This month in 1981, BAD MANNERS released their third studio LP Gosh It's ... Bad Manners, (October 1981)
By late 1981, BAD MANNERS had become a formidable chart presence. Such was their popularity that October saw their third LP score an #18 on the UK album chart. In contrast to the first single off the album, the wild party anthem and cover of the popular tune CAN CAN – one that scored a Top 5 hit, equalling the feat of 1980’s Special Brew single – the second was WALKING IN THE SUNSHINE.
The tune hinted at a band with many hidden depths and an impeccable understanding of bright, summery dubby ska and how it could be married with pop without losing credibility.
1881 The Savoy Theatre, the first public building to be lit by electricity, opened with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Patience'.
1928 George V opened the Tyne Bridge. It contained Britain's largest steel arch.
1957 A major radiation leak was detected at the Windscale (now known as Sellafield) nuclear plant in Cumbria after an accident three days earlier.
1961 Following a volcanic eruption, the entire population of the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha was evacuated to Britain.
1963 "From Russia With Love" 2nd James Bond film premieres in London.
1971 After being sold (to Robert McCulloch, chairman of the McCulloch Oil Corporation) then dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopened in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. McCulloch and his business associate C.V. Wood had concluded that London Bridge was exactly the kind of thing that Lake Havasu needed to make it an attractive resort city and a tourist destination. The gamble paid off and land sales in Lake Havasu City soared. From a population of just a few hundred in the 1960s, the town blossomed to 10,000 by 1974. That year, the bridge drew almost two million visitors to the new city.
1975 Elizabeth Taylor got married for the 6th time. She re-married British actor Richard Burton at a remote location in Botswana. They divorced the following year.
1978 British pop music magazine "Smash Hits" first published.
1988 Igor Judge, a British QC, was sworn in as a High Court judge where he would be known as Mr Justice Judge.
1996 A Scottish fisherman found a message in a bottle. It had been thrown in the North Sea in 1914 to chart the currents.
1999 Thousands gathered to watch the giant Millennium wheel become the latest landmark on the London skyline.
2009 Rob Green hit the headlines when he became the first England goalkeeper to be sent off. Playing in Dnipropetrovsk in a World Cup qualifier against Ukraine he was red-carded for a professional foul on Artem Milevskiy after just 14 minutes. He was replaced by David James, the spot kick was missed but England lost 1-0 although by then had already won a place in the World Cup finals in South Africa.
1216 King John lost his crown and jewels whilst crossing 'The Wash', on the north-west margin of East Anglia.
1649 After a ten-day siege, English New Model Army troops, under the command of Oliver Cromwell, stormed the town of Wexford, Ireland, killing over 2,000 Irish Confederate troops and 1,500 civilians.
1899 The start of the Boer War between the British Empire and the Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal in southern Africa.
1919 The first airline meals were served on a Handley-Page flight from London to Paris. They were pre-packed lunch boxes at 3 shillings each (15p).
1951 Gordon Richards, champion British jockey, rode his 200th winner for the sixth successive season.
1958 Bill Nicholson started his new career as a manager on this day and watched his Spurs side beat Everton 10-4 in a First Division match at White Hart Lane.
1966 The Post Office announced that all home and business addresses in Britain were to be allocated postcodes.
1981 Unknown rocker Prince opens for Rolling Stones at LA Coliseum he gets booed off the stage, The Stones have good intentions in bringing in a rising star, but his act isn't a good fit for this crowd and when he opens his trench coat to reveal bikini briefs it gets ugly. Prince never again performs as an opening act.
1982 The Mary Rose, which had been the pride of Henry VIII's English fleet until it sank in the Solent in 1545, was raised, by the Mary Rose Trust. It was one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.
1987 A huge sonar exploration of Loch Ness failed to find the world famous monster known affectionately as Nessie.
1988 Girls began to study at Magdalene College, Cambridge for the first time. To mark the occasion male students wore black armbands and the porter flew a black flag.
1537 Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII by his third wife Jane Seymour was born. Jane died 13 days after giving birth to him.
1609 Children's rhyme "Three Blind Mice" is published in London in a book edited by and possibly written by Thomas Ravenscroft.
1823 Charles Macintosh of Scotland began selling raincoats, now better known as - Macs.
1879 British troops occupy Kabul, Afghanistan.
1901 Theodore Roosevelt renames the "Executive Mansion" as "The White House"
1915 Ford Motor Company under Henry Ford manufactures its 1 millionth automobile at the River Rouge plant in Detroit.
1931 Christ the Redeemer statue opens standing 30 meters high (98 ft) on top of Mount Corcovado overlooking Rio de Janeiro.
1933 Alcatraz becomes a federal prison.
1936 The leader of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley, led a controversial anti-Jewish march down the Mile End Road in London which was a predominantly Jewish area of the capital.
1940 World War II: Adolf Hitler postponed indefinitely 'Operation Sealion' - the planned invasion of Britain.
1948 The first Morris Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis, was produced at Cowley, Oxfordshire. 1.6 million Morris Minors were built until production ceased in 1971.
1967 Zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his book The Naked Ape that compared human behaviour with animals.
1974 "Rollermania" takes hold as the Bay City Rollers' debut album, Rollin', hits #1 in the UK.
1977 Scotland beat Wales in a World Cup qualifier to reach the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina - and were the only British nation to qualify. Scotland's 2-0 win was helped along by a hotly-disputed penalty and the choice of venue. After crowd problems at a Wales match at Cardiff's Ninian Park the Welsh FA decided to stage the home match 'abroad' at Liverpool's Anfield Stadium rather than in Wrexham. There were so many members of the Tartan Army in the 50,850 Anfield crowd it almost seemed to be an away match for the Welsh.
1978 Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, who he found dead in the bathroom of their hotel room with a stab wound to her abdomen. Vicious dies of a heroin overdose before he can be tried for the murder.
1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped an assassination attempt when an IRA bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel, Brighton which was being used by delegates to the Conservative Party Conference. Five people were killed and 30 people injured, including the Employment Secretary Norman Tebbit and his wife Margaret, who was left permanently disabled.
1989 The remains of Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre were found on London's Bankside.
1996 Arsene Wenger's first game in charge of Arsenal was a 2–0 away victory over Blackburn Rovers.
1996 Aston Villa's goalkeeper Mark Bosnich hadn't been a favourite of Tottenham Hotspur fans following a clash between the Australian 'keeper and Jurgen Klinsmann of Spurs at Villa Park in January 1995. Klinsmann was knocked unconscious in the Premier League fixture. When the clubs met in another Premier League match in October 1996, at White Hart Lane, Spurs fans chanted the name of Klinsmann every time Bosnich touched the ball. In response Bosnich did a Nazi salute directed at the home fans. With Spurs having a deep Jewish heritage there was immediate outrage at the incident and later football fans generally condemned the actions of Bosnich. Complaints from fans saw the Australian interviewed by police and charged with misconduct by the FA for which he was later fined £1000 and warned about his future conduct.
