first guest editor for UK Vogue in 103 years for its September issue

Born Today ;-

1866 Beatrix Potter, English children's author and illustrator (The Tale of Peter Rabbit), born in London

1904 Selwyn Lloyd, Wirral MP served as Leader of the House and Speaker, born in West Kirby

1909 Malcolm Lowry, English novelist (Under the Volcano), born in New Brighton

1929 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, American First Lady (1961-63), born in Southampton, New York

1935 Simon Dee, television broadcaster

1936 – Sir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers, Legendary Barbadian cricketer both on & off the field

1945 – Jim Davis, American cartoonist, created Garfield

1951 – Ray Kennedy, Liverpool & England footballer, career was cut short by Parkinsons.

1954 Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela (1998-2013), born in Sabaneta, Barinas State, Venezuela

1971 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Leader of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), born in Samarra, Iraq

1993 – Harry Kane, England footballer, Captain

Died Today ;-

1540 Thomas Cromwell, English chief minister for King Henry VIII, executed for treason and heresy

1655 Cyrano de Bergerac, French dramatist/novelist, dies at 36 in Paris

1741 Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Baroque composer (The Four Seasons)

1750 Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer (Art of the Fugue, Mattheus-Passion)

1794 Georges Couthon, French politician
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, French soldier and politician known as 'The Angel of Death'
Maximilien Robespierre, French revolutionary (President of the National Convention, Member of Committee of Public Safety), executed by guillotine

1809 – Richard Beckett, English cricketer ( MCC & England) and Captainin the Coldstream Guards during the Napoleonic Wars, killed in action during the Battle of Talavera. He was the first first-class cricketer to be killed on active service.

1844 Joseph Bonaparte, older brother of Napoleon I and King of Naples and Spain

2004 Francis Crick, English molecular biologist - DNA , Nobel laureate (1962),Held contraversial views on Eugenics & Religion,I do not respect Christian beliefs. I think they are ridiculous. If we could get rid of them we could more easily get down to the serious problem of trying to find out what the world is all about, once joked, "Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children." dies of colon cancer at 88

2020 – Junrey Balawing, Filipino record holder for the world's shortest man alive measuring at 60.00 centimetres (23.62 in) tall. The declaration came during Balawing's 18th birthday celebration. Guinness World Records official said Balawing broke the record of Khagendra Thapa Magar of Nepal, who was 0.67 m (2 ft 2+1?3 in) tall. He missed the title of shortest man in history, which was held until 2012 by Gul Mohammed of India, who was 57 centimetres (22 in) tall he lost the title in February 2012 to Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal, who stands 54.6 centimetres (21.5 in) tall was declared the world's shortest living man ever.

[Alikado]

World Day against Trafficking in Persons

World Snorkeling Day

International Day of Friendship

1419 First defenestration of Prague: anti-Catholic Hussites, followers of executed reformer Jan Hus, storm Prague town hall and throw the judge, mayor and several city council members out the windows. They die in the fall or killed by crowd outside.

1626 – An earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills about 10,000 people

1792 500 Marseillaisian men sing France's national anthem for 1st time

1863 President Abraham Lincoln issues "eye-for-eye" order to shoot a rebel prisoner for every black prisoner shot

1869 The Charles, considered the world’s first "oil tanker", departs from the United States headed for Europe with a bulk capacity of 7,000 barrels of oil

1871 – The Staten Island Ferry Westfield's boiler explodes, killing over 85 people.

1878 German anti-semitism begins during the Reichstag election

1884 Nonpareil Dempsey [John Edward Kelly] fights George Fulljames, the 1st middleweight fight with boxing gloves

1900 British Parliament passes several progressive social acts: a Mines Act, a Workmen's Compensation Act and a Railway Act

1914 Austrian-Hungary & Russia proclaim general mobilization

1914 French troops withdraw 10 km from German border

1928 George Eastman shows first amateur color motion pictures to guests at his New York house including Thomas Edison

1930 1st FIFA World Cup Final, Estadio Centenario, Montevideo, Uruguay: Uruguay beats Argentina, 4-2 in the inaugural event

1935 1st Penguin book is published, starting the paperback revolution

1937 Russian Politburo issues NKVD Order no. 00447, to repress former kulak and anti-soviets, 269,100 to be arrested, 76,000 to be shot. Part of the Great Purge.

1942 German SS kills 25,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia

1942 German occupiers set night curfew on Jews in Netherlands

1945 After delivering the Atomic Bomb across the Pacific, the cruiser USS Indianapolis is torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-58. 880 of the crew died, many after being attacked by sharks, the inspiration for the movie Jaws.

