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.

13th June 1249 – Alexander III was crowned King of Scotland. 1525 – Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns. 1625 – King Charles I married French princess Henrietta Maria de Bourbon. 1774 – Rhode Island became the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves. 1886 - Fire destroyed nearly 1,000 buildings in Vancouver. 1912 - Albert Berry made the first parachute jump from an airplane. 1934 – Adolf Hitler and Benitto Mussolini met in Venice. Mussolini later described the German dictator as "a silly little monkey". 1970 – "The Long and Winding Road" became the Beatles' last Number 1 song. 1977 – James Earl Ray, the convicted murderer of Martin Luther King Jr. was recaptured after escaping from prison three days before. 1980 - The U.N. Security Council called for South Africa to free Nelson Mandela 1981 – At the Trooping of...

Police in Rome, Italy, have seized €3m (£2.3m)  of marijuana in a drugs raid in the city. (Now 340kg (750lb) of marijuana is in itself interesting, but what makes this story unique is the plants were being grown  in an old underground Metro tunnel that was built beneath Rome during the fascist era of Benito Mussolini. The tunnel, which is 1 km (0.6 miles) long was officially being used as a mushroom farm.) Source

Benito Mussolini was given an honourary knighthood in 1923 but it was withdrawn in 1940. (Honourary knighthoods are given by the Queen to non-British or Commonwealth citizens on what is called the "advice", which basically means the orders, of the British government. Mr Mussolini is not alone though, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, was stripped of his shortly after he had been deposed and, as it turned out, only one day before he was shot. Even more recently Zimbabwe's "President" Robert Mugabe has just been similarly dishonoured. (Is that the right word?).