1999 The Day of Six Billion: the proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world is born. It wasn't until 1804 that the world's population reached 1 billion, now a billion people are added to the population about every 12 years.
1399 Henry of Bolingbroke is crowned King Henry IV of England in Westminster Abbey, a few weeks after deposing Richard II
1884 Greenwich was chosen as the universal time meridian of longitude from which standard times throughout the world are calculated.
1894 The first Merseyside 'derby' football match was played at Goodison Park between Liverpool and Everton, with Everton winning 3 - 0.
1899 The start of the siege of the British garrison at Mafeking by Boer forces. The commander of the garrison, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell and his forces held firm for 217 days.
1924 Labour Party leader Ramsay MacDonald became the first Prime Minister to make an election broadcast on BBC radio.
1925 The birth of Margaret Thatcher British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990.
1940 Princess Elizabeth, aged 14, (now Queen Elizabeth II), made her first radio broadcast to child evacuees.
1946 The birth of Edwina Currie, former Member of Parliament. She resigned as a Junior Health Minister in 1988 over the controversy of salmonella in eggs. Among her comments over the next two years were that good Christian people don't get AIDS, that old people who couldn't afford their heating bills should wrap up warm in winter, and that northerners die of ignorance and chips.
1963 The term Beatlemania was coined after The Beatles appeared at the Palladium. They made their debut as the top of the bill on ITV's 'Sunday Night at The London Palladium.'
1972 Uruguay to Chile plane crashes in Andes Mountains, (passengers eat crash victims to survive, 16 of 45 rescued 2 months later).
2008 The government said that they would pump billions of pounds of taxpayers money into three UK banks in one of the UK's biggest nationalisations. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds TSB and HBOS would have a total of £37bn injected into them.
2010 Copiapó mining accident in Chile comes to a happy end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground.
1066 The Battle of Hastings was fought, on Senlac Hill, near Pevensey. An English army, commanded by King Harold, was defeated by the invasion force of William of Normandy. Harold was killed and Edgar the Ætheling was proclaimed king, but never crowned. William I 'The Conqueror' and the first Norman King of England, was subsequently crowned at Westminster Abbey on 25th December 1066.
1322 Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeated King Edward II of England at the Battle of Old Byland in Yorkshire, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence.
1878 The first football match played under floodlights took place at Bramhall Lane, Sheffield, in front of a crowd of just under 20,000. Two generators positioned behind each goal powered lights on 30 ft. high wooden towers situated at each corner of the field. The light was deemed so bright that some ladies present put up their parasols to protect themselves from being burned.
1892 Arthur Conan Doyle publishes "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" collection of 12 stories originally published serially in "The Strand Magazine"
1913 Britain's worst pit disaster. More than 400 miners were killed in an explosion down a mine at Senghenydd in Glamorgan, S. Wales.
1926 A. A. Milne's book "Winnie the Pooh" released.
1969 Ahead of the complete changeover to decimalization, Britain scrapped the 10 shilling note and introduced the 50 pence coin.
1977 Bing Crosby dies of a heart attack after finishing a round of golf in Spain, at age 74.
1666 Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that Charles II had started wearing the first known waistcoat. The King was so overweight that he left the bottom button undone, a fashion custom followed to this day.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on island of St Helena to begin his exile.
1887 Preston North End beat Hyde 26-0 in an FA Cup tie, the highest goal score ever by an English club in a major competition, with James Ross the first player to score seven goals in a 1st Division match.
1888 A 'From He ll' letter was sent to George Lusk, then head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, claiming to be from the serial killer Jack the Ripper. It was delivered with a small box containing half of what doctors later determined was a human kidney, preserved in ethanol. One of his victim's kidneys had been removed by the killer, which gave the letter some authenticity. The letter ended with the words - 'Catch me when you can Mister Lusk.', but the Ripper was never caught.
1895 Henry Perky patents a machine he developed with William Ford for the preparation of cereals for food, otherwise known as shredded wheat.
1956 The last RAF Lancaster bomber was retired from service.
1961 The human rights organization Amnesty International was established in London.
1964 Harold Wilson won the election with a majority of just 4, making him the youngest Prime Minister at the time of the 20th century.
1964 British singer Screaming Lord Sutch runs for the English Parliament. He goes on to lose 40 elections (mostly by-elections).
1968 British athlete David Hemery sets a world record 48.12s to beat Gerhard Hennige of West Germany and take the gold medal in the men's 400m hurdles at the Mexico City Olympics.
1997 Following a new land speed record by Andy Green in Thrust SSC the previous month, Thrust SSC became the first land vehicle to exceed the speed of sound when it achieved 763 mph (Mach 1.020) at Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The record still stands.
2017 The round £1 coin, introduced in 1983, went out of circulation at midnight. Its replacement was 12 sided and had additional security features.
1881 The first edition of The People' - later renamed 'The Sunday People'.
1902 Britain opened its first 'Borstal' detention centre, at the village of Borstal in Kent. The institution was designed to keep boys, especially first offenders, away from adult criminals in prisons; to teach them a trade and to reward good behaviour.
1920 Gordon Richards, 26 times a champion jockey had his first ride at Lingfield Park.
1958 Britain's most popular children's television programme 'Blue Peter' was first broadcast on BBC TV. The first presenters were Leila Williams and Christopher Trace.
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis begins as JFK is shown photos confirming the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
1964 Harold Wilson became Prime Minister of a Labour Government. He was the first Labour PM in 13 years.
1972 Rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival break up.
1979 Comedy sketch show "Not the Nine O'Clock News" debuts on BBC 2.
1987 Southern Britain began a massive clear-up operation after the worst night of storms in living memory. BBC Weatherman Michael Fish faced criticism, as he had reassured viewers that the worst of the stormy weather would be across Spain and France.
1987 Defending champion Mike Tyson beats Tyrell Biggs by TKO in round 7 at Convention Centre, Atlantic City to retain the unified heavyweight boxing title.
2002 A gaffe from England’s David Seaman brought more criticism for the Arsenal ‘keeper when he allowed Macedonia’s Artim Šakiri to score direct from a corner kick. The 2-2 draw with Macedonia in a Euro qualifier at St Mary’s in Southampton proved to be David Seaman’s 75th and final appearance for his country.
2004 17-year old Lionel Messi makes his league debut for FC Barcelona in a 1-0 win against cross-town rivals Espanyol at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, Barcelona.
