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1

• 1464 - Between 1455 and 1499, England is torn apart by civil war, beginning with The First War of the Roses led by the houses of York and Lancaster.

• 1533 - Anne Boleyn, second 'wife' of King Henry VIII of England, is crowned queen.

• 1926 - In Los Angeles Hospital, one the world's most famous stars is born. Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jean Mortensen, enters the world to become 'the photographer's dream'.

• 1966 - A new dawn of technology emerges when The Apollo Project successfully launch Surveyor 1 and it lands on the Moon the following day.

• 1967 - As US military presence continues to rise in Vietnam, Vietnam Veterans Against the War is born amongst the increasing distress.

• 1970 - The native Indian protest occupation damages Alcatraz with fire.

• 2001 - One of the strangest Royal murders takes place, when The Nepalese Royal Family is massacred in one day.

• 2002 - Hanse Cronje, South African cricketer, dies when his plane crashes in the Outeniqua mountains.

2

• Every year - Feast day of Saint Blandina, Patron Saint of those Falsely Accused of Cannibalism.

• 1780 - In England, the Derby horse race is held for the first time.

• 1925 - The New York Yankees make a wise decision and baseball legend Lou Gehrig becomes a regular member of the line-up, taking over first base.

• 1941 - Sixteen years later, Lou Gehrig dies.

• 1953 - Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's coronation takes place in Westminster Abbey.

• 1966 - Surveyor 1 of the Apollo Project touches down in the Ocean of Storms.

• 1983 - Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers dies, not exactly in an air crash, but in a mysterious fire aboard his DC-9-32 on its way to Toronto.

• 2001 - Moribund Dipendra is crowned king for the day, following the massacre of the Nepalese Royal Family. It is possibly the shortest amount of time a king has reigned for.

3

• 1876 - The Great Sham War embarrasses the US military at a celebration of the centenary of the nation at Alcatraz.

• 1899 - Johann Strauss dies, leaving Orchestral Music minus a great person.

• 1937 - The Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson.

• 1965 - Gemini IV lifts off for the Apollo Pathfinders.

• 1966 - Stafford and Cernan go into space in the Gemini Spacecraft.

4

• 1487 - Henry VI claims the English Crown, in the Third War of the Roses.

• 1785 - Jacob Grimm, eldest of the Grimm brothers, is born, heralding the birth of the Fairy Tale.

• 1953 - The world premiere of the film version of Julius Caesar, starring Marlon Brando.

• 1969 - Mexican tennis star Rafael Osuna dies in an air crash, when his Mexican Airlines Boeing 727 crashes near Monterey airport due to pilot error.

• 1979 - Flight lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana, west Africa, after a military coup overthrows general Fred Akuffo.

• 2002 - Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Golden Jubilee, as mentioned in 'Unchained Melody'.

5

• 1944 - D-Day Invasion forces head for the Normandy beaches, passing the Isle of Wight Radar Station, the only radar station to be destroyed in the British Isles during the war.

• 1950 - American composer and performance artist Laurie Anderson is born. Her hits include 'O, Superman', 'Mister Heartbreak' and 'Home of the Brave'.

• 1968 - Robert, the brother of JF Kennedy, is assassinated.

• 1968 - The assassination of R. Kennedy is another demonstration of the unrest due to the Vietnam War.

• 2003 - A severe heat wave across Pakistan and India reaches its peak, as temperatures exceed 50°C (122°F).

• 2004 - Former American President Ronald Reagan dies.

6

• 1813 - The Battle of Stoney Creek takes place during the Napoleonic Wars (The War of 1812 ).

• 1977 - Queen Elizabeth lights a bonfire, starting the Silver Jubilee celebrations.

• 1944 - A supreme effort of British forces brings about the events of D-Day.

• 1966 - Gemini IX re-enters Earth's atmosphere.

• 1999 - In Australian Rules Football, Tony Lockett breaks the record of 1,299 career goals set by Gordon Coventry in 1937.

• 2002 - The everyday happenings of Weebl and sometimes Weebl's friend, Bob make their first online appearance with the ground-breaking episode, 'pie'.

7

• 1538 - Marie de Guise summons her final council.

