Interesting Facts

11th September 1944 - An allied bombing raid on the German city of Darmstadt killed an estimated 12,300 inhabitants and made 70,000 people homeless. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."   Dwight Eisenhower 2001 - Four commercial passenger jet airliners were hijacked. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania, after some of it...

3rd August 2001 - A car bomb exploded in a busy west London street, injuring seven people. 2003 - The Anglican Church in America voted to approve the appointment of an openly gay bishop. 2008 - Nobel literature prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn who revealed the horror of Stalin's camps to the world, died aged 89.

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...

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.

10th June 1184 BC – The city of Troy was sacked and burned. 1509 – Henry VIII of England married Catherine of Aragon. 1692 - Salem Village. Bridget Bishop, the first colonist tried in the Salem witch trials, was hanged after being found guilty of the practice of witchcraft. (In 1956 the Massachusetts General Court passed an act exonerating her. Well that's alright then.) 1776 - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston were appointed to the Committee of Five to draft the American declaration of independence. 1788 – Russian explorer Gerasim Izmailov reached Alaska. 1955 – Eighty-three people were killed and at least 100 injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collided at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. 1959 - The Hovercraft, invented by Christopher Cockerell, was officially launched in Southampton. 1962 – Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin became the only prisoners to successfully escape from Alcatraz I...

6th May 1536 – King Henry VIII ordered English language Bibles be placed in every church. 1840 – The Penny Black postage stamp was introduced for use in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1882 – Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish were stabbed and killed during the Phoenix Park Murders in Dublin. 1889 – The Eiffel Tower was officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris. 1910 – George V became King upon the death of his father, Edward VII. 1937 – The German Zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed within a minute while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people were killed. 1940 – John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath. 1954 – Roger Bannister became the first person to run the mile in under four minutes. 1966 – Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were sentenced to life imprisonment for the Moors Murders in England. 1994 – The Channel Tunnel (aka the Chunnel)...

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...

1st April 1318 - Berwick-upon-Tweed was captured by the Scottish from the English. 1826 - Samuel Morey patented the internal combustion engine. 1867 - Singapore became a British crown colony. 1873 - The British steamer RMS Atlantic sank off Nova Scotia, 547 people died. 1891 - The Wrigley Company was founded in Chicago, Illinois. 1918 - The Royal Air Force was created by the merger of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. 1924 - Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the "Beer Hall Putsch". However, he spent only nine months in jail, during which time he wrote the book Mein Kampf. (Just shows you prison is no deterrent.) 1949 - The twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State became the Republic of Ireland. 1976 - Apple Computer was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. 1979 - Iran became an Islamic Republic by a 98% vote, officially overthrowing the Shah. 1981 - Daylight saving time was introduced ...

20th January 2001 - George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd president of the United States. 1993 - Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd president of the United States. 1987 – Church of England envoy Terry Waite was kidnapped in Lebanon. 1986 - Soviets launched the space station Mir. 1981 - Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th president of the United States. 1962 - John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. 1961 - John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president of the United States. 1958 - The UK government announced the naval dockyards at Sheerness were to close. 1936 - Britain's King George V died and Edward VIII became King of the United Kingdom. 1841 – The island of Hong Kong was occupied by the British. 1783 - Great Britain signed a peace treaty with France and Spain. Officially ending hostilities between the countries in the American War of Independence. 1649 - Charles I of England went on trial for treason and other "high cri...

15th January 1929 - Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. 2001 - Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

The Chilcot report into the Iraq war cost £10,375,000.00. It consists of 12-volumes containing 2.6 million words. (The inquiry was launched on 30 July 2009, to cover the period of 2001 to the end of July 2009.  Over 100 witnesses were called. The findings of the report were that British military action was not the last resort, that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence that was never challenged, and that the overall severity of the threat posed by Iraq, particularly the existence of weapons of mass destruction, was grossly overstated, and presented with a certainty that was not justified.) The whole report can be downloaded here: http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/

Americans consume three times more paper per person than the average European, and 100 times more than the average person in China. (The average per capita paper use in the USA in 2001 was 700 pounds (320 kg). The average per capita paper use worldwide was 110 pounds (50 kg). Barely a third of the paper products sold in America are from recycled sources — most of it comes from virgin wood. There's nothing wrong with recycled paper, the United States Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) found that recycling causes 35% less water pollution and 74% less air pollution than making virgin paper.)

One-day strikes now account for 55% of industrial stoppages in the UK. (According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2005 and 2006, 55% of all stoppages lasted for just a single day. This was up from 49% in 2001. In 1988, the figure was 42%. In 1977, only 17% of stoppages lasted for a single day, while 18.5% lasted 12 days or more.)