2005 Renault driver Fernando Alonso wins season-ending Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai International Circuit; first Spanish Formula 1 World Drivers champion; wins by 21 points from Kimi Räikkönen.
1091 A tornado struck London. It was Britain's earliest reported tornado. The wooden London Bridge was demolished, and the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in the city of London was badly damaged. Other churches in the area were demolished, as were over 600, mostly wooden, houses.
1346 At the Battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham, the Scots were routed and King David II of Scotland was captured by Edward III of England and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.
1651 Defeated by Oliver Cromwell at Worcester, Charles II of England fled to France.
1814 A Beer Flood occurs in London killing nine.
1860 The world's first professional golf tournament was held, at Prestwick in Scotland. The British Open Men's Golf, Willie Park Sr. wins inaugural event by 2 strokes from fellow Scot Tom Morris Sr.
1933 Albert Einstein arrives in US as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
1936 Newspaper owner Lord Beaverbrook promised King Edward VIII that he would arrange for the British press to remain silent on the subject of his relationship with American divorcee Mrs. Wallis Simpson.
1957 Jailhouse Rock starring Elvis Presley premieres in Memphis, Tennessee.
1968 "Bullitt" starring Steve McQueen is released.
1973 The start of a major world oil crisis when oil producing Arab states increased prices by 70 per cent and cut production in protest at US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
1981 Brazilian Nelson Piquet driving for Brabham finishes 5th in the season ending Caesars Palace Grand Prix in Las Vegas to clinch his first Formula 1 World Drivers Championship by 1 point from Carlos Reutemann.
1995 A samba band and 5,000 fans turned out at The Riverside to welcome new midfield signing Juninho, the Brazilian player of the year, who cost Bryan Robson £4.75m from Sao Paulo.
1998: Fulham boss Kevin Keegan took his spending to £11m with the signing of Bristol Rovers striker Barry Hayles for £2m.
2008 Iran's attempt to create the world's largest sandwich (1,500 metres) fails when crowds eat it before it can be measured.
2012 Colin Farmer, aged 61 and a blind stroke victim said that he thought he was going to die when he was shot in the back in Chorley town centre with a 50,000-volt Taser stun gun fired by a police officer who mistook his white stick for a Samurai sword.
This I'm sure will never happen again. Just after the start of the 1919/20 season the footballing authorities closed down Leeds City and expelled them from the Football League with their fixtures being taken over by Port Vale. Their crime had been to make illegal payments to players during the First World War. That saw the need to auction off the club assets to pay the debts so on 17th October 1919 representatives of 30 League clubs assembled at the Metropole Hotel in Leeds to bid for everything from boots to goalnets to....the players! The Yorkshire Post newspaper described it as "a melancholy spectacle" as the playing squad was sold as if they were cattle. Billy McLeod was bought by Notts County for £1250, John Hampson (to Aston Villa) and Harold Millership (to Rotherham County) went for £1000 each while £100 was the bargain price Lincoln City paid for Francis Chipperfield. Their whole squad went for around £10,000 but out of that hardship a new club was soon playing at the Elland Road home of Leeds City....Leeds United.
Football On This Day – 17th October 1973.
England needed to beat Poland in front of a 100,000 Wembley full-house to get to the 1974 World Cup finals, anything less then Poland would be there. In his pre-match analysis TV pundit Brian Clough called the Polish ‘keeper Jan Tomaszewski a ‘clown’ and so, inevitable, he produced a brilliant performance in the 1-1 draw. England were out of the World Cup and after two memorable World Cup final tournaments they found themselves as being just ordinary again.
England played Russia on the artificial surface of the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow and a 2-1 defeat was a major setback in their hopes of qualifying for Euro 2008. They eventually finished third in the group – behind qualifiers Croatia and Russia – and equal on points with Israel. England manager Steve McClaren only lasted another month in the job following the defeat in Russia.
On Monday 17th October 1814, a terrible disaster claimed the lives of at least 8 people in St Giles, London. A bizarre industrial accident resulted in the release of a beer tsunami onto the streets around Tottenham Court Road.
The Horse Shoe Brewery stood at the corner of Great Russell Street and Tottenham Court Road. In 1810 the brewery, Meux and Company, had had a 22 foot high wooden fermentation tank installed on the premises. Held together with massive iron rings, this huge vat held the equivalent of over 3,500 barrels of brown porter ale.
On the afternoon of October 17th 1814 one of the iron rings around the tank snapped. About an hour later the whole tank ruptured, releasing the hot fermenting ale with such force that the back wall of the brewery collapsed. The force also blasted open several more vats, adding their contents to the flood which now burst forth onto the street. More than 320,000 gallons of beer were released into the area. This was St Giles Rookery, a densely populated London slum of cheap housing and tenements inhabited by the poor, the destitute, prostitutes and criminals.
The flood reached George Street and New Street within minutes, swamping them with a tide of alcohol. The 15 foot high wave of beer and debris inundated the basements of two houses, causing them to collapse. In one of the houses, Mary Banfield and her daughter Hannah were taking tea when the flood hit; both were killed.
In the basement of the other house, an Irish wake was being held for a 2 year old boy who had died the previous day. The four mourners were all killed. The wave also took out the wall of the Tavistock Arms pub, trapping the teenage barmaid Eleanor Cooper in the rubble. In all, eight people were killed. Three brewery workers were rescued from the waist-high flood and another was pulled alive from the rubble.
All this ‘free’ beer led to hundreds of people scooping up the liquid in whatever containers they could. Some resorted to just drinking it, leading to reports of the death of a ninth victim some days later from alcoholic poisoning.
‘The bursting of the brew-house walls, and the fall of heavy timber, materially contributed to aggravate the mischief, by forcing the roofs and walls of the adjoining houses.‘ The Times, 19th October 1814.
Some relatives exhibited the corpses of the victims for money. In one house, the macabre exhibition resulted in the collapse of the floor under the weight of all the visitors, plunging everyone waist-high into a beer-flooded cellar.
The stench of beer in the area persisted for months afterwards.
The brewery was taken to court over the accident but the disaster was ruled to be an Act of God, leaving no one responsible.
The flood cost the brewery around £23000 (approx. £1.25 million today). However the company were able to reclaim the excise duty paid on the beer, which saved them from bankruptcy. They were also granted ₤7,250 (₤400,000 today) as compensation for the barrels of lost beer.
This unique disaster was responsible for the gradual phasing out of wooden fermentation casks to be replaced by lined concrete vats. The Horse Shoe Brewery was demolished in 1922; the Dominion Theatre now sits partly on its site.
1016 The Battle of Assandun (Essex). The battle was the conclusion to the Danish reconquest of England. The Vikings, led by Canute the Great were victorious over the Anglo-Saxons led by King Edmund Ironside.
