The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
On this day
1602: The Bodleian Library at Oxford University opened to the public.
1674: The blind English poet John Milton died at the age of 65. A student once wrote in an essay on Milton: “He got married and wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.”
1847: Dracula creator Bram Stoker was born in Dublin.
1886: Fred Archer, English champion jockey who won the Derby five times, shot himself, aged only 29.
1895: Wilhelm Rontgen discovered X-rays during an experiment at the University of Wurzburg with the flow of electricity through a partially evacuated glass tube.
1920: The first Rupert Bear cartoon appeared in the Daily Express.
1923: The Munich Beer Hall Putsch marked the start of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. 1932: Franklin D Roosevelt – promising a “New Deal” for America – swept into the White House on a landslide in the US presidential election.
1960: John F Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon to become US president.
1966: Former Massachusetts attorney general Edward Brooke became the first African American elected to the United States Senate.
1967: Radio Leicester, the first BBC local radio station, was opened.
1974: The famous fruit and vegetable market at Covent Garden in London closed after more than 300 years.
1987: An IRA bomb exploded shortly before a Remembrance Day service at Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, killing 11 people.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Plans to build a new nuclear power station in the UK, creating over 20,000 jobs, collapsed after Toshiba said it was pulling out of the project.
“I told him I danced too much and that’s why I’m in a wheelchair. When I told him what I do now, he said ‘You are a great example to all of us’,” - Choreographer Robert Cohan, 94, pictured left, reveals what Prince Charles told him as he knighted him for services to choreography and dance.
“It’s just another milestone, I went through 700,000, then 800,000 and so on, it’s another milestone to pass a million, to go on to 1.1, 1.2, and so on, I will probably finish up very close to two million by the time I die when I am 100,” - Russ Mantle, 82, on cycling 1 million miles in the past 68 years.
“Turn to your loved ones and friends to your left and right and say ‘Which pub are we going to?’ and let’s go there and have a memorable night in anticipation of coming back,” - Actor Wendell Pierce, pictured left, encourages crowds to make the best of their night after being evacuated from Death of a Salesman at the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End after part of the ceiling collapsed.
“To lose a loved one is heartbreaking. To lose a loved one to murder is horrific. To lose a loved one to murder and never be able to lay them to rest is an unimaginable torture,” - Helen McCourt’s mother Marie pleads with her daughter’s killer Ian Simms to reveal where her body is.