ON THIS DAY
June 30, 2016
IT’S DAY 182 OF 2016
AMERICAN Matt Stonie, the amazingly slim, world No 1 competitive eater, downed a record 182 slices of bacon in five minutes last year. A TOTAL of 182 Victoria Crosses were awarded during the Indian Mutiny of 185758 — exactly the same number presented in World War II.
THERE ARE 184 DAYS LEFT
AT LEAST 184,000 tonnes of gold are in circulation around world, stored in government reserves, bank vaults and personal collections. This amount would fill the main arch of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It is 184 years since murderer James Cook became the last person in the UK to be executed and his body left in a gibbet in a public place as a warning to others. Thousands gathered in Leicester to see the gruesome spectacle. IN AUGUST 1915 during a World War I encounter, a British Short Type 184 seaplane dropped a torpedo and sank a Turkish supply ship near the coast of Gallipoli, becoming the world’s first torpedo bomber.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CHERYL FERNANDEZVERSINI, 33, the Newcastle-born Girls Aloud singer and former X Factor judge (right). With two failed marriages and one assault conviction behind her, she is now dating One Direction star Liam Payne, 22. One of her more unusual projects was the launch of a limited edition Belgian chocolate bar with Greggs in August 2015 — with 5p of the profits of each sale going to her charitable trust. JAMES MARTIN, 44. The yorkshire-born celebrity chef, best known for his decade as presenter of BBC cookery show Saturday Kitchen, started his career at a very young age: at 12 he cooked a meal for the Queen Mother at Castle Howard, where his father was catering manager. MICHAEL PHELPS, 31. The American swimmer, nicknamed The Baltimore Bullet, is the most decorated Olympian of all-time with 22 medals, 18 of which are gold. A major factor in his success are his double-jointed ankles which can bend 15 degrees more than most people to act like flippers.
BORN ON THIS DAY
SUSAN HAYWARD (19171975). The New york-born actress (right) won an Oscar for I Want To Live! Hayward starred with John Wayne in The Conqueror, filmed near a U.S. atomic bomb test site, radiation from which was probably the cause of her fatal brain cancer. By the end of 1980, 46 members of the film’s cast and crew had died from some form of the disease, including Wayne. JOHN GAY (1685-1732). The Devon-born poet best known for writing The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. He’s buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey and his tomb carries the inscription: ‘Life is a jest, and all things show it: I thought so once, and now I know it.’
ON JUNE 30th . . .
In 1970, on a visit to Coventry, the Queen went on her first ‘royal walkabout’ in Britain. The practice had begun on a tour of New Zealand earlier that year.
In 1980, the old sixpence, commonly referred to as a ‘tanner’ and worth 2.5p in decimal currency, was withdrawn from circulation.
In 2015, and on this date in 2012, 1997, 1994, 1993, 1992, 1985, 1983, 1982, 1981, and 1972, one second was added to the world’s time to keep the super-accurate atomic clocks in step with the Earth’s rotation.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story. Frank Herbert (1920-1986)
JOKE OF THE DAY
How do you get down from an elephant? You don’t, you get down from a goose.