Interesting Facts

25th July 1943 - Italian dictator Benito Mussolini stepped down as head of the armed forces and the government. 1969 - Senator Edward Kennedy plead guilty to leaving the scene of a crime following the Chappaquiddick car crash. 1978 - The first so called 'test tube baby' was born in Manchester, England. 1992 - The Olympic Games opened in Barcelona with all countries present for the first time in modern history. 2000 - 113 people died when Concorde crashed minutes after take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris. Concorde was out of service for more than a year after the Paris crash, it struggled to attract enough passengers and was retired in October 2003 as it was no longer profitable.

30th June 1860 – The 1860 Oxford evolution debate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History took place. 1908 – The Tunguska event occured in Siberia. 1936 - Gone with the Wind was published. 1934 – The Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's violent purge of his political rivals in Germany, took place. 1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan, USA. (I wonder if it was a little red one.) 1960 – Congo gained independence from Belgium. 1963 – A car bomb, intended for Mafia boss Salvatore Greco, killed seven police and military officers near Palermo. 1969 – Nigeria banned Red Cross aid to Biafra, leaving over 4 million people to face starvation. 1971 - Three Russian cosmonauts were found dead in their Soyuz 11 space capsule after it made what looked like a perfect landing in Kazakhstan. 1985 - 39 Americans being held captive by the Shia Muslim Amal militia in Lebanon were released, after almost three weeks in ...

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 May 1521 – Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was executed for treason. 1536 – George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford and four other men were executed for treason. 1590 – Anne of Denmark was crowned Queen of Scotland. 1792 – The New York Stock Exchange was formed. 1814 – The Constitution of Norway was signed and Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik elected King of Norway by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly. 1974 – Thirty-three people were killed by terrorist bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland. 1978 - Charlie Chaplin's stolen body was found. 1984 – Prince Charles called the proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend," sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal Family and the course of modern architecture. 1992 – The WHO (World Health Organisation) took homosexuality out of its list of mental illnesses. 1994 - The U.N. Security Council approved sendi...

29th April 1429 – Joan of Arc arrived to relieve the Siege of Orleans. 1770 – James Cook arrived at and named Botany Bay, Australia. 1882 – The "Elektromote" – forerunner of the tram – was tested by Ernst Werner von Siemens in Berlin. 1885 - Women were admitted for the first time to examinations at England's Oxford University. 1916 – Martial law in Ireland was lifted and the Easter rebellion officially ended with the surrender of Irish nationalists to British authorities in Dublin. 1945 – The German Army in Italy unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. 1945 – Adolf Hitler married his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designated Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. 1945 - Dachau Concentration Camp was liberated by US Troops. 1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing title. 1985 - Four gunmen escaped with nearly $8 million in cash st...

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 March 1861 - Modern Italy became unified under the house of Savoy. 1992 - South African whites voted to end minority rule. 2.8 million whites who cast ballots, slightly more than 1.9 million (68.7 percent) voted to give Mr. de Klerk the mandate he had sought. In his own words "Today will be written up in our history as one of the most fundamental turning point days in the history of South Africa. Today we have closed the book on apartheid -- and that chapter is finally closed."

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.)

1984 - The world's worst industrial disaster took place when 42 tonnes of toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant in the city of Bhopal, India. More than 500,000 people were exposed to the toxic gases, with the symptoms bearing all the hallmarks of cyanide poisoning. The first official death toll was 2,259. A more probable figure is that 8,000 people died within two weeks. It is estimated that around 20,000 people have died from gas-related diseases since the disaster. http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/11/28/india-bhopal-gas-union-carbide-dow-idINKCN0JC0WC20141128 1992 - The first text message was sent.  

After nearly 25 years, the Carry On film franchise is about to return to British cinema. (The last film to be made was Carry On Columbus in 1992, it was the 31st film made.   Carry on Films are part of British Culture, and they turned actors like Sid James, Kenneth Williams, and Dame Barbara Windsor into household characters. In 2007 the line "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!" was voted the funniest film one-liner: Kenneth Williams uttered the words as Julius Caesar in the 1964 romp Carry On Cleo. Film company, Hereford Films, are behind the project, and the first 2 films in the pipeline are Carry On Doctors, followed by Carry On Campus. Co-writer Tim Dawson paid respect to the previous writers of the Carry On series: "These films are a part of British culture and to be carrying on the legacy of Norman Hudis and Talbot Rothwell is a thrill and a responsibility. We intend to be sympathetic to the heritage whilst being unafraid to modernise th...

20th November 1945 - The Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals began. 1992 - A major fire broke out at Windsor Castle. 1995 - Diana Princess of Wales admitted to having committed adultery in a TV interview.  

Sky TV and BT Sport have paid £5.1 billion for the TV rights to the Premier League from 2016 to 2019. (Sky paid £4.2bn for five of the seven TV packages ( £11.07m per match), while rival BT paid £960m ( £7.6m per game) for the other two in a TV rights auction. Between 1992 and 1997 the whole lot cost £191 million. Does anyone else think this is obscene?)