Interesting Facts

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.

30th July 762 – Baghdad was founded. 1866 – New Orleans's Democratic government ordered police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150. 1965 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid. 1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He was never seen or heard from again. 2003 – In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line. 2006 – The world's longest running music show, Top of the Pops, was broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years. 2006 – At least 28 civilians, including 16 children were killed by the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon. 2005 - Anthony Walker, a British student was murdered in a racially motivated crime. 2007 - The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to ...

1298 – King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeated William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons outside the town of Falkirk. 1456 – John Hunyadi, Regent of Kingdom of Hungary defeats Mehmet II of Ottoman Empire in Belgrade. 1894 – The first ever motorized racing event was held in France between the cities of Paris and Rouen. The race was won by Jules de Dion. 1916 – In San Francisco, California, a bomb exploded on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade killing 10 and injuring 40. The true identity of the bomber (or bombers) remains unknown. 1933 – Wiley Post became the first person to fly solo around the world, traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. 1934 – "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger was mortally wounded by FBI agents, outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre. 1942 – The systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto began. 1944 – The Polish Committee of National Liberation published its manifesto, starting the...

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...

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...

2nd June 455 – The Vandals entered Rome, and plundered the city for two weeks. 1692 – Bridget Bishop was the first person to go to trial in the Salem witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. 1793 – Jean-Paul Marat recited the names of 29 people to the French National Convention. Almost all of these people were guillotined, followed by 17,000 more over the course of the next year during the Reign of Terror. 1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States. 1946 – Italians voted to turn Italy from a monarchy into a Republic. After the referendum the king of Italy Umberto II di Savoia was exiled. 1953 - Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. 1966 - The United States landed a spacecraft on the Moon on its first try (four months behind the Soviet Union). 1985 - English clubs were banned from playing in Europe indefinitely, after the riot at Brussels...

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 March 1956 - Tunisia gained independence from France. 1993 - Johnathan Ball, aged 3, died in a bomb attack in Warrington. He was in town with his babysitter buying a Mothering Sunday Card. Tim Parry, 12, was fatally injured and died five days later in hospital. 1997 - The Liggett Group, the fifth-largest U.S. tobacco company, admitted that smoking was addictive and caused health problems and that the tobacco industry had sought for years to sell its products to children as young as 14. 2003 - American launched missiles hit the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Civilian casualties were not counted.

Since 2012 all large shops and supermarkets in England had to hide tobacco products from public view, and now all shops will have to do so from 6th April. (The original ban only applied to shops of more than 280 sq m (3,014 sq ft), and small outlets were exempt until 2015, but that is about to end as the ban comes into force across the UK.  The ban will stop cigarettes being visible at the point of sale in any small shops and other premises selling tobacco such as cafes, pubs and clubs. It seems to be working too, with smoking rates for England at their lowest ever levels: the latest figures show only 8% of 15 year olds are now regular smokers, compared with 22% in 2003. Interestingly on a recent trip to France, every other shop seemed to sell e-cigarettes.)

According to figures, from the Office for National Statistics’ the number of married couples with 1 child grew from 37 per cent to 40 per cent from 2003 to 2013. (A sociologist at Kent University, Professor Frank Furedi, has worked out that if this trend continues, by 2022 half of families in the UK will only have 1 child.)

April 8th 2014 Microsoft will stop support for Windows XP and Office 2003.

The first patent for a "a smokeless non-tobacco cigarette" was made in 1963 by Herbert Gilbert. (Gilbert described a device that replaced burning tobacco and paper with heated, moist, flavoured air, but his device involved no nicotine, it was more flavoured steam and didn't prove a commercial success. It wasn't until 2003 that the first nicotine based electronic cigarette was patented, by Mr Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacologist. Manufactured to look like a traditional cigarette, the batter powered product contains liquid nicotine that is turned into a vapour which is then inhaled. Just another way to part a fool from his / her money. I wonder if it could be turned into something useful like a drug delivery system.)

According to figures released by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents; more people were killed on UK roads in 2011 than at any time since 2003. (Statistics revealed almost 2,000 people died in traffic accidents – 3% up on 2010. The number of deaths and serious injuries reported to the police hit 25,023, a 2% increase on the previous year and the first increase in those killed or seriously injured since 1994. Now I wonder what's changed recently that might cause these increases. Anyone here been using their mobile phone recently?) Source

Every year at Thanksgiving in the USA two turkeys are "pardoned". For many years the turkeys were given to Kidwell Farm, a petting zoo at Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Virginia. In 2005 they were flown to Disneyland in California for the famous Thanksgiving Day parade. They will spend the rest of their lives at a Disneyland ranch. (Disneyland somehow seems better than Frying Pan Park if for a turkey who has escaped being part of someone's Thanksgiving feast. In 2005, President Bush gave two turkeys named Marshmallow and Yam a last-minute reprieve. The two turkeys hail from Henning, Minnesota, For the third time, the American public was allowed to vote for the turkeys' names on the White House web site. 2004's turkeys were named Biscuit and Gravy, and in 2003, Stars and Stripes.)

There have only ever been three voices for the BT Speaking Clock, apart from a two week period in March 2003 when Lenny Henry, a famous British comedian, did a special version of the Speaking Clock in aid of Comic Relief. (A London telephonist, Jane Cain was the first voice in 1936 and lasted until 1963. She was followed by a Miss Pat Simmons, a supervisor in a London telephone exchange, she was the second voice from 1963 until 1984. The present voice, belongs to Brian Cobby (73) who was an assistant supervisor at Withdean exchange in Brighton. He became the first male voice at 11 am on 2nd April 1985. Brian Cobby, an actor by profession before he joined BT, was selected from 12 finalists in BT’s Golden Voice competition, on 5th December 1984.) !Note - The speaking clock is a telephone service provided by British Telecom where you dial 123 to hear a recording of the time, but be warned, you will be charged 31p for doing so.