Interesting Facts

18th August 1982 - The first CD was produced at Philips' factory in Germany.

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...

9th July 1982 - The Queen fended off an intruder, when a man broke into Buckingham Palace and spent ten minutes talking to her, in her bedroom! 1991 - The Bank of Credit and Commerce International collapsed, losing about 20 local councils in the UK up to £30m in investments.

21st June 1305 – King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia and Poland died. 1377 – King Edward III of England died. 1652 – Inigo Jones died. 1905, Jean-Paul Sartre was born. 1948 – Columbia Records introduced the long-playing record album (LP) in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. 1964 – Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. 1982 – Princess Diana gave birth to Prince William, heir to the throne. 1985 - Scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. 2001 – John Lee Hooker died. 2004 – SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight. 2009 – Self-rule was introduced in Greenland.

6th June 1944 - The Battle of Normandy began as thousands of Allied troops started landing on the beaches of Normandy in northern Franc: the beginning of D-Day, which was code named Operation Overlord, 1966 - James Meredith, the first black man to brave the colour bar at the University of Mississippi, was shot in the back and legs while on a civil rights march. 1975 - British voters backed the UK's continued membership of the EEC by two-to-one in a nationwide referendum. 1982 – The Lebanon War began. 1984 - Nearly 300 people were killed as Indian troops stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, which was being held by Sikh militants. 2004 – Tamil was established as a "classical language" by the President of India.

28th May 1503 – James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor were married according to a Papal Bull by Pope Alexander VI. A Treaty of Everlasting Peace between Scotland and England signed on that occasion resulted in a peace that lasted ten years. 1533 – The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declares the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn valid. 1859 – Big Ben was drawn on a carriage pulled by 16 horses from Whitechapel Bell Foundry to the Palace of Westminster. 1934 – The Glyndebourne festival in England was inaugurated. 1937 – Neville Chamberlain became British Prime Minister. 1942 – In retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis in Czechoslovakia killed over 1800 people. 1952 – Women in Greece were given the right to vote. 1959: Two monkeys, Abe and Baker, became the first living creatures to survive a space mission. (Able died from the effects of anesthesia given for removal of implanted electrodes.) 1964 – The Palestine Libe...

25th February 1964 - Boxer Cassius Clay was crowned heavyweight champion of the world. 1972 - The miners strike was called off. 1982 - The European Court of Human Rights ruled that beating schoolchildren against their parents' wishes was a violation of the Human Rights Convention. Luckily my mum was against corporal punishment.

Dr Hughes is interesting because scores of people queued round the block to say farewell and good luck to him when he announced his retirement. (The practice was open for two hours on a Saturday so that his patients could say goodbye and thank him. He had served the community in Portsmouth since 1982 after doing his GP training there. Would you queue up for 2 hours to thank your GP?)