1826 Britain's last state lottery was held, prior to the launch of the National Lottery in 1994.
1851 Herman Melville's book Moby-D ick was first published as 'The Whale' by Richard Bentley of London.
1867 Alaska Purchase: US takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia, having paid $7.2 million at 2 Cents per acre.
1910 The trial began at the Old Bailey of the American Dr. Crippen, accused of murdering his wife Cora Henrietta Crippen. Born in Michigan in 1862 Hawley Harvey Crippen moved to Camden in 1897 and became the first suspect to be captured using the aid of wireless telegraphy. When he and his lover Ethel Neave were spotted escaping on board the liner Montrose the authorities were alerted and Crippen was arrested as the liner entered the St. Lawrence River.
1912 Black boxer Jack Johnson arrested for violating the Mann Act for "transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes" due to his relationship with white woman Lucille Cameron, allegedly a prostitute. Later convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to a year in prison.
1921 Charles Strite granted US patent #1,394,450 for his invention, the automatic pop-up toaster.
1922 The British Broadcasting Corporation was officially formed, to operate from Marconi House in London, under the management of John Reith. It established a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.
1931 American gangster Al Capone convicted of tax evasion.
1957 Paul McCartney and John Lennon perform together for the first time after Paul joins John's band the Quarrymen. The show takes place at New Clubmoor Hall in their hometown of Liverpool, and Paul plays guitar.
1961 Second Division strugglers Stoke City paid £3,500 to buy a 46 year old player to improve their fortunes. It worked - the last home League match before he arrived attracted 8,409 fans but in the first match after he arrived 35,974 were at the Victoria Ground. The player they had brought back from Blackpool was Stanley Matthews who made made his League debut for Stoke back in 1932 and who would go on playing until he was 50.
1963 Chuck Berry is released from prison after serving 20 months for a Mann Act violation (transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes).
1966 The Queen granted a royal pardon to Timothy Evans, wrongly convicted and hanged in 1950 for the murder of his wife and child. The real murderer was John Reginald Christie who had been hanged for mass murder in 1953.
1967 Walt Disney's animated musical adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" film is released.
1969 Rod Stewart joins Faces, formerly known as Small Faces.
1987 Nigel Mansell won the Mexican Grand Prix.
1995 Red Rum, three times winner of the Grand National at Aintree, died at the age of 30, an exceptional age for a horse. He was buried at Aintree.
2009 British Mercedes driver Jenson Button finishes 5th in Brazilian Grand Prix at Autódromo José Carlos Pace to clinch his first F1 World Drivers Championship.
How old does this make me feel two classic albums from my youth 41 years ago.
I started this thread one year ago today about the above two albums, which then transformed into a 'On This Day' thread. I've enjoyed doing it and also learnt a few interesting things along the way. I hope that the few who've been following have also enjoyed some of the posts (if we could remember them all, we could form a team to challenge The Eggheads) . I'll continue to post things that I missed the first time around as the 'On This Day' format didn't start until a while later on in the thread. Thanks to those that have read and contributed to the thread.
1216 King John died of dysentery at Newark-on-Trent , during a Civil War which was the result of his refusal to recognize the Magna Carta signed the previous year. He was known as John Lackland for losing so much territory to France and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry.
1781 The American War of Independence came to an end when British commander Lord Cornwallis surrendered his 8,000 troops to George Washington at Yorktown, in Virginia, after a three week siege.
1856 James Kelly and Jack Smith fight bareknuckle for 6h15m in Melbourne.
1914 Wartime licensing laws came into operation, premises having to close at 10 p.m.
1958 Stirling Moss wins season ending Moroccan Grand Prix at Ain-Diab but fellow Brit Mike Hawthorn takes World Drivers Championship from Moss by just 1 point by finishing second; first British world champion.
1969 Scottish Matra-Ford driver Jackie Stewart finishes 4th in season ending Mexican Grand Prix to win his first F1 World Drivers Championship by 26 points from Jacky Ickx of Belgium.
1970 British Petroleum announced the first major discovery of oil under the British sector of the North Sea.
1978 For the first time in Britain, the International Motor Show was held outside London, its new home being the newly-completed National Exhibition Centre (NEC) near Birmingham.
1987 Black Monday. Millions of pounds were wiped off the value of shares and other financial markets around the world. Wall Street ended the day down 22%, a greater fall than the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
1991 London's Royal Opera House had to cancel its performance, as orchestra members, pursuing an industrial dispute, refused to wear dinner jackets and turned up in jeans.
1993 Norwich City wouldn't perhaps be considered the most notable of English clubs who have played in European competitions but on this day in 1993 they did something no other English club had ever done. The Canaries beat Bayern Munich in the Olympic Stadium, then Bayern's home ground, in the UEFA Cup.
2001 It was announced that a 'serious error' was made by researchers who wasted five years testing the wrong animal brains for BSE.
2001 Dennis Yates (aged 58), a Second World War memorabilia dealer, was jailed for 10 months for handling a wartime Enigma encoding machine. It was stolen from a display cabinet at Bletchley Park (codenamed Station X) on 1st April 2000 during an open day at the former top secret site. A separate charge, of blackmailing Christine Large, the director of Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, where the Abwehr Enigma G312 machine was kept, was ordered to lie on file. Following months of ransom demands, the machine, one of only three left in the world, was returned via BBC Two's Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman.
2012 Trenton Oldfield, aged 36, who disrupted the 2012 University Boat Race by swimming between the boat race crews was jailed for six months for causing a public nuisance. Oldfield said that he was demonstrating against government cuts.
2013 The violin that was apparently played to calm passengers on the Titanic as it sank was sold for £900,000 in just 10 minutes at auction in Wiltshire. Bidding started at £50 and the violin had a guide price of £300,000. The bandleader Wallace Hartley aged 33, was from Colne in Lancashire and is buried in Colne cemetery. The words 'Nearer My God To Thee', the alleged last song that the band played on RMS Titanic, are engraved on the plinth along with a violin and bow.
Comments
By late 1981, BAD MANNERS had become a formidable chart presence. Such was their popularity that October saw their third LP score an #18 on the UK album chart.
In contrast to the first single off the album, the wild party anthem and cover of the popular tune CAN CAN – one that scored a Top 5 hit, equalling the feat of 1980’s Special Brew single – the second was WALKING IN THE SUNSHINE.
The tune hinted at a band with many hidden depths and an impeccable understanding of bright, summery dubby ska and how it could be married with pop without losing credibility.
‘Walking In The Sunshine’ remains a joy to hear.
1881 The Savoy Theatre, the first public building to be lit by electricity, opened with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Patience'.