• 1954 - Master of Artificial Intelligence and Computing, Alan Turing commits suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

• 1968 - Lego reaches new heights when LegoLand opens in Denmark.

• 2001 - Tony Blair's Labour Party wins another landslide victory in the UK election.

8

• 632 - Mohammed, founder of Islam, dies in Medina.

• 1846 - Julian Workman becomes the first known owner of Alcatraz.

• 1969 - President Nixon meets the president of South Vietnam during The Vietnam War Protest.

• 1969 - The El Salvadoran national team plays Honduras in a fateful match, and war ensues.

• 1984 - Homosexuality is declared legal in New South Wales, Australia.

• 2004 - The Transit of Venus is the biggest astronomical event of 2004; the previous transit occurred in 1882.

9

• 68 AD - Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide.

• 1537 - Louis II of France dies.

• 1870 - Great British author Charles Dickens dies.

• 1897 - The town of Bradford is granted city status.

• 1902 - The first complete performance of Mahler's third symphony eventually takes place in Krefeld, Germany.

• 1968 - US president Lyndon B Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of senator Robert F Kennedy.

• 2006 - World hitchhiker Kinga 'Freespirit' Choszcz dies aged 33 in Accra, Ghana, after having contracted cerebral malaria.

10

• 1921 - Prince Philip born in Corfu.

• 1940 - German torpedo ships sink the SS Dungrane and the MV Ashanti off the Isle of Wight.

• 1963 - America's 35th President JF Kennedy gives his 'Commencement Speech', with 'What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek?'

• 1990 - Flight BA 5390 leaves Birmingham International Airport en route to Malaga, Spain.

• 1996 - Peace talks begin between political parties in Northern Ireland, without Sinn Féin.

• 2001 - The BBC brings fame to The Isle of Wight with a new series, Dinosaurs of The Isle of Wight.

11

• 1937 - A Day at the Races is released for The Marx Brothers.

• 1959 - Comedian, actor and writer James Hugh Calum Laurie, or Hugh Laurie as he is better known, is born in Oxford, UK.

• 1962 - The 13th escape attempt from Alcatraz, perhaps the most famous of all.

• 1963 - The 35th President of the United States of America, John F Kennedy, delivers the 'Civil Rights Address'.

• 1972 - Six people are killed in a London rail disaster near Eltham Well Hall, when the intoxicated train driver took a bend far too fast.

• 1986 - The Amnesty International tour includes The Police who play in Atlanta.

• 2002 - US Congress acknowledges Antonio Meucci as the first inventor of the telephone.

12

• 1381 - During the Peasants' Revolt in England, rebels arrive at Blackheath.

• 1593 - 'Venus and Adonis' is registered in the Stationers' Register, by Christopher Marlowe.

• 1701 - The Act of settlement is signed by Queen Anne.

• 1878 - William Cullen Bryant, known as the 'Father of American Poetry', dies in New York City in the same month he had predicted for his death in his poem 'June'.

• 1920 - Peter Jones is born.

• 1929 - Anne Frank is born; her diaries go on to be world-famous.

• 1980 - Billy Butlin, famous for the Butlins Holiday Camps dies.

• 1999 - Alex Ferguson receives a knighthood in recognition of his services to English football.

13

• 1483 - Gloucester accuses Hastings of treason, and has him executed without trial.

• 1865 - Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats is born to Protestant parents in Sandymount, County Dublin.

• 1928 - Mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. is born in Bluefield, West Virginia.

• 1952 - An unarmed Swedish radio surveillance plane disappears over international waters in the Baltic Sea. Search parties spark Russian 'retaliation'.

• 1970 - 'The Long and Winding Road', which features on the Beatles' final album Let it Be, becomes the band's last number-one single.

• 1970 - Nixon establishes the 'President's Commission on Campus Unrest' due to Anti-Vietnam Demonstrations.

• 1971 - The New York Times begins publishing a series of articles based on top secret Pentagon papers.

• 1996 - Cal Ripken Jnr. becomes the first Oriole to hit six times in one game, two of which are home runs.

14

• 1961 - Boy George, of Culture Club fame is born this day, George O'Dowd.