1948 Czech distance running legend Emil Zátopek wins the 10,000m at the London Olympics in 29:59.6, an Olympic record

1949 HMS Amethyst escapes down Yangtze River, having been refused a safe passage by Chinese Communists after 3-month standoff

1963 British spy Kim Philby found in Moscow

1965 LBJ signs Medicare bill, which goes into effect in 1966

1966 FIFA World Cup Final, Wembley Stadium, Geoff Hurst scores a hat trick as England beats West Germany, 4-2 after extra time

1976 4 Protestant civilians were shot dead at a pub off Milltown Road, Belfast; the attack was claimed by the Republican Action Force

1984 Holly Roffey aged 11 days is the youngest ever to receive a heart transplant

1988 Jordanian King Hussein renounces sovereignty over West Bank to the PLO

1990 Graham Gooch scores 123 v India to follow up 1st innings 333

1990 Soldiers opens fire on worshippers in Monrovian church, 200-600 die

1992 Yael Arad becomes Israel's first ever Olympic medalist when she wins silver in the women's 61kg judo in Barcelona; 20th anniversary of Munich massacre and 500th anniversary of Alhambra Decree

1995 Dominic Cork takes hat-trick in England Test Cricket win v WI

2003 The last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line in Mexico

2006 World's longest running music show "Top of the Pops" is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show aired for 42 years.

2011 – Marriage of Queen Elizabeth II's eldest granddaughter Zara Phillips to former rugby union international Mike Tindall, she won a silver medal at the 2012 Olympics

2012 General Motors (Chevrolet) sign a record breaking 7 year $559 million sponsorship deal with EPL club Manchester United

2012 Indian power grid failure leaves over 300 million without electricity

2014 Death toll in Gaza reaches 1,346, while 56 Israeli soldiers and 3 civilians have been killed

2015 In Bandar Mahshahr, Iran, the temperature reaches 46C (109F), humidity makes it feel like 73C

2018 British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt mistakenly calls his Chinese-born wife "Japanese" in meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing

2020 Barack Obama gives the eulogy at the funeral of congressman John Lewis, with former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Donald Trump doesn't attend.

2020 The US economy posts the largest quarterly fall on record with GDP down 9.5% for the 3 months to June 30

2020 Federal law enforcement officers begin withdrawal from Portland amid criticism of their actions to shut down Black Lives Matter protests

Born Today ;-

1747 Antonio Benedetto Maria Puccini, Italian composer, born in Lucca, Italy

1751 Maria Anna Mozart, Austrian pianist and Wolfgang's sister, born in Salzburg

1818 Emily Brontë, novelist (Wuthering Heights), born in Thornton, West Yorkshire

1863 Henry Ford, American industrialist and auto maker (Ford Model T), born in Dearborn Township, Michigan

1898 Henry Moore, English artist and sculptor (known for Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae), born in Castleford

1940 Clive Sinclair, British computer inventor (ZX Spectrum), born in Richmond, Surrey

1941 Paul Anka, Canadian singer (Put Your Head on My Shoulder), born in Ottawa, Ontario

1947 Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-American body builder, actor (Terminator) and politician (38th Governor of California), born in Thal, Austria

1950 – Harriet Harman, English lawyer and politician

1958 Kate Bush, English singer-songwriter (Wild Things, Wuthering Heights), born in Plumstead

1958 Elizabeth Marguerita Mary Kershaw, Broadcaster, journalist, brother of Andy Kershaw, born Littleborough,

1958 Kate Bush, English singer-songwriter (Running Up That Hill, Wuthering Heights), born in Bexleyheath

1962 Andy Green, Royal Air Force pilot the current holder of the World Land speed record in ThrustSSC, and the first person to break the sound barrier on land, he is also the holder of the Diesel Land Speed Record achieving a speed of 350.092 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, born in Atherstone, Warwickshire

1974 Jason 'Billy Whizz' Robinson, English dual-code international rugby player, eldest son Lewis Tierneyplays fRL for Wigan Warriors & Scotland, son Patrick is a professional cyclist is the three-time reigning champion for the Street Velodrome cycling discipline, born in Leeds

1980 Justin Rose, English golfer (US Open 2013), born in Johannesburg, South Africa

1982 Jimmy Anderson, Lancashire & England cricket fast bowler (most wickets for England in both Test and ODI cricket), born in Burnley

1992 – Hannah Cockroft, English wheelchair racer, 5 Olympic Golds She holds the world records for the 100 metres, 200 metres, 400 metres, 800 metres and 1500 metres in her classification and the Paralympic records at 100 metres, 200 metres, 400 metres and 800 metres

