Interesting Facts

23rd July 1942 – The Treblinka extermination camp was opened. 1961 – The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was founded in Nicaragua. 1967 – Riots broke out in Detroit, Michigan, one of the worst riots in United States history, by the end 43 people were killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burnt to the ground. 1974- The military government in Greece collapses and the former prime minister Constantine Karamanlis was invited to return. 1982 – The International Whaling Commission voted to end commercial whaling by 1985-86. 1983 – The Sri Lankan Civil War began with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In the subsequent government-organised pogrom of Black July, about 1,000 Tamils were slaughtered, some 400,000 Tamils fled to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, India and many found refuge in Europe and Canada. 1984 – Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign when she surrendered her crown after nude photos of her ...

12th July 55 - Julius Caesar was born. 1543 – King Henry VIII of England married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr at Hampton Court Palace. 1812 – The United States invaded Canada at Windsor, Ontario. 1961 – The Panshet and Khadakvasala dams in India burst destroying most of the older sections of the city of Pune. Half of the city was submerged. More than 100,000 families dislocated and the death tally exceeded 2,000. 1962 – The Rolling Stones performed their first ever concert, at the Marquee Club in London. 1998 - Three young brothers, Richard Quinn, 11, Mark Quinn, 9, and Jason Quinn, 7, were murdered in a loyalist arson attack as the stand-off between Orangemen and police at Drumcree in Ireland. 2006 - Hezbollah guerrillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid; Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon in response.

19th June 1269 – King Louis IX of France ordered all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver. 1306 – The Earl of Pembroke's army defeated Bruce's Scottish army at the Battle of Methven. 1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, were finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 13 other contiguous states as Juneteenth. 1961 – Kuwait declared independence from the United Kingdom. 1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. 1970 - Edward Heath became prime minister after a surprise victory for the Conservatives in the general election. 1975 - An inquest jury decided Lord Lucan murdered the 29-year-old nanny of his three young children. 1978 – Garfield comic strip was first published. It has grown to over $1 billion in revenue, and is dis...

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...

20th May 1506 - Christopher Columbus died in poverty in Spain. 1570 – Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued the first modern atlas. 1609 – Shakespeare's Sonnets were first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. 1631 – The city of Magdeburg in Germany was seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years' War. 1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. 1902 – Cuba gained independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma became the first President of Cuba. 1927 - Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. 1932 – Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot. She landed in Irel...

19th April 1587 – Francis Drake sank the Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbour. 1775 – The Battle of Lexington and Concord began, which started the American Revolution against the British. 1839 – The Treaty of London established Belgium as a kingdom. 1961 – The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ended. 1984 – Advance Australia Fair was chosen as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours. 1987 – The Simpsons premièred as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show. 1989 – Daphne du Maurier, British novelist died. 1992 – Benny Hill, and Frankie Howard died. They were both English comic actors. 1995 – A bomb in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, killed 168 people. 1999 – The German Bundestag returned to Berlin. 2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of the Papal conclave.

17th April 1397 – Geoffrey Chaucer recited the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. (And it's been torturing British schoolchildren ever since.) 1521 – Martin Luther spoke to the assembly at the Diet of Worms, refusing to recant his teachings. 1961 – A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. 1984 - WPC (Woman Police Constable) Yvonne Fletcher was shot and killed outside the Libyan embassy in central London. 1986 - British journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped, by the militant group Islamic Jihad, in Beirut. He spent more than five years in captivity. 1986 - Three bodies of murdered hostages, were found on the streets of Beirut. They were Leigh Douglas, Philip Padfield from the UK and an American, Peter Kilburn. 1986 – The 335 Years' War (1651–1986) between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly officially ended. It was both one of the world's longest ...

9th March 1009 – Lithuania was mentioned for the first time (in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg). 1566 – David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, was murdered in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland. 1831 – The French Foreign Legion was established by King Louis Philippe to support his war in Algeria. 1841 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them to captivity had been taken into slavery illegally. 1925 – The first Royal Air Force operation conducted independently of the British Army or Royal Navy began. It was called Pink's War. 1946 – Bolton Wanderers stadium disaster at Burnden Park, Bolton, England, killed 33 and left hundreds more injured. The disaster led to Moelwyn Hughes's official report, which recommended more rigorous control of crowd sizes. 1959 – The Barbie doll made its debut at the American International Toy F...

6th March 1988 – Three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers were murdered by the SAS on the territory of Gibraltar. 1987 – The British car ferry MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsized just outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, in about 90 seconds killing 193 people. 1974 -  The miners' strike came to an end following a pay increase of over 30%. 1970 - The British Government announced an indefinite ban on the importation of domestic pets to prevent rabies. 1964 – Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad (born Elijah Robert Poole) officially gave boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali. 1961 – George Formby, British comedian and singer, died. 1957 – Ghana became the first Sub-Saharan country to gain Independence from the British 1945 – Cologne (Köln) was captured by American Troops. 1899 – Bayer registered aspirin as a trademark. 1836 - Mexican forces captured the Alamo in San Antonio killing the last of 187 defenders who had held out...

20th January 2001 - George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd president of the United States. 1993 - Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd president of the United States. 1987 – Church of England envoy Terry Waite was kidnapped in Lebanon. 1986 - Soviets launched the space station Mir. 1981 - Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th president of the United States. 1962 - John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. 1961 - John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president of the United States. 1958 - The UK government announced the naval dockyards at Sheerness were to close. 1936 - Britain's King George V died and Edward VIII became King of the United Kingdom. 1841 – The island of Hong Kong was occupied by the British. 1783 - Great Britain signed a peace treaty with France and Spain. Officially ending hostilities between the countries in the American War of Independence. 1649 - Charles I of England went on trial for treason and other "high cri...