1928 George V opened the Tyne Bridge. It contained Britain's largest steel arch.
1957 A major radiation leak was detected at the Windscale (now known as Sellafield) nuclear plant in Cumbria after an accident three days earlier.
1961 Following a volcanic eruption, the entire population of the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha was evacuated to Britain.
1963 "From Russia With Love" 2nd James Bond film premieres in London.
1971 After being sold (to Robert McCulloch, chairman of the McCulloch Oil Corporation) then dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopened in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. McCulloch and his business associate C.V. Wood had concluded that London Bridge was exactly the kind of thing that Lake Havasu needed to make it an attractive resort city and a tourist destination. The gamble paid off and land sales in Lake Havasu City soared. From a population of just a few hundred in the 1960s, the town blossomed to 10,000 by 1974. That year, the bridge drew almost two million visitors to the new city.
1975 Elizabeth Taylor got married for the 6th time. She re-married British actor Richard Burton at a remote location in Botswana. They divorced the following year.
1978 British pop music magazine "Smash Hits" first published.
1988 Igor Judge, a British QC, was sworn in as a High Court judge where he would be known as Mr Justice Judge.
1996 A Scottish fisherman found a message in a bottle. It had been thrown in the North Sea in 1914 to chart the currents.
1999 Thousands gathered to watch the giant Millennium wheel become the latest landmark on the London skyline.
2009 Rob Green hit the headlines when he became the first England goalkeeper to be sent off. Playing in Dnipropetrovsk in a World Cup qualifier against Ukraine he was red-carded for a professional foul on Artem Milevskiy after just 14 minutes. He was replaced by David James, the spot kick was missed but England lost 1-0 although by then had already won a place in the World Cup finals in South Africa.
1216 King John lost his crown and jewels whilst crossing 'The Wash', on the north-west margin of East Anglia.
1649 After a ten-day siege, English New Model Army troops, under the command of Oliver Cromwell, stormed the town of Wexford, Ireland, killing over 2,000 Irish Confederate troops and 1,500 civilians.
1899 The start of the Boer War between the British Empire and the Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal in southern Africa.
1919 The first airline meals were served on a Handley-Page flight from London to Paris. They were pre-packed lunch boxes at 3 shillings each (15p).
1951 Gordon Richards, champion British jockey, rode his 200th winner for the sixth successive season.
1958 Bill Nicholson started his new career as a manager on this day and watched his Spurs side beat Everton 10-4 in a First Division match at White Hart Lane.
1966 The Post Office announced that all home and business addresses in Britain were to be allocated postcodes.
1981 Unknown rocker Prince opens for Rolling Stones at LA Coliseum he gets booed off the stage, The Stones have good intentions in bringing in a rising star, but his act isn't a good fit for this crowd and when he opens his trench coat to reveal bikini briefs it gets ugly. Prince never again performs as an opening act.
1982 The Mary Rose, which had been the pride of Henry VIII's English fleet until it sank in the Solent in 1545, was raised, by the Mary Rose Trust. It was one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.
1987 A huge sonar exploration of Loch Ness failed to find the world famous monster known affectionately as Nessie.
1988 Girls began to study at Magdalene College, Cambridge for the first time. To mark the occasion male students wore black armbands and the porter flew a black flag.
1537 Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII by his third wife Jane Seymour was born. Jane died 13 days after giving birth to him.
1609 Children's rhyme "Three Blind Mice" is published in London in a book edited by and possibly written by Thomas Ravenscroft.
1823 Charles Macintosh of Scotland began selling raincoats, now better known as - Macs.
1879 British troops occupy Kabul, Afghanistan.
1901 Theodore Roosevelt renames the "Executive Mansion" as "The White House"
1915 Ford Motor Company under Henry Ford manufactures its 1 millionth automobile at the River Rouge plant in Detroit.
1931 Christ the Redeemer statue opens standing 30 meters high (98 ft) on top of Mount Corcovado overlooking Rio de Janeiro.
1933 Alcatraz becomes a federal prison.
1936 The leader of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley, led a controversial anti-Jewish march down the Mile End Road in London which was a predominantly Jewish area of the capital.
1940 World War II: Adolf Hitler postponed indefinitely 'Operation Sealion' - the planned invasion of Britain.
1948 The first Morris Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis, was produced at Cowley, Oxfordshire. 1.6 million Morris Minors were built until production ceased in 1971.
1967 Zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his book The Naked Ape that compared human behaviour with animals.
1974 "Rollermania" takes hold as the Bay City Rollers' debut album, Rollin', hits #1 in the UK.
1977 Scotland beat Wales in a World Cup qualifier to reach the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina - and were the only British nation to qualify. Scotland's 2-0 win was helped along by a hotly-disputed penalty and the choice of venue. After crowd problems at a Wales match at Cardiff's Ninian Park the Welsh FA decided to stage the home match 'abroad' at Liverpool's Anfield Stadium rather than in Wrexham. There were so many members of the Tartan Army in the 50,850 Anfield crowd it almost seemed to be an away match for the Welsh.
1978 Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, who he found dead in the bathroom of their hotel room with a stab wound to her abdomen. Vicious dies of a heroin overdose before he can be tried for the murder.
1984 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped an assassination attempt when an IRA bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel, Brighton which was being used by delegates to the Conservative Party Conference. Five people were killed and 30 people injured, including the Employment Secretary Norman Tebbit and his wife Margaret, who was left permanently disabled.
1989 The remains of Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre were found on London's Bankside.
1996 Arsene Wenger's first game in charge of Arsenal was a 2–0 away victory over Blackburn Rovers.
1996 Aston Villa's goalkeeper Mark Bosnich hadn't been a favourite of Tottenham Hotspur fans following a clash between the Australian 'keeper and Jurgen Klinsmann of Spurs at Villa Park in January 1995. Klinsmann was knocked unconscious in the Premier League fixture. When the clubs met in another Premier League match in October 1996, at White Hart Lane, Spurs fans chanted the name of Klinsmann every time Bosnich touched the ball. In response Bosnich did a Nazi salute directed at the home fans. With Spurs having a deep Jewish heritage there was immediate outrage at the incident and later football fans generally condemned the actions of Bosnich. Complaints from fans saw the Australian interviewed by police and charged with misconduct by the FA for which he was later fined £1000 and warned about his future conduct.
1999 The Day of Six Billion: the proclaimed 6 billionth living human in the world is born.
It wasn't until 1804 that the world's population reached 1 billion, now a billion people are added to the population about every 12 years.
1399 Henry of Bolingbroke is crowned King Henry IV of England in Westminster Abbey, a few weeks after deposing Richard II
1884 Greenwich was chosen as the universal time meridian of longitude from which standard times throughout the world are calculated.
