Interesting Facts

16th August 1819 – Seventeen people die and over 600 were injured in cavalry charges at a public meeting at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England, which was held to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. This became known as The Peterloo Massacre. 1902 – Georgette Heyer, English author was born. 1906 – An estimated 8.2 MW earthquake hit Valparaíso, Chile, killing 3,886 people. 1913 – Tōhoku Imperial University of Japan (modern day Tohoku University) becomes the first university in Japan to admit female students. 1946 – Mass riots in Kolkata began, in which more than 4,000 people were murdered over the next 72 hours. 1960 – Cyprus gained its independence from the United Kingdom. 1974 – Punk Rock pioneers The Ramones played their first show in a local New York club called CBGB. 1977 - Elvis Presley died. 2012 – South African police fatally shot 34 miners and wounded 78 more during an industrial dispute near Rustenburg.

8th August 1503 – King James IV of Scotland married Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland. 1585 – John Davis entered the Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage. 1709 – The first documented balloon flight in Europe was demonstrated by Bartolomeu de Gusmão, in Lisbon. It did not end well, but he was the first. 1786 – Mont Blanc on the French – Italian border was climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard. 1793 – The insurrection of Lyon occured during the French Revolution. 1794 – Joseph Whidbey led an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska. 1876 – Thomas Edison received a patent for his mimeograph. 1908 – Wilbur Wright made his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It was the Wright Brothers' first public flight. 1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin began a round-the-world flight. 1942 – The Quit India Movement was laun...

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 ...

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...

26th June 1284 – The legendary Pied Piper led 130 children out of Hamelin, Germany. 1483 – Richard III was crowned king of England. 1870 – The Christian holiday of Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States. 1917 – The first U.S. troops arrived in France to fight alongside Britain, France, Italy, and Russia against Germany, and Austria-Hungary in World War I. 1945 – The United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco. 1948 – The Western allies began an airlift to Berlin after the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin. 1960 – The former British Protectorate of Somaliland British Somaliland gained its independence. 1963 – John F. Kennedy spoke the famous words "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a doughnut), on a visit to West Berlin. 1974 - The bar code, allowing for the electronic scanning of prices, was used for the first time on a pack of gum at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. 1977 – The Yorkshire Ripper killed 16 year old shop assistant Jayne...

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...

15th May 1567 – Mary Queen of Scots married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, her third husband. 1718 – James Puckle, a London lawyer, patented the world's first machine gun. 1756 – The Seven Years' War began when England declared war on France. 1800 – George III survived two assassination attempts in one day. 1905 – Las Vegas, Nevada, was founded when 110 acres (0.4 km²), in what later would become downtown, were auctioned off. 1928 - Mickey Mouse appeared in his first animated cartoon "Plane Crazy". 1935 – The Moscow Metro was opened to the public. 1936 – Amy Johnson arrived back in England after a record-breaking return flight to Cape Town. 1940 – McDonald's opened its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California. 1957 - Britain dropped its first H-bomb. 1974 – Terrorists attacked an Israeli school, killing a total of 31 people, including 22 schoolchidren. 1988 – The Red Army began its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

29th March 1971 - Lt. William Calley was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison for his part in the My Lai massacre. He served one day in prison, before President Richard Nixon ordered him transferred to house arrest at Fort Benning, pending appeal. He subsequently served only three and a half years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning and was released on September 25, 1974, by federal judge J. Robert Elliott. I wonder if he's ever read the 5 people you meet in heaven. 2017 - The UK triggered Article 50 to begin negotiations to leave the European Union. 2017 - Germany switched over its terrestrial TV signals to allow the broadcast of HD signals. 

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...

8th February 1974 - The Loch Ness Monster was allegedly photographed in Scotland. 1996 - Francois Mitterand died.   Seemingly for his last meal he decided to eat a tiny little yellow songbird called an ortolan, which is illegal, even in France. A typical ortolan weighs only 55 g and is about the size of a man's thumb. Depending on the preparation, the diner is sometimes required to first bite off the head of the bird and discard it on the plate. Then, the rest of the bird is eaten in one mouthful, including the bones and internal organs. A napkin is worn over the diner's head to prevent the aroma from escaping (or to cover their shame). God grant me the grace to have something more interesting to do when I am dying.

Dr Henry Heimlich, the surgeon who gave his name to the simple but dramatic procedure used to rescue people from choking, managed to save someone’s life using the technique himself for the first time since he invented it in 1974. (His technique, called the Heimlich manoeuvre, is used for dislodging food or objects caught in people’s throats, and has been credited with saving thousands of lives around the world: On noticing a fellow resident at the senior assisted living centre where he lives, choking on a piece of meat, Heimlich, a spritely 96-year-old, calmly stepped in. After her brush with death, the resident in question, 87-year-old Patty Ris, wrote Dr Heimlich a note, saying: "God put me in the seat next to you.")