Interesting Facts

22nd June 1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe. 1907 – The London Underground's Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opened. 1922 – 19 strikebreakers and 2 union miners were murdered in Herrin, Illinois . 1941 - Hitler's German troops invaded the Soviet Union. 1969 – The Cuyahoga River, in Northeast Ohio in the United States, caught fire, which triggered a crack-down on pollution in the river. Time magazine described the Cuyahoga as the river that "oozes rather than flows" and in which a person "does not drown but decays." 1969 – Judy Garland died. 1978 – Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, was discovered. 1981 - Mark Chapman changed his plea to guilty and admitted he murdered John Lennon in December 1980. 1984 – Virgin Atlantic Airways launched. Its first flight was from London Heathrow Airport. 1987 – Fred Astaire died. ...

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...

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...

20th May 1506 - Christopher Columbus died in poverty in Spain. 1570 – Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued the first modern atlas. 1609 – Shakespeare's Sonnets were first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. 1631 – The city of Magdeburg in Germany was seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years' War. 1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. 1902 – Cuba gained independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma became the first President of Cuba. 1927 - Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. 1932 – Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot. She landed in Irel...

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 ...

22nd January 1521 – Emperor Charles V opened the Diet of Worms. (Not as disgusting as it sounds.) 1561 - Francis Bacon was born. 1879 – The Battle of Rorke's Drift: 139 British soldiers successfully defend their garrison against an onslaught by 3 to 4 thousand Zulu warriors. 1901 – Edward VII was proclaimed King after the death of his mother, Queen Victoria. 1905 – Bloody Sunday in Saint Petersburg began the 1905 revolution. 1924 – Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 1927 – The first live radio commentary of a football match was broadcast. 2002 – Kmart became the largest retailer in United States history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Human rights groups estimate that up to 30,000 people were killed or disappeared in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. (In a series of systematic abductions, men women and children were methodically tortured and murdered. The disappeared have not been heard of to this day. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which came into force on 1 July 2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, a "forced disappearance" qualifies as a crime against humanity, and thus is not subject to a statute of limitation.) >