1894 The first Merseyside 'derby' football match was played at Goodison Park between Liverpool and Everton, with Everton winning 3 - 0.
1899 The start of the siege of the British garrison at Mafeking by Boer forces. The commander of the garrison, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell and his forces held firm for 217 days.
1924 Labour Party leader Ramsay MacDonald became the first Prime Minister to make an election broadcast on BBC radio.
1925 The birth of Margaret Thatcher British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990.
1940 Princess Elizabeth, aged 14, (now Queen Elizabeth II), made her first radio broadcast to child evacuees.
1946 The birth of Edwina Currie, former Member of Parliament. She resigned as a Junior Health Minister in 1988 over the controversy of salmonella in eggs. Among her comments over the next two years were that good Christian people don't get AIDS, that old people who couldn't afford their heating bills should wrap up warm in winter, and that northerners die of ignorance and chips.
1963 The term Beatlemania was coined after The Beatles appeared at the Palladium. They made their debut as the top of the bill on ITV's 'Sunday Night at The London Palladium.'
1972 Uruguay to Chile plane crashes in Andes Mountains, (passengers eat crash victims to survive, 16 of 45 rescued 2 months later).
1988 The Queen sued The Sun newspaper after it printed a private photograph.
1988 Shroud of Turin, revered by many Christians as Christ's burial cloth, is shown by carbon-dating tests to be a fake from the Middle Ages.
1996 British racing driver Damon Hill, driving a Williams, won the Japanese Grand Prix to clinch his first (and only) World Championship.
2002 The Spanish sisterly act Las Ketchup scores a UK #1 hit with the strangely infectious "The Ketchup Song."
2008 The government said that they would pump billions of pounds of taxpayers money into three UK banks in one of the UK's biggest nationalisations. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds TSB and HBOS would have a total of £37bn injected into them.
2010 Copiapó mining accident in Chile comes to a happy end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground.
2014 UKiP leader Nigel Farage hailed it an 'emotional moment' as he watched Douglas Carswell introduced to Parliament as the party's first elected MP.
2016 Queen Elizabeth II became the world's longest-reigning monarch following the death of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
On this date in 1979, BLONDIE were on Dutch TV show ‘TopPop’ performing SUNDAY GIRL, (October 13th 1979).
Taken from Blondie’s third studio album ‘Parallel Lines’, SUNDAY GIRL would earn the group their second No. 1 hit in the UK.
1066 The Battle of Hastings was fought, on Senlac Hill, near Pevensey. An English army, commanded by King Harold, was defeated by the invasion force of William of Normandy. Harold was killed and Edgar the Ætheling was proclaimed king, but never crowned. William I 'The Conqueror' and the first Norman King of England, was subsequently crowned at Westminster Abbey on 25th December 1066.
1322 Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeated King Edward II of England at the Battle of Old Byland in Yorkshire, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence.
1878 The first football match played under floodlights took place at Bramhall Lane, Sheffield, in front of a crowd of just under 20,000. Two generators positioned behind each goal powered lights on 30 ft. high wooden towers situated at each corner of the field. The light was deemed so bright that some ladies present put up their parasols to protect themselves from being burned.
1892 Arthur Conan Doyle publishes "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" collection of 12 stories originally published serially in "The Strand Magazine"
1913 Britain's worst pit disaster. More than 400 miners were killed in an explosion down a mine at Senghenydd in Glamorgan, S. Wales.
1926 A. A. Milne's book "Winnie the Pooh" released.
1969 Ahead of the complete changeover to decimalization, Britain scrapped the 10 shilling note and introduced the 50 pence coin.
1977 Bing Crosby dies of a heart attack after finishing a round of golf in Spain, at age 74.
Today is a good day 🥳🎂🎁, well it is 4 me.
Here's a link 4U, if you liked Blondie, rediscovered original Rapture, 2 days ago.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/blondie-yuletide-throwdown-ep-1241327/
1666 Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that Charles II had started wearing the first known waistcoat. The King was so overweight that he left the bottom button undone, a fashion custom followed to this day.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on island of St Helena to begin his exile.
1887 Preston North End beat Hyde 26-0 in an FA Cup tie, the highest goal score ever by an English club in a major competition, with James Ross the first player to score seven goals in a 1st Division match.
1888 A 'From He ll' letter was sent to George Lusk, then head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, claiming to be from the serial killer Jack the Ripper. It was delivered with a small box containing half of what doctors later determined was a human kidney, preserved in ethanol. One of his victim's kidneys had been removed by the killer, which gave the letter some authenticity. The letter ended with the words - 'Catch me when you can Mister Lusk.', but the Ripper was never caught.
1895 Henry Perky patents a machine he developed with William Ford for the preparation of cereals for food, otherwise known as shredded wheat.
1956 The last RAF Lancaster bomber was retired from service.
1961 The human rights organization Amnesty International was established in London.
1964 Harold Wilson won the election with a majority of just 4, making him the youngest Prime Minister at the time of the 20th century.
1964 British singer Screaming Lord Sutch runs for the English Parliament. He goes on to lose 40 elections (mostly by-elections).
1968 British athlete David Hemery sets a world record 48.12s to beat Gerhard Hennige of West Germany and take the gold medal in the men's 400m hurdles at the Mexico City Olympics.
1969 The print unions finally allowed Rupert Murdoch's purchase of 'The Sun' newspaper.
1971 World's first arcade video game Computer Space developed by Syzygy first demonstrated at the MOA Show in the US.
1973 Country music artist Dolly Parton releases her single "Jolene"
1973 Britain and Iceland ended the 'Cod War' with agreement on fishing rights.
1987 The worst hurricane to hit Britain since records began devastated southern England and caused at least 17 deaths.
1997 Following a new land speed record by Andy Green in Thrust SSC the previous month, Thrust SSC became the first land vehicle to exceed the speed of sound when it achieved 763 mph (Mach 1.020) at Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The record still stands.
2017 The round £1 coin, introduced in 1983, went out of circulation at midnight. Its replacement was 12 sided and had additional security features.
1881 The first edition of The People' - later renamed 'The Sunday People'.
1902 Britain opened its first 'Borstal' detention centre, at the village of Borstal in Kent. The institution was designed to keep boys, especially first offenders, away from adult criminals in prisons; to teach them a trade and to reward good behaviour.
1920 Gordon Richards, 26 times a champion jockey had his first ride at Lingfield Park.
1958 Britain's most popular children's television programme 'Blue Peter' was first broadcast on BBC TV. The first presenters were Leila Williams and Christopher Trace.
