Interesting Facts

20th August 1858 – Charles Darwin first published his theory of evolution in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory. 1882 – Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuted in Moscow. 1940 – Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramon Mercader in Mexico. 1978 - A 29 year old airline stewardess, Irit Gidron, died during an attack on a bus carrying Israelis in central London. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) later said it had carried out the attack. 1986 – U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill gunned down 14 of his co-workers and then commited suicide in In Edmond, Oklahoma. 1988 – A cease-fire was agreed between Iran and Iraq, after almost eight years of war. 1989 – The pleasure boat Marchioness sank on the River Thames, in London, following a collision. 51 people were killed. 1991 – Estonia seceded from the Soviet Union.

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...

10th July 988 – The city of Dublin was founded on the banks of the river Liffey in Ireland. 1040 - Lady Godiva stripped and rode round the streets of Coventry in her birthday suit, to protest the heavy taxation imposed by her husband, Lord Leofric, the Earl of Mercia. 1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burnt most of the city to the ground. 1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick defeated the king's Lancastrian forces and took King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton. 1553 – Lady Jane Grey took the throne of England for - nine days. Awww bless. 1778 – Louis XVI of France declared war on the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1856 – Nikola Tesla was born. 1913 – Temperatures in Death Valley, California hit 134 °F (~56.7 °C), which is the highest temperature recorded in the United States. 1938 – Howard Hughes set a new record by completing a 91 hour airplane flight around the world. 1940 - The German air force, the Luftwaffe, attacked ...

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.

27th June 1967 - The world's first ATM was installed by Barclay's Bank in North London. (We also call the a hole in the wall or a cash machine.) 1986 - The International Court of Justice found the United States guilty of violating international law by supporting Contra rebels in Nicaragua. 1991 - Yugoslav tanks, troops and aircraft rolled into the small republic of Slovenia, 48 hours after it declared independence.

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...

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.

23rd June 1973 – A fire at a house in Hull, England, which killed a six year old boy was passed off as an accident; it later emerged that it was the first of 26 deaths by fire caused over the next seven years by arsonist Peter Dinsdale. 1983 - Pope John Paul II privately met banned union leader Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity, on a visit to Poland. 1984 - An auction of John Lennon's possessions raised $430,000, including $19,000 for a guitar used while Lennon was with the Beatles. 1985 – A terrorist bomb brought a Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board. 1988 – James Hansen testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that it was 99% probable that global warming had begun. 1991 – Moldova declared independence. 1992 - New York crime boss John Gotti (the Teflon Don) was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole. 1996 - The Nintendo 64 went on sale in Japan. 2004 - A U.S. lawyer...

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...

31st March 1918 - Daylight Saving Time was adopted as law in the US. 1948 - Congress passed the Marshall Aid Act, a plan to rehabilitate war-ravaged Europe. 1959 - The Dalai Lama fled Chinese-occupied Tibet and was granted political asylum in India. 1991 - The Warsaw Pact formally ended as Soviet commanders surrendered their powers in an agreement between pact members and the Soviet Union.

3rd March 1284 - The Statute of Rhuddlan was signed and Wales became a territory under the English crown. 1991 - A home video captured three Los Angeles police officers beating motorist Rodney King. (Four LAPD officers were later tried in a state court for the beating but were acquitted. The announcement of the acquittals sparked the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.)

18th February 1478 - George - Duke of Clarence, who had been impeached for treason by his brothers Edward IV and Richard III, was, allegedly, drowned in a gigantic vat of Malmsey wine at the Tower of London. 1517 - Mary I, Queen of England was born. 1678 - John Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress was published. 1946 - Sailors of the Royal Indian Navy mutinied in Mumbai harbour, from where it spread throughout British India. 1949 - Opportunity Knocks, the forerunner to the X factor and other talent shows, was presented for the first time (on BBC radio) by its creator, Hughie Greene. 1991 - One man was killed and 43 people injured by an IRA bomb at Victoria Station, London. 1996 - An IRA bomb detonated prematurely on a bus travelling in central London, killing Edward O'Brien, the IRA member who was transporting the device. Eight other people were injured.

According to the NFU (National Farmers Union), if all the food produced within the UK for a year, was stored and eaten from January 1, we would run out by August 14th. (Seemingly Britain produces less than two-thirds (62%) of the food the country consumes, down from 75% in 1991, and imports £37.6 billion in food and drink. What they don't seem to understand is we can't grow our own tea or coffee.)