1993 – André Gomes, Everton & Portugal footballer

Died Today ;-

1700 – Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, English royal

1771 – Thomas Gray, English poet

1898 Otto von Bismarck, German "Iron" chancellor, dies at 83

1914 Albert Trott, cricketer (3 Tests for Aus, 2 for Eng), he is believed to be the only batsman to have struck a ball over the top of the Lord's Pavilion and is also one of only two players to take two hat-tricks in the same first-class innings which was also his benefit match causing an early end which meant that it did not raise as much money for him as it might have done, and he is said to have remarked that he had "bowled himself into the poorhouse". His popularity rose as he enjoyed regular ales with spectators on the boundary while fielding, older brother Harry Trott also played Test cricket for Australia, the South African-born English cricketer Jonathan Trott claims to be a distant relation.he wrote his will on the back of a laundry ticket, leaving his wardrobe and £4 to his landlady. Shortly afterwards, one day before the 15th anniversary of his famous strike over the pavilion at Lord's, he shot himself

2005 Anthony Walker, English hate crime murder victim, murdered with an ice axe by Michael Barton (brother of footballer Joey Barton) and his cousin Paul Taylor in an unprovoked, racially motivated attack in Huyton

2007 Ingmar Bergman, Swedish stage and film director (Cries & Whispers), dies at 89

2015 Lynn Anderson, American country singer (I Never Promised you a Rose Garden), dies of a heart attack at 67

[Alikado]

World Ranger Day

International Decora Day

1492 – The Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect.

1588 – The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England.

1703 Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers

1715 – Seven days after a Spanish treasure fleet of 12 ships left Havana, Cuba for Spain, 11 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.

1737 Prince Frederick of Wales escapes the English court, he was a cricket enthusiast but it is suspected that this was motivated by gambling.

1751 Fire in Stockholm destroys 1,000 houses

1786 "Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect" by Robert Burns is published by John Wilson in Kilmarnock

1852 Hottest July in Netherlands since at least 1783 (68.4°F (20.2°C) avg)

1855 Hottest July in Stockholm since at least 1756 (21.4°C avg)

1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.

1861 9,300 mm rainfall in July in Cherrapunji, Assam: then world record

1865 – The first narrow-gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Queensland

1879 The first cable connection between South Africa and Europe is laid by the British electrical engineer Charles Tilston Bright as part of his project to link the British Empire with growing telecommunications technologies

1899 Albert Trott hits Monty Noble over the Pavilion at Lord's, it is believed it is the only time this has happened.

1914 German Emperor Wilhelm II threatens war, orders Russia to demobilize

1917 Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) begins, goes on to cause approximately 500,000 casualties

1925 Unemployment Insurance Act passed in Britain

1928 Halina Konopacka of Poland hurls discus world record 39.62m to win first gold medal in women's Olympic athletics at the Amsterdam Games;

1928 In the first women’s Olympic track event, American sprinter Elizabeth Robinson equals her own world record 12.2s to win 100m gold medal in Amsterdam; Canadians Fanny Rosenfeld & Ethel Smith dead-heat (12.3s)

1932 – The NSDAP (Nazi Party) wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections.

1938 MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis suspends New York Yankees outfielder Jake Powell after he said on Chicago radio he kept in shape by "cracking" African Americans over the head with his nightstick

1941 – The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final Solution of the Jewish question."

1941 U-boats sink and damage 21 allied ships this month (80,521 tons)

1942 German SS gases 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia

1943 Transport #58 departs with French Jews to Nazi Germany

1944 Last deportation train out Mechelen departs to Auschwitz

1944 Transport #77 departs with French Jews to Nazi Germany

1944 US troops occupy Sansapor, New Guinea

1945 – Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria

1948 – USS Nevada is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target practice by three other ships.

1954 First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio

1956 England cricket spin bowler Jim Laker takes 10-53 in Australia's 2nd innings; match figures 19-90 in 4th Test at Old Trafford; England win by innings & 170 runs

1959 Cliff Richard and the Shadows have their 1st British No. 1 single with "Living' Doll" (biggest British single of 1959)

1961 Israel welcomes its one millionth immigrant

1962 England fast bowler Brian Statham becomes Test cricket's leading wicket-taker with world-record tally of 237 as Australian wicketkeeper Barry Shepherd is caught by Fred Truman for 10 in drawn 4th Test

1964 Rolling Stones concert in Ireland halts after 12 minutes due to riot

1965 Cigarette advertising banned on British TV

1967 Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards end 1 month jail sentence

1970 Daniel O'Hagan (19), a Catholic civilian, is shot dead by the British Army during a serious riot in the New Lodge Road area of Belfast

1970 Black Tot Day: the last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy (started 1740)

1972 Operation Motorman: the British Army use 12,000 soldiers supported by tanks and bulldozers to re-take the "no-go areas" controlled by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It is the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis of 1956, and the biggest in Ireland since the Irish War of Independence. Later that day, nine civilians are killed by car bombs in the village of Claudy.

