Interesting Facts

14th August 1947 - Colonial rule in India ended, and the country of Pakistan was created.

19th July 1545 – The Tudor warship Mary Rose sank off Portsmouth. 1553 – Lady Jane Grey was replaced by Mary I of England as Queen of England after having been Queen for just nine days. 1692 – Five women were hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. 1799 – A group of Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers discovered what is now known as The Rosetta Stone, enabling the translation of hieroglyphics for the first time. 1843 – Brunel's steamship the SS Great Britain was launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and also becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world. 1870 – France declared war on Prussia. 1947 – Bogyoke Aung San, Prime minister of the shadow Burma government, and 6 of his cabinet along with 2 non-cabinet members were assassinated. 1963 – Joe Walker flew a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 metres (347,800 feet). Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualified as human spaceflight...

7th July 1543 – French troops invade Luxembourg. 1947 – The Roswell UFO incident took place. 1967 – The civil war in Biafra began. 1969 – In Canada, the Official Languages Act was adopted making the French language equal to the English language throughout the Federal government. 1978 – The Solomon Islands became independent from the United Kingdom. 2005 - Four bombs were set off on the London public transport system during the morning rush hour, killing 56 people, and injuring 700. It was the deadliest single act of terrorism in the UK since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, which killed 270 people. A group called "Al Qaeda in Europe" claimed responsibility for the attacks. 2006 – The Western Black Rhinoceros, the rarest of the Black Rhino subspecies, was declared extinct by the World Conservation Union, due to poaching.

25th June 1678 – Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate of philosophy. 1876 – Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 1947 – The Diary of Anne Frank was published. 1951 - The first colour TV broadcast took place on America's CBS Network. 1991 – Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia. 1996 – The Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 U.S. servicemen. 2006 – Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, was kidnapped in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip in Palestine. 2007 – Severe flooding hit England. Parts of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire flooded including Louth, Horncastle and worst affected, Hull. 2009 - Michael Jackson died.

17th June 1579 – Sir Francis Drake claimed a land he called "Nova Albion" (modern California) for England. 1631 – Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, then spent more than 20 years building her tomb, the Taj Mahal. 1882 - Igor Stravinsky, the Russian composer, was born. 1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbour aboard the French ship Isere. 1939 – Last public guillotining in France took place. Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, was guillotined in Versailles outside the prison Saint-Pierre. 1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fell under the occupation of the Soviet Union. 1944 – Iceland declared independence from Denmark and became a republic. 1947 - Pan Am Airways was chartered as the world's first worldwide passenger airline. 1950 - The first documented kidney transplant took place in Chicago, on Ruth Tucker, a 44-year-old woman with polycystic kidney disease. Un...

7th April 1795 – France adopted the metre as the basic measure of length. 1827 – John Walker, an English chemist, sold the first friction match. 1947 – Henry Ford, the American automobile manufacturer and industrialist died. 1948 – The World Health Organization was established by the United Nations. 1994 – The massacre of Tutsis began in Kigali, Rwanda.

15th August 1843 – Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, opened in Copenhagen, Denmark. 1914 – The Panama Canal opened to traffic. 1945 - Allied nations celebrated VJ Day marking the end of World War II. 1947 – India gained Independence from British rule after almost 190 years. 1952 – A flash flood in the town of Lynmouth, England, killed 34 people. 1963 – The last man was hanged in Scotland. 1971 – Bahrain gained independence from the United Kingdom. 1971 - horse rider Harvey Smith was stripped of £2,000 winnings and a major show jumping title for allegedly making a rude gesture, although he swore it was a V for victory sign. 1998 – 27 people were killed following a massive car bomb in the town of Omagh in Northern Ireland.