Interesting Facts

19th May 1499 – Catherine of Aragon, was married by proxy to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. Catherine was just 13 and Arthur 12. 1536 – Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, was beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest. 1568 – Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered the arrest of Mary Queen of Scots. 1649 – An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth was passed by the Long Parliament. England would be a republic for the next eleven years. 1890 – Ho Chi Minh, the1st President of Vietnam was born. 1897 – Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Prison. 1943 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the cross-English Channel landing (D-Day). It would be delayed over a month due to bad weather. 1962 - Marilyn Monroe sang "that" birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, New York City. 1984 – Poet John Betjeman, who had been B...

British soldier, Private John Henry Parr (19 July 1897 – 21 August 1914), is believed to be the first soldier of the Commonwealth killed by enemy action in the First World War. (He is buried in the St Symphorien military cemetery, just southeast of Mons, in France, but his age on the gravestone is given as 20, because the army id not know his true age: 17.)

It's only 62 years since the last person was prosecuted for witchcraft in the UK. (Helen Duncan (1897 – 1956) was a Scottish medium. During World War II, she held a seance in Portsmouth at which she indicated knowledge that a warship had been sunk. Because this fact had been kept from the public, the British Admiralty chose to attempt to discredit her. She was arrested and eventually charged at first with conspiracy and then witchcraft, she was jailed for nine months. Winston Churchill was less than impressed with the whole thing and eventually repealed the Witchcraft Act in 1951.)