1973 Lancashire batsman Frank Hayes scores unbeaten 106 in England Test debut in 1st Test v West Indies at The Oval, the tourists win by 158 runs

1980 Hurricane Allen forms in the Atlantic Ocean, will go on to become the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin with winds of 190mph (305km/h)

1982 46 kids & 7 adults die as 2 buses and several cars collide near Beaune, France

1983 Dutch July average temperature is 20.1°C; warmest July since 1852

1992 Three world record swims on final night session at the Barcelona Olympics; Australian Kieren Perkins 1,500m (14:43.4); Tamás Darnyi of Hungary 200m backstroke (1:59.36); China's Yang Wenyi women's 50m freestyle (24.79)
Hungarian swimmer Krisztina Egerszegi earns her 3rd gold medal of the Barcelona Olympics winning 200m backstroke for the 100-200 double along with 400m I/M gold

1994 102.7°F (39.3°C) in Pleschen, East-Germany
1994 Arcen Limburg averages 71.6°F (22.0°C) in July: record
1994 Netherlands' warmest July since 1783 - average 21.4°C

1994 Sergei Bubka pole vaults his 35th world record (6.14 m)

1994 Stockholm averages 21.5°C; the warmest July since 1855

2005 British Open Women's Golf, Royal Birkdale GC: Jeong Jang of South Korea leads wire-to-wire to win her first LPGA event and lone major title, 4 strokes ahead of Sophie Gustafson

2007 Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end

2012 Germany wins London Olympic equestrian eventing final; daughter of Princess Anne, Zara Phillips part of GB silver medal winning team

2012 Michael Phelps becomes the greatest medal winner in Olympic history as part of the winning American 4 x 200m freestyle relay team in London; Phelps' 19th career Olympic medal and 15th overall gold

2012 A second power grid failure in India in two days leaves 670 million people without power

2012 Germany wins London Olympic equestrian eventing final; daughter of Princess Anne, Zara Phillips part of GB silver medal winning team

2014 The US agree to resupply arms to Israel - including rocket launchers, mortar rounds, grenades - despite condemnation of civilian casualties in Gaza
Israel and Hamas agree to a 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire

2017 England cricket spin bowler Moeen Ali takes a hat-trick in 239 run 3rd Test win over South Africa; 100th Test match played at The Oval, London

2018 Rihanna becomes the first black woman to appear on the cover of British Vogue's September issue

2018 Facebook discloses and removes Russian-linked network of sites attempting to interfere in American politics

2019 Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian army to help put out huge wildfires in Siberia covering three million hectares (7.4 million acres) after 700,000 people sign petition

2020 Eurozone economic activity falls 11.9% for April-June with Spain the worst at -18.5%, its deepest in modern times

2020 Mexico overtakes the UK to have the world's third highest death toll from COVID-19 with 46,688 fatalities

2020 Apple wildfire starts near Beaumont, California, forcing the evacuation of nearly 8,000 people over the next few days

Born Today ;-

1737 Princess Augusta Frederica of Great Britain, born in St James Palace, grandaughter of King George II, brother of King George III, Mother in law of King George IV

1803 John Ericsson, Swedish-American inventor (screw propeller, rotating turret), born in Långban, Sweden

1932 Ted Cassidy, American actor (Lurch-Addams Family), born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1944 Geraldine Chaplin, actress (Doctor Zhivago, 3 Musketeers) daughter of Charlie Chaplin, born in Santa Monica, California

1944 – Jonathan Dimbleby, English journalist and author, son of Richard, brother of David, wife of Bel Mooney

1947 Richard Griffiths, actor (Withnail & I, Harry Potter), born in Thornaby-on-Tees

1947 Karl Green, English rock bassist (Herman's Hermits - "Mrs. Brown You Have A Lovely Daughter"), born in Salford

1951 Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Australian tennis player (7 Grand Slam singles titles), born in Barellan, NSW

1959 – Andrew Marr, Scottish journalist, TV Presenter and author

1961 – Frank Gardner, Tv Presenter and journalist was shot six times and seriously injured in an attack by al-Qaida gunmen in Saudi Arabia

1963 Norman Cook [Fatboy Slim], musician and record producer (Housemartins, Fatboy Slim), born in Bromley

1965 J. K. Rowling, writer (Harry Potter novels), born in Yate, Gloucestershire

1974 Emilia Fox, English actress (The Pianist, Silent Witness for 16 years ), born in London to parents Edward Fox & Joanna David, brother of Freddie

Died Today ;-

1886 Franz Liszt, Hungarian romantic composer and virtuoso pianist (Faust Symphony)

1919 Dick Barlow, Lancs & England cricketer, umpire and a football referee (591 runs/34 wickets/17 Tests for England), Refereed the record 26–0 score between Preston North End and Hyde in the FA Cup. Born Bolton & died in Stanley Park, Blackpool

1943 Hedley Verity, Yorkshire & England cricket spin bowler (40 Tests, 144 wickets @ 24.37), dies in POW camp in Italy at 38