• 1968 - Spock, Coffin, Goodman and Ferber are convicted of conspiracy to encourage violations of draft laws in Vietnam.

• 1968 - The Basil Brush Show hits British televisions for the first time.

• 1969 - Steffi Graf, of tennis fame is born.

• 1982 - Argentine forces in Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands, surrender to British forces, ending the Falklands War.

• 1996 - Cal Ripkin Jnr sets a new consecutive games world record.

15

• Every year - The Feast day of St Germaine, the Patron Saint of the really ugly.

• 1215 - The Magna Carta is signed in Runnymede, England.

• 1608 - Thomas Hill and Robert Raynor claim to have seen a mermaid, as noted in the logbook of Captain Henry Hudson.

• 2002 - The asteroid 2002 MN near-misses the Earth by 75,000 miles, about a third of the distance to the Moon.

16

• 1779 - Sir Charles Hardy leaves the Isle of Wight to face The Spanish Armada.

• 1862 - The Cowes and Newport railway line opens on the Isle of Wight.

• 1952 - One of the Catalinas sent to retrieve the lost Swedish surveillance plane is attacked by two soviet MiG-15s.

• 1953 - Ian Mosley, drummer with the rock band Marillion, is born.

• 1965 - A five-hour teach-in takes place inside and on the steps of the Pentagon.

• 1973 - Richard O'Brien's Musical The Rocky Horror Show opens at The Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London.

• 1976 - Cian Ciaran, keyboard player of the Welsh band Super Furry Animals, is born in Bangor.

17

• 1715 - Margrave Karl Wilhelm founds the city of Karlsruhe, Germany.

• 1963 - The US Supreme Court rules against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools.

• 1972 - Five burglars break into the Watergate complex to steal information, under direction from Richard Nixon.

• 1977 - Vancouver's SeaBus ferry service goes into service.

18

• 1178 - Five men in Canterbury see an apparition, thought to be The Giordano Bruno Crater.

• 1538 - Marie de Guise marries James V of Scotland.

• 1778 - Following the Battle of Monmouth the Redcoats leave Philadelphia.

• 1812 - The US declare war on Britain in The War of 1812.

• 1942 - James Paul McCartney, future member of the legendary group The Beatles, is born in Walton Hospital, Liverpool.

• 1971 - The Washington Post begins publishing a series of articles based on top secret Pentagon papers, following similar publication a week previously by the New York Times.

• 1981 - The AIDS epidemic is formally recognised by medical professionals in San Francisco, California.

• 1983 - Sally Ride becomes the first American woman to orbit the Earth.

19

• 1903 - The baseball legend Lou Gehrig is born.

• 1927 - The first race on the Nurburgring motor-racing circuit takes place; German driver Rudolf Caracciola wins.

• 1948 - Singer/Songwriter Nick Drake is born in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) to Molly and Rodney Drake.

• 1953 - Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are executed for atomic espionage.

• 1977 - Lady Olave Baden-Powell, the English founder of the Girl Guides, dies (b. 1889).

20

• 1887 - Queen Victoria celebrates her Golden Jubilee today and tomorrow.

• 1941 - The Big Store by The Marx Brothers is released.

• 1991 - The German parliament decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.

21

• Every year - The last day of the Gemini sign period in the Horoscope Cycle.

• Every year -The end of spring/start of summer north of the equator.

• Every year - The end of autumn/start of winter south of the equator.

• Every year - The summer solstice.

• 1854 - The first Victoria Cross is awarded following the British bombardment of Bomarsund in the Aland Islands.

• 1919 - The German High Seas Fleet is scuttled off the islands of Orkney in 1919.

• 1940 - Richard Nixon marries Thelma Catherine Ryan.

• 1948 - A currency reform takes place in Germany - the Deutschmark is introduced in place of the Reichsmark.

• 1982 - HRH Prince William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor is born following 17 hours of labour, at just after 9pm at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington.

22

• Every year - The first day of the Cancer sign period.

• 1897 - Queen Victoria celebrates her Diamond Jubilee.

• 1971 - The US Senate passes a non-binding resolution urging the withdrawal of all American troops from Vietnam by the end of the year.