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis begins as JFK is shown photos confirming the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
1964 Harold Wilson became Prime Minister of a Labour Government. He was the first Labour PM in 13 years.
1972 Rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival break up.
1979 Comedy sketch show "Not the Nine O'Clock News" debuts on BBC 2.
1987 Southern Britain began a massive clear-up operation after the worst night of storms in living memory. BBC Weatherman Michael Fish faced criticism, as he had reassured viewers that the worst of the stormy weather would be across Spain and France.
1987 Defending champion Mike Tyson beats Tyrell Biggs by TKO in round 7 at Convention Centre, Atlantic City to retain the unified heavyweight boxing title.
2002 A gaffe from England’s David Seaman brought more criticism for the Arsenal ‘keeper when he allowed Macedonia’s Artim Šakiri to score direct from a corner kick. The 2-2 draw with Macedonia in a Euro qualifier at St Mary’s in Southampton proved to be David Seaman’s 75th and final appearance for his country.
2004 17-year old Lionel Messi makes his league debut for FC Barcelona in a 1-0 win against cross-town rivals Espanyol at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, Barcelona.
2005 Renault driver Fernando Alonso wins season-ending Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai International Circuit; first Spanish Formula 1 World Drivers champion; wins by 21 points from Kimi Räikkönen.
1091 A tornado struck London. It was Britain's earliest reported tornado. The wooden London Bridge was demolished, and the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in the city of London was badly damaged. Other churches in the area were demolished, as were over 600, mostly wooden, houses.
1346 At the Battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham, the Scots were routed and King David II of Scotland was captured by Edward III of England and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.
1651 Defeated by Oliver Cromwell at Worcester, Charles II of England fled to France.
1814 A Beer Flood occurs in London killing nine.
1860 The world's first professional golf tournament was held, at Prestwick in Scotland. The British Open Men's Golf, Willie Park Sr. wins inaugural event by 2 strokes from fellow Scot Tom Morris Sr.
1933 Albert Einstein arrives in US as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
1936 Newspaper owner Lord Beaverbrook promised King Edward VIII that he would arrange for the British press to remain silent on the subject of his relationship with American divorcee Mrs. Wallis Simpson.
1957 Jailhouse Rock starring Elvis Presley premieres in Memphis, Tennessee.
1968 "Bullitt" starring Steve McQueen is released.
1973 The start of a major world oil crisis when oil producing Arab states increased prices by 70 per cent and cut production in protest at US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
1980 Bruce Springsteen releases The River album.
1981 Brazilian Nelson Piquet driving for Brabham finishes 5th in the season ending Caesars Palace Grand Prix in Las Vegas to clinch his first Formula 1 World Drivers Championship by 1 point from Carlos Reutemann.
1995 A samba band and 5,000 fans turned out at The Riverside to welcome new midfield signing Juninho, the Brazilian player of the year, who cost Bryan Robson £4.75m from Sao Paulo.
1998: Fulham boss Kevin Keegan took his spending to £11m with the signing of Bristol Rovers striker Barry Hayles for £2m.
2008 Iran's attempt to create the world's largest sandwich (1,500 metres) fails when crowds eat it before it can be measured.
2012 Colin Farmer, aged 61 and a blind stroke victim said that he thought he was going to die when he was shot in the back in Chorley town centre with a 50,000-volt Taser stun gun fired by a police officer who mistook his white stick for a Samurai sword.
This I'm sure will never happen again. Just after the start of the 1919/20 season the footballing authorities closed down Leeds City and expelled them from the Football League with their fixtures being taken over by Port Vale. Their crime had been to make illegal payments to players during the First World War. That saw the need to auction off the club assets to pay the debts so on 17th October 1919 representatives of 30 League clubs assembled at the Metropole Hotel in Leeds to bid for everything from boots to goalnets to....the players! The Yorkshire Post newspaper described it as "a melancholy spectacle" as the playing squad was sold as if they were cattle. Billy McLeod was bought by Notts County for £1250, John Hampson (to Aston Villa) and Harold Millership (to Rotherham County) went for £1000 each while £100 was the bargain price Lincoln City paid for Francis Chipperfield. Their whole squad went for around £10,000 but out of that hardship a new club was soon playing at the Elland Road home of Leeds City....Leeds United.
Football On This Day – 17th October 1973.
England needed to beat Poland in front of a 100,000 Wembley full-house to get to the 1974 World Cup finals, anything less then Poland would be there. In his pre-match analysis TV pundit Brian Clough called the Polish ‘keeper Jan Tomaszewski a ‘clown’ and so, inevitable, he produced a brilliant performance in the 1-1 draw. England were out of the World Cup and after two memorable World Cup final tournaments they found themselves as being just ordinary again.
Football On This Day – 17th October 2007.
England played Russia on the artificial surface of the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow and a 2-1 defeat was a major setback in their hopes of qualifying for Euro 2008. They eventually finished third in the group – behind qualifiers Croatia and Russia – and equal on points with Israel. England manager Steve McClaren only lasted another month in the job following the defeat in Russia.
On Monday 17th October 1814, a terrible disaster claimed the lives of at least 8 people in St Giles, London. A bizarre industrial accident resulted in the release of a beer tsunami onto the streets around Tottenham Court Road.
The Horse Shoe Brewery stood at the corner of Great Russell Street and Tottenham Court Road. In 1810 the brewery, Meux and Company, had had a 22 foot high wooden fermentation tank installed on the premises. Held together with massive iron rings, this huge vat held the equivalent of over 3,500 barrels of brown porter ale.
On the afternoon of October 17th 1814 one of the iron rings around the tank snapped. About an hour later the whole tank ruptured, releasing the hot fermenting ale with such force that the back wall of the brewery collapsed. The force also blasted open several more vats, adding their contents to the flood which now burst forth onto the street. More than 320,000 gallons of beer were released into the area. This was St Giles Rookery, a densely populated London slum of cheap housing and tenements inhabited by the poor, the destitute, prostitutes and criminals.
The flood reached George Street and New Street within minutes, swamping them with a tide of alcohol. The 15 foot high wave of beer and debris inundated the basements of two houses, causing them to collapse. In one of the houses, Mary Banfield and her daughter Hannah were taking tea when the flood hit; both were killed.
In the basement of the other house, an Irish wake was being held for a 2 year old boy who had died the previous day. The four mourners were all killed. The wave also took out the wall of the Tavistock Arms pub, trapping the teenage barmaid Eleanor Cooper in the rubble. In all, eight people were killed. Three brewery workers were rescued from the waist-high flood and another was pulled alive from the rubble.
All this ‘free’ beer led to hundreds of people scooping up the liquid in whatever containers they could. Some resorted to just drinking it, leading to reports of the death of a ninth victim some days later from alcoholic poisoning.
‘The bursting of the brew-house walls, and the fall of heavy timber, materially contributed to aggravate the mischief, by forcing the roofs and walls of the adjoining houses.‘ The Times, 19th October 1814.