1964 Jim Reeves, American country singer and actor (Gun Fury, Kimberley Jim), dies in air crash

1992 – Leonard Cheshire, Baron Cheshire, VC, OM, DSO & Two Bars, DFC , founded a hospice that grew into the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability

2009 Sir Bobby Robson, England Manager (20 caps; England manager 1982-90) defeated bowel cancer in 1992, a malignant melanoma in 1995, and a tumour in his right lung and a brain tumour, both in 2006. Treatment of these conditions had left him partially paralysed due to a stroke caused by the brain tumour, and also with a partially prosthetic upper jaw after the melanoma was surgically removed. His fifth diagnosis of cancer in 2007, consisting of cancerous nodules in both lungs, was diagnosed as terminal in February 2007, and as of December 2008, was being controlled through bouts of chemotherapy.[137] After these experiences, and following his fifth diagnosis with cancer, Robson devoted the remaining years of his life to helping fight the disease. On 25 March 2008, he launched the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation.

[Alikado]

Yorkshire Day

Minden Day

International Childfree Day

World Lung Cancer Day

World Wide Web Day

Lammas (England, Scotland, Neopagans)
Lughnasadh in the Northern hemisphere, Imbolc in the Southern hemisphere; traditionally begins on the eve of August 1. (Gaels, Ireland, Scotland, Neopagans)

World Scout Scarf Day

International Forgiveness Day

1485 Henry Tudor's army sails to England (future Henry VII)

1714 – George, Elector of Hanover, becomes King George I of Great Britain, marking the beginning of the Georgian era of British history.

1715 First Doggett's Coat and Badge race (Waterman's race) held on Thames River (London Bridge to Chelsea)

1720 South Sea bubble reaches a frenzy in London as the stock price of the South Sea Company peaks at £1,000, collapses soon after and falls to £124 by December

1759 Battle at Minden, Westfalen: Ferdinand van Brunswick beats France

1774 English chemist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen by isolating it in its gaseous state

1781 British army under general Cornwallis occupies Yorktown, Virginia

1793 France becomes 1st country to use the metric system

1798 Battle of the Nile: British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson attacks and decimates the French fleet

1800 – The Acts of Union 1800 are passed which merge the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1820 London's Regent's Canal opens.

1828 Bolton and Leigh Railway opens to freight traffic.

1831 London Bridge opens to traffic

1834 Slavery abolished throughout the British Empire - Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into effect

1842 Rotherhithe Tunnel under the Thames opens

1870 Irish Land Act gives rights to tenants of landlords in Ireland

1883 Inland postal service begins in Great Britain

1893 Henry Perky and William Ford patent a machine for the preparation of cereals for food, otherwise known as shredded wheat

1896 George Samuelson completes rowing Atlantic (NY to England)

1900 The 1st Michelin Guide is published by the brothers Édouard and André Michelin as a hotel and restaurant reference guide to encourage more road travel and thus boost tire sales

1907 First Scout camp opens on Brownsea Island, in Poole Harbour, Dorset

1909 Tour de France: François Faber of Luxembourg becomes the first foreigner to win the cycling classic

1914 Trois Vierges: German 69th infantry regiment enters Luxembourg on outbreak of WWI

1914 France and Germany mobilize their troops

1914 Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany declares war on his nephew Tsar Nicholas II of Russia

1918 British troops enter Vladivostok

1936 XI Summer Olympic Games are opened by Adolph Hitler in Berlin

1941 Luftwaffe bombs German 23rd division

1941 The first Jeep is produced.

1942 Actress Janet Leigh (14) weds childhood sweetheart John Kenneth Carlisle (18) in Reno, Nevada

1943 Sunderland seaplanes sink U-454 & U-383

1943 – Operation Tidal Wave also known as "Black Sunday", was a failed American attempt to destroy Romanian oil fields.

1944 Anne Frank's last diary entry; 3 days later she is arrested

1944 Polish resistance fighters of the Home Army launch the Warsaw Uprising, the largest military effort undertaken by a resistance movement in occupied Europe

1945 Japanese city Toyama destroyed by B-29's

1951 1st Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion's Mapai-party wins Israeli parliamentary election

1954 South African Natives Resettlement Act comes into being, empowers the Government to remove Africans from any area within and next to the magisterial district of Johannesburg

1961 Australian cricket captain Richie Benaud takes 6 for 70 in England's 2nd innings for a 54 run 4th Test win at Old Trafford

1965 Scottish Lotus driver Jim Clark wins the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring to clinch his second F1 World Drivers Championship

1972 1st article exposing Watergate scandal by Bernstein and Woodward in "The Washington Post"

1976 Reigning world F1 champion Niki Lauda of Austria suffers a near fatal crash during the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, he is badly burned.

