Interesting Facts

16th September  1968 - Royal Mail, in the UK, began the two-tier postal system of first and second class stamps.

21st August 1770 – James Cook formally claimed eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales. 1831 – Nat Turner led black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. 1879 – The Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, reportedly appeared to the people of Knock, County Mayo, Ireland. Paving the way for lots of little plastic figurines. 1911 – The Mona Lisa was stolen by an employee at the Louvre in Paris. 1968 - Dozens of people were killed in a massive military clampdown in Czechoslovakia. 1983 - Benigno Aquino, the Philippines opposition leader, was murdered just minutes after returning home from exile. 1986 - 1,700 people died when a cloud of lethal gas escaped from a volcanic lake, Lake Nyos, in Cameroon.

1968 – The Special Olympics was founded. 1969 - Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, orbited above. 1974 - Thousands of Turkish troops invaded northern Cyprus. 1982 – The Provisional IRA detonated two bombs in Hyde Park and Regents Park in central London, killing eight soldiers on ceremonial duty, wounding forty-seven bystanders, and leading to the deaths of seven horses. 1986 – In South Africa, police fired tear gas into a church service for families of those held under the government's emergency decrees. 1989 – Burma's ruling junta put opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. 1990 - An IRA bomb blew a 10-foot hole in the London Stock Exchange. 1996 – In Spain, an ETA bomb at an airport killed 35. 1998 – Two hundred aid workers from CARE International, Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups l...

8th July 1949 – Celebrities Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson were named in an FBI report as Communist Party members. 1953 – The United States Supreme Court ruled that Washington, D.C. restaurants could not refuse to serve black patrons. 1965 - Ronald Biggs who was serving a 30-year prison sentence for his part in the Great Train Robbery escaped from Wandsworth prison. 1968 – James Earl Ray was arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. 1984 – Homosexuality was declared legal in the Australia state of New South Wales. 1996 - Three young children and four adults were attacked by a man with a machete at an infant school in Wolverhampton, England. 2001 – Mamoru Takuma stabbed 8 school pupils to death at Ikeda Elementary School. 2003 - Conjoined Iranian twins, Ladan Bijani and Laleh Bijani (in Persian: لادن و لاله بیژنی ), who had volunteered to go ahead with a major operation to separate the...

29th May 1660 – Charles II was restored to the throne of Great Britain. (It was his birthday too.) 1913 – Igor Stravinsky's ballet score; The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris, France, provoking a riot. 1914 – Ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sank in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; 1,024 people died. 1919 – Einstein's theory of general relativity was tested (and later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington's observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil. 1942 – Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra recorded Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", the best-selling Christmas single in history. 1953 – Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday. 1968 - Manchester Utd Football Club won the European Cup becoming the first English club to do so. 1972 – 26 people were killed...

11th April 1945 – The Buchenwald concentration camp, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil, was liberated. 1951 – The Stone of Scone, the stone upon which Scottish monarchs were traditionally crowned, was found on the site of the altar of Arbroath Abbey. It had been taken by Scottish nationalists from its place in Westminster Abbey. 1957 - Britain agreed to self-rule in Singapore. 1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. One week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. 1968 – German student leader Rudi Dutschke is shot in Berlin. 1976 – The Apple I was created. 1979 – Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was deposed. 1981 – A huge riot in Brixton, South London, resulted in almost 300 police injuries and 65 serious civilian injuries. 1987 – Primo Levi, Italian chemist and author died. 2001 – Harry Secombe, Welsh actor and co...

1968 - The My Lai massacre took place in Vietnam. (Of the 26 US soldiers initially charged with criminal offences for their actions at My Lai, only William Calley was convicted. He served three years of his life sentence.)

22nd February 1774 - The House of Lords ruled that authors do not have perpetual copyright. 1797 - The Last Invasion of Britain by the French began near Fishguard, Wales. 1900  - Hawaii became a US territory. 1928 -  Australian aviator Bert Hinkler completed the first solo England to Australia flight. 1943 -  Members of  the White Rose were executed in Nazi Germany. 1958 - Egypt & Syria formed the United Arab Republic. 1968 -  Rock group Genesis released their 1st record "Silent Sun". 2006 - At least six armed robbers staged the biggest cash robbery in Britain, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or 78€ million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.

23rd June 1314 – The Battle of Bannockburn began. 1532 – Henry VIII and François I signed a secret treaty against Emperor Charles V. 1713 – The French residents of Acadia were given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada. 1757 – 3,000 British troops under Robert Clive defeated a 50,000 strong Indian army under Siraj Ud Daulah at Plassey. 1758 – British forces defeated French troops at Krefeld in Germany. 1794 – Empress Catherine II of Russia granted Jews permission to settle in Kiev. 1845 - The Congress of the Republic of Texas agreed to annexation by the United States. 1860 - The U.S. Secret Service was created. 1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for Type-Writer. 1894 – The International Olympic Committee was founded at the Sorbonne, Paris, at the initiative of Baron Pierre de Coubertin. 1942 – The first selections for the gas chamber at Auschwitz took place on a train load of people from Paris. 1955 - The Queen ...

12th November 1439 – Plymouth, England, became the first town incorporated by the English Parliament. 1793 – Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, was guillotined. 1893 – The treaty of the Durand Line delineating the border between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan was signed by Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat in British India. 1912 – The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men were found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. 1918 – Austria became a republic. 1927 – Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union. 1933 – Hugh Gray took the first known photographs alleged to be of the Loch Ness Monster. 1956 – Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia joined the United Nations. 1956 – 111 people, including 103 refugees, were killed by the Israeli army in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rafah, in the midst of the Suez Crisis. The United Nations were unable to determine the circumstances surrounding...