Some relatives exhibited the corpses of the victims for money. In one house, the macabre exhibition resulted in the collapse of the floor under the weight of all the visitors, plunging everyone waist-high into a beer-flooded cellar.
The stench of beer in the area persisted for months afterwards.
The brewery was taken to court over the accident but the disaster was ruled to be an Act of God, leaving no one responsible.
The flood cost the brewery around £23000 (approx. £1.25 million today). However the company were able to reclaim the excise duty paid on the beer, which saved them from bankruptcy. They were also granted ₤7,250 (₤400,000 today) as compensation for the barrels of lost beer.
This unique disaster was responsible for the gradual phasing out of wooden fermentation casks to be replaced by lined concrete vats. The Horse Shoe Brewery was demolished in 1922; the Dominion Theatre now sits partly on its site.
1016 The Battle of Assandun (Essex). The battle was the conclusion to the Danish reconquest of England. The Vikings, led by Canute the Great were victorious over the Anglo-Saxons led by King Edmund Ironside.
1826 Britain's last state lottery was held, prior to the launch of the National Lottery in 1994.
1851 Herman Melville's book Moby-D ick was first published as 'The Whale' by Richard Bentley of London.
1867 Alaska Purchase: US takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia, having paid $7.2 million at 2 Cents per acre.
1910 The trial began at the Old Bailey of the American Dr. Crippen, accused of murdering his wife Cora Henrietta Crippen. Born in Michigan in 1862 Hawley Harvey Crippen moved to Camden in 1897 and became the first suspect to be captured using the aid of wireless telegraphy. When he and his lover Ethel Neave were spotted escaping on board the liner Montrose the authorities were alerted and Crippen was arrested as the liner entered the St. Lawrence River.
1912 Black boxer Jack Johnson arrested for violating the Mann Act for "transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes" due to his relationship with white woman Lucille Cameron, allegedly a prostitute. Later convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to a year in prison.
1921 Charles Strite granted US patent #1,394,450 for his invention, the automatic pop-up toaster.
1922 The British Broadcasting Corporation was officially formed, to operate from Marconi House in London, under the management of John Reith. It established a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.
1931 American gangster Al Capone convicted of tax evasion.
1957 Paul McCartney and John Lennon perform together for the first time after Paul joins John's band the Quarrymen. The show takes place at New Clubmoor Hall in their hometown of Liverpool, and Paul plays guitar.
1961 Second Division strugglers Stoke City paid £3,500 to buy a 46 year old player to improve their fortunes. It worked - the last home League match before he arrived attracted 8,409 fans but in the first match after he arrived 35,974 were at the Victoria Ground. The player they had brought back from Blackpool was Stanley Matthews who made made his League debut for Stoke back in 1932 and who would go on playing until he was 50.
1963 Chuck Berry is released from prison after serving 20 months for a Mann Act violation (transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes).
1966 The Queen granted a royal pardon to Timothy Evans, wrongly convicted and hanged in 1950 for the murder of his wife and child. The real murderer was John Reginald Christie who had been hanged for mass murder in 1953.
1967 Walt Disney's animated musical adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" film is released.
1969 Rod Stewart joins Faces, formerly known as Small Faces.
1987 Nigel Mansell won the Mexican Grand Prix.
1995 Red Rum, three times winner of the Grand National at Aintree, died at the age of 30, an exceptional age for a horse. He was buried at Aintree.
2009 British Mercedes driver Jenson Button finishes 5th in Brazilian Grand Prix at Autódromo José Carlos Pace to clinch his first F1 World Drivers Championship.
1216 King John died of dysentery at Newark-on-Trent , during a Civil War which was the result of his refusal to recognize the Magna Carta signed the previous year. He was known as John Lackland for losing so much territory to France and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry.
1781 The American War of Independence came to an end when British commander Lord Cornwallis surrendered his 8,000 troops to George Washington at Yorktown, in Virginia, after a three week siege.
1856 James Kelly and Jack Smith fight bareknuckle for 6h15m in Melbourne.
1914 Wartime licensing laws came into operation, premises having to close at 10 p.m.
1958 Stirling Moss wins season ending Moroccan Grand Prix at Ain-Diab but fellow Brit Mike Hawthorn takes World Drivers Championship from Moss by just 1 point by finishing second; first British world champion.
1969 Scottish Matra-Ford driver Jackie Stewart finishes 4th in season ending Mexican Grand Prix to win his first F1 World Drivers Championship by 26 points from Jacky Ickx of Belgium.
1970 British Petroleum announced the first major discovery of oil under the British sector of the North Sea.
1978 For the first time in Britain, the International Motor Show was held outside London, its new home being the newly-completed National Exhibition Centre (NEC) near Birmingham.
1987 Black Monday. Millions of pounds were wiped off the value of shares and other financial markets around the world. Wall Street ended the day down 22%, a greater fall than the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
1991 London's Royal Opera House had to cancel its performance, as orchestra members, pursuing an industrial dispute, refused to wear dinner jackets and turned up in jeans.
1993 Norwich City wouldn't perhaps be considered the most notable of English clubs who have played in European competitions but on this day in 1993 they did something no other English club had ever done. The Canaries beat Bayern Munich in the Olympic Stadium, then Bayern's home ground, in the UEFA Cup.
2001 It was announced that a 'serious error' was made by researchers who wasted five years testing the wrong animal brains for BSE.
2001 Dennis Yates (aged 58), a Second World War memorabilia dealer, was jailed for 10 months for handling a wartime Enigma encoding machine. It was stolen from a display cabinet at Bletchley Park (codenamed Station X) on 1st April 2000 during an open day at the former top secret site. A separate charge, of blackmailing Christine Large, the director of Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, where the Abwehr Enigma G312 machine was kept, was ordered to lie on file. Following months of ransom demands, the machine, one of only three left in the world, was returned via BBC Two's Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman.
2012 Trenton Oldfield, aged 36, who disrupted the 2012 University Boat Race by swimming between the boat race crews was jailed for six months for causing a public nuisance. Oldfield said that he was demonstrating against government cuts.
2013 The violin that was apparently played to calm passengers on the Titanic as it sank was sold for £900,000 in just 10 minutes at auction in Wiltshire. Bidding started at £50 and the violin had a guide price of £300,000. The bandleader Wallace Hartley aged 33, was from Colne in Lancashire and is buried in Colne cemetery. The words 'Nearer My God To Thee', the alleged last song that the band played on RMS Titanic, are engraved on the plinth along with a violin and bow.
On this day in 2021, my Sister turned 50. I of course, being a good Brother, have sent half a dozen p*ss taking texts