1976 Actress Elizabeth Taylor's 6th divorce from actor Richard Burton (their 2nd divorce together)

1977 Former Lockheed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers crashes the news helicopter he was flying in Los Angeles

1980 Buttevant Rail Disaster kills 18 and injures dozens of train passengers near Cork, Ireland.

1982 Heavy Israeli air bombardment on Beirut

1983 Despite brave 112no by David Gower, New Zealand wins 2nd Test at Headingley by 5 wickets, first ever NZ Test cricket victory in England

1984 – Commercial peat-cutters discover the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire

1987 Mike Tyson outpoints Tony Tucker in 12 in a heavyweight boxing unification matchup in Las Vegas, first to own all 3 major belts WBA, WBC and IBF at the same time

1987 In New Zealand, the Maori Language Act comes into force, making te reo M?ori an official language of New Zealand; it can now be used in some legal proceedings

1992 Linford Christie (32) becomes the oldest man to win an Olympic 100m gold

1992 American sprinter Gail Devers wins an incredibly close finish in the women's 100m at the Barcelona Olympics, with 5 athletes within 0.06 seconds of Devers (10.82)

1993 England wins the women's cricket World Cup for the first time since the inaugural event in 1973 with a 67 run victory over New Zealand at Lord's

1994 99.9°F (37.7°C) in Berlin-Dahlem: record

1996 George R.R. Martin publishes the epic fantasy novel "A Game of Thrones", the first in his series "A Song of Ice and Fire"

2001 Bulgaria, Cyprus, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia join the European Environment Agency.

2004 A supermarket fire kills 396 people and injures 500 in Asunción, Paraguay

2010 British Open Women's Golf, Royal Birkdale GC: 21 year old Yani Tseng of Taiwan becomes youngest-ever winner of 3 major championships, 1 stroke ahead of Katherine Hull of Australia

2012 Great Britain collects its first ever gold medal in women's rowing with Heather Stanning and Helen Glover in the coxless pairs at the London Olympics

2012 Bradley Wiggins' win in the London Olympics cycling time trial gives him the most aggregate medals (7) of any British Olympian (4 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze)

2013 Robert Mugabe continues to maintain power after winning 142 out of 210 seats in the Zimbabwean election

2014 USA and UN announce a 72 hour ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, though it quickly breaks down

2016 Anthrax outbreak in Yamalo-Nenets, Siberia kills one and infects 8 others, also kills 2,300 reindeer, global warming blamed

Born Today ;-

1870 Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, Russian biologist who perfected the artificial insemination of animals and showed that his technology allowed one stallion to fertilize up to 500 mares, born in Shchigry, Kursk Oblast, Russia

1877 Charlotte Hughes (Milburn), British supercentenarian (lived under the rule of 6 monarchs and 24 British Prime Ministers), born in Middlesbroughlived to 115 years 228 days (1993) the longest-lived person ever documented from the United Kingdom. Lived in her own home to 113.

1924 Sir Frank Worrell, West Indian cricket batsman and captain (51 Tests @ 49.48; 9 x 100s), born in Bridgetown, Saint Michael, Barbados

1926 – Hannah Hauxwell, English TV personality, North Pennine Farmer - Too Long a Winter, Tv Documentary

1930 Lionel Bart [Begleiter], British pop music composer and writer (Oliver!), born in London

1935 – Geoff 'Noddy' Pullar, Lancashire & England cricketer born in Swinton

1936 Laurie Taylor, English sociologist and broadcaster (BBC Radio 4), born in Liverpool, attended St Mary's College, Crosby

1936 Yves Saint Laurent, French fashion designer, born in Oran, French Algeria

1958 Adrian Dunbar, Northern Irish actor (Hear My Song, Line of Duty), born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh,

1961 Mike Watkinson, Lancashire & England cricketer (England off-spinner all-rounder v WI 1995), born in Westhoughton

1963 Amber Rudd, British politician, Home Secretary (2016-18), born in London

1965 Sam Mendes, British stage and film director, born in Reading

1970 – David James, Liverpool & England footballer and manager who at the age of 39, he became the oldest goalkeeper to appear in an FA Cup Final. born in Welwyn Garden City

1979 Honeysuckle Weeks, Welsh actress (Foyle's War), born in Cardiff,

Died Today ;-

30 BC Mark Antony [Marcus Antonius], Roman politician and general, commits suicide after he is defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium at 53

1714 Anne Stuart, Queen of England (1702-14), dies at about 49

1903 Calamity Jane [Martha Jane Canary], American frontierswoman, dies at 51

1983 Peter Arne, actor (Straw Dogs), bludgeoned to death in London at 62

1998 – Eva Bartok, Hungarian born actress

2008 – Eleven mountaineers from international expeditions died on K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth in the worst single accident in the history of K2 mountaineering

2010 Eric Tindill, New Zealand rugby, cricket representative (international cricket umpire, rugby referee), dies at 99 , held a number of unique records: he was the oldest ever Test cricketer at the time of his death, the only person to play Tests for New Zealand in both cricket and rugby union (a so-called "double All Black"), and the only person ever to play Tests in both sports, referee a rugby union Test, and umpire a cricket Test: a unique "double-double".