• 1994 - Douglas Adams's daughter Polly is born.

• 2002 - An earthquake in western Iran, measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale, kills more than 261 people.

23

• 1912 - Alan Turing, inventor of the computer, is born.

• 1961 - Patrice Lumumba becomes the Democratic Republic of Congo's first and only elected Prime Minister.

• 1964 - Television and Film Writer Joss Whedon, perhaps best known for his Buffy the Vampire Slayer scripts, is born.

• 1988 - James Hansen testifies to the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that it is 99 per cent probable global warming has begun.

• 1996 - The Nintendo 64 is released in Japan.

24

• 1314 -The English are defeated by the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn.

• 1813 - The Battle of the Beaver Dams takes place in The War of 1812.

• 1907 - The Marx Brothers make their debut appearance, as 'Ned Weyburn's Nightingales'.

• 1948 - As a response of the Western Allies to the blockade on West Berlin by the USSR, the Berlin Airlift started.

• 1995 - South Africa defeat New Zealand in rugby union's World Cup - the first major sporting event in South Africa since the end of apartheid.

25

• 1483 - Parliament asks Gloucester to take the throne.

• 1876 - General George Armstrong Custer attacks a force of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians led by chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

• 1948 - The Berlin Airlift begins.

• 1950 - North Korean troops cross into South Korea.

26

• 1460 - Warwick, Salisbury, March and 2000 troops land in support for the Lancastrians in The Wars of The Roses.

• 1483 - Gloucester accepts the throne and the reign of Richard III begins.

• 1778 - Washington finally decides to attack the British troops as they advance towards New York during the Battle of Monmouth.

• 1870 - Wagner's Opera Die Walküre, the second part of the Ring Cycle, is premiered at the Court Theatre in Munich.

• 1927 - The Cyclone roller coaster opens on Coney Island, New York.

• 1963 - JF Kennedy makes his world famous 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech, declaring himself to be a doughnut.

• 1964 - The Beatles' first album that contained entirely original material, A Hard Day's Night, is released in the USA.

• 1975 - English conductor Basil Cameron, the quiet Maestro, dies at Leominster in the County of Herefordshire, England.

27

• 1722 - John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, considered to be one of the greatest military geniuses England has ever produced dies at home in Blenheim Palace.

• 1863 - General Richard Ewell's forces reach the outskirts of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the American Civil War.

• 1969 - Life magazine displays portrait photos of all 242 Americans killed in Vietnam during the previous week.

• 2001 - Pope John Paul II beatifies 28 Ukrainian Greek Catholics, most of whom were killed by the Soviet secret police.

28

• 1461 - Edward is crowned following The First War of the Roses.

• 1838 - At the age of 19, Queen Victoria is crowned, with Prime Minister Lord Melbourne acting as her political advisor.

• 1863 - The 32nd North Carolina Regiment raises a Confederate flag over Carlisle Barracks during the American Civil War.

• 1914 - Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated in Sarajevo, triggering WWI.

• 1922 - The Irish Civil War begins with Free State forces' shelling the Four Courts in Dublin.

• 1941 - The Germans seize Minsk in what is now Belarus, during the German Invasion of the USSR.

• 1971 - Daniel Ellsberg - source of the Pentagon papers leak - surrenders himself to police.

29

• 1908 - John Hench - the official artist of Mickey Mouse - is born.

• 1911 - Film Composer Bernard Herrmann, perhaps best known for his soundtrack to Psycho, is born.

• 1956 - Marilyn Monroe marries Arthur Miller.

• 2002 - US vice-president Dick Cheney serves as president for two and a half hours while George W Bush undergoes a colonoscopy procedure.

30

• 1960 - The Congo is granted independence from Belgium, with Joseph Kasavubu as President and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister. Shortly afterwards the Congolese Civil War starts.

• 1977 - Menachem Begin becomes Prime Minister of Israel.

• 1977 - Virginia Wade wins the women's singles title at Wimbledon - the last British champion to date.

• 2002 - The last day stamps with only DM values printed on them are valid; also, French banks and post offices will no longer be required to exchange French francs (remaining coins and notes must be exchanged by the Banque de France, within three years).

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