ON THIS DAY
NATIONAL DAY OF COLOMBIA
1807: Round-arm bowling was introduced to English cricket by John Willes of Kent in the Kent v England match at Penenden Heath.
1837: London’s first railway station, Euston, opened.
1871: The English Football Association Challenge Cup Competition was formed, to become better known as the FA Cup. The first final saw the Wanderers beat the
Royal Engineers by one goal to nil, watched by a crowd of 2,000.
1885: The original vamp, Theda Bara, was born in Cincinnati. She stunned audiences in her 1915 debut movie A Fool There Was, which was inspired by Kipling’s poem The Vampire – hence the expression.
1940: The first singles charts were published in the US journal Billboard. No 1 was I’ll Never Smile Again by the Tommy Dorsey band, vocal by Frank Sinatra.
1944: An assassination attempt on Hitler was made by a German staff officer, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, at Rastenberg, East Prussia. He was summarily executed, as were 1,000 other people implicated in the plot.
1968: Actress Jane Asher broke off her engagement with Paul McCartney in a BBC television interview.
1969: “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” said Neil Armstrong when he emerged from the Eagle lunar module to take man’s first step on the moon.
1973: Kung-fu film star Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: A working single mother won a landmark High Court challenge against the Government’s Universal Credit rules for assessing earnings. BIRTHDAYS: Jacques Delors, European politician, 96; Kim Carnes, singer, 76; Carlos Santana, rock musician, 74; Paul Cook, rock drummer (Sex Pistols), 65; Charlie Magri, former boxer, 65; Jonathon Morris, actor, 61; Anton du Beke, ballroom dancer, 55; Josh Holloway, actor, 52.