2015 – Cilla Black (Priscilla Maria Veronica White ), English singer and actress, Tv Presenter

2020 Stan Mellor MBE, English National Hunt jockey and trainer (first jumps jockey to ride 1,000 winners; Champion Jockey 1960-62), dies at 83

[Alikado]

International Remembrance Day of the Holocaust of the Roma

1100 King William II of England (William Rufus) is killed by an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrell while hunting in the New Forest

1274 – Edward I of England returns from the Ninth Crusade to be crowned King seventeen days later.

1415 – Thomas Grey is executed for participating in the Southampton Plot a conspiracy to depose King Henry V. The Southampton Plot is dramatised in Shakespeare's Henry V

1695 Daniel Quare receives a British patent for his portable barometer

1776 – The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence took place.

1790 1st US census conducted, the population was 3,939,214 including 697,624 slaves

1791 Samuel Briggs and his son, patent nail-making machine

1832 Battle of Bad Axe, Wisconsin: 1,300 Illinois militia defeat Sauk & Fox Native Americans ending the Black Hawk War in the US

1865 Lewis Carroll publishes "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

1865 Trans Atlantic Cable being laid by SS Great Eastern snaps and is lost

1870 Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London

1873 – The Clay Street Hill Railroad begins operating the first cable car in San Francisco's famous cable car system.

1875 1st roller skating rink opens (London)

1880 British Parliament officially adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

1887 Rowell Hodge patents barbed wire

1892 Charles A Wheeler patents a prototype of the escalator

1894 Death duties 1st introduced in Britain

1914 German troops overthrow Luxembourg

1914 Great Britain mobilizes

1914 Russian troops invade Eastern Prussia

1916 Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto

1918 Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I

1922 China is hit by a typhoon; about 60,000 die

1923 – Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes U.S. President upon the death of President Warren G. Harding.

1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg.

1937 Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, essentially rendering marijuana and all its by-products illegal

1939 – Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.

1940 Clermont-Ferrand sentences General Charles de Gaulle to death

1941 German 11st Army surrounds 20 Soviet divisions at Oeman

1941 Jews are expelled from Hungarian Ruthenia

1942 250 Dutch Catholic Jews arrested, transported to Amersfoort camp

1942 Colonel general Hermann Hoth's Panzer army reaches Kotelnikovo

1943 Armed revolt breaks out in Treblinka

1943 Sunderland seaplanes sink U-706 and U-106

1943 – Jewish prisoners stage a revolt at Treblinka, one of the deadliest of Nazi death camps where approximately 900,000 persons were murdered in less than 18 months.

1943 PT-boat 109 is sunk at Solomon islands it is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. president, saves all but two of his crew.

1944 Jewish survivors of Kovono Ghetto emerge from their bunker

1944 – The largest trade convoy HX300 comprising 166 ships arrives safely in the Western Approaches.

1945 After 3½ days suffering exhaustion, lack of water and shark attacks in the Philippine Sea, the surviving crew of USS Indianapolis are spotted by Wilbur “Chuck” Gwinn, a PV-1 Ventura pilot on a routine sector search. 316 had survived.

1947 – A British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner crashes into a mountain during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile. The wreckage would not be found until 1998.

1948 Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands wins the 100m in 11.9 at the London Olympics; 1st of unprecedented 3 individual track & field gold medals

1952 17 year-old future world champion Floyd Patterson wins the gold medal in the middleweight division at the Helsinki Olympic Games

1961 The Beatles 1st gig in Liverpool's Cavern Club

1967 The second Blackwall Tunnel opens in Greenwich, London

1970 Rubber bullets used for the first time in Northern Ireland during 'The Troubles'

1972 Gold hits record $70 an ounce in London

1973 – A flash fire kills 51 people at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man

1980 Fascist bomb attack on Bologna Italy train station, 86 killed

1980 Cuban super-heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson becomes the 1st fighter to win 3 Olympic gold medals in the same division in Moscow

1981 England cricket all-rounder Ian Botham takes 5 for 11 to end Australia's chase of 151 target, all out 121 for 29 run defeat in 4th Test at Edgbaston

1985 England captain David Gower scores his 5,000th run in Test cricket during the drawn 4th Test v Australia at Old Trafford

1989 – A massacre is carried out by an Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians.

1992 American Jacki Joyner-Kersee becomes first athlete to win consecutive gold medals in the gruelling heptathlon with a 199 point win over Irina Belova (Soviet Union) at the Barcelona Olympics

2003 South African cricket batsman Graeme Smith blazes 259, fast bowler Makhaya Ntini has 5 wickets in each England innings as Proteas win 2nd Test by an innings and 92 at Lord's

2009 Michael Phelps ends the World Swimming Championships in Rome with his 5th gold medal as part of the US 4x100m medley relay team that recorded the 43rd world record of the meet

2009 British Open Women's Golf, Royal Lytham & St Annes GC: Catriona Matthew wins her lone major title, 3 strokes ahead of runner-up Karrie Webb; first Scot to win the title

2012 American swimmer Michael Phelps wins an unprecedented third consecutive gold medal in the 200m individual medley in 1:54.27 at the London Olympics

2017 Great Britain's Prince Philip aged 96 makes his final solo public appearance before retiring from public engagements

2017 First successful gene editing in human embryos to repair disease-causing mutation reported by scientists in "Nature"

2017 US President Donald Trump signs legislation imposing sanctions on Russia, limiting his ability to ever lift them

2017 More than a billion people around the world need glasses and 36 million are blind, according to new study published in "The Lancet"

2018 Apple becomes the first American public listed company to reach $1 trillion in value

2018 TikTok, the video-sharing social network, becomes available worldwide after merging with Musical.ly
2019 Saudi Arabia announces news rules for women including allowing them to travel independently abroad without a male guardian's permission

2019 Seven-year-old boy operated on after 526 teeth found inside his mouth in Chennai, India

2020 SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico, 1st commercial crewed mission

2020 Australian state of Victoria announces state of disaster and imposes further lockdown measures after spike in COVID-19 cases

2020 South Africa confirms over 500,000 cases of COVID-19 with 10,107 deaths, highest total on the African continent

2020 Islamic State stages a jail break at a prison in Afghan city of Jalalabad, placing bombs at its entrance, results in 20 hr gunfight, 29 deaths and over 300 prisoners at large

Born Today

1820 John Tyndall, Irish physicist who demonstrated why the sky is blue and proved that the Earth's atmosphere has a greenhouse effect, born in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland

1834 Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, French sculptor (designed the Statue of Liberty), born in Colmar, France

1835 – Elisha Gray, American businessman, co-founded Western Electric is also credited (in US) with inventing the Telephone

1868 Constantine I, King of Greece (1913-17, 20-22), born in Athens. Edward VII was his BiL, George V his Nephew & the DoEhis Gt Nephew.

1891 Arthur Bliss, English composer (Olympians), born in London

1919 John Pinkerton, English computer scientist who designed the first business computer in England, the LEO computer, born in London

1921 – Alan Whicker, Egyptian born English journalist, Broadcaster & TV Presenter - Whicker's World

1922 Lord (Lionel Hodskinson) Murray of Epping Forest [Lionel], politician and union leader (General Secretary TUC), born in Hadley, Telford

1923 – Shimon Peres, Polish born lawyer and politician, 9th President of Israel

1928 – Malcolm Hilton, Lancs & England cricketer, born Chadderton

1929 Lord David Waddington, British politician (Home Secretary 1989-90), born in Burnley

1932 Peter O'Toole, actor (Lord Jim, Beckett, Lawrence of Arabia), born in Leeds

1948 – Andy Fairweather Low, Welsh singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Amen Corner), born in Ystrad Mynach, Wales

1968 John Pinkerton, English computer scientist who designed the first business computer in England, the LEO computer

1973 Susan O'Neill, is an Australian swimmer from Brisbane, nicknamed "Madame Butterfly". She achieved eight Olympic Games medals during her swimming career.

Died Today ;-

1788 Thomas Gainsborough, English painter (Blue Boy), dies at 61

1876 Wild Bill" Hickok [James Butler], American cowboy and scout, shot dead from behind by Jack McCall while playing poker (he held a pair of Aces and a pair of 8's), dies at 39

1921 Enrico Caruso, Italian operatic tenor (Faust), dies at 48

1922 Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born inventor (telephone)also co founded AT&T, dies of diabetes complications at 75

1931 Kinue Hitomi, Japanese athlete (World record women's 100m, 200m, long jump, triple jump; Olympic silver 800m 1928), dies from pneumonia at 24

1934 Paul von Hindenburg, German WW1 general and President of Germany (1925-34), dies of lung cancer at 86

1936 Louis Blériot, French aviator who made the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier than air aircraft, dies of a heart attack at 64

1980 Verdun Scott, New Zealand cricket batsman, rugby league utility back (10 Tests; 1 cap) represented New Zealand in both Test cricket and rugby league he is the only player to have done so, dies at 64

2003 Don Estelle [Ronald Edwards], actor and singer (It Ain't Half Hot Mum),born Crumpsall, Manchester

2011 Baruj Benacerraf, Venezuelan-American immunologist (Nobel 1980 - discovery of genes that regulate immune responses and of the role that some of these genes play in autoimmune diseases), dies at 90

2015 Forrest Bird, American aviator and inventor (1st respirators and ventilators)