31st October

Jan Vermeer, the Dutch interior designer, was born today in 1632. He spent his entire artistic career painting kitchens, tiles and other rooms. One critic said his work was as 'dull as Dutchwater'. How true.

In other news ...

'Gentlemen,' said the Turkish leader Kemal Attaturk today in 1927, 'it was necessary to abolish the fez, which sat on the heads of our nation as an emblem of ignorance, negligence, fanaticism and hatred of progress ...' Which is pretty true, really. In the great days of the Ottoman Empire (14th-17th century) everybody wore turbans.

Mind you, the fez didn't do Tommy Cooper any harm.

30th October

Orson Welles frightened everybody today in 1938 when he produced and starred in a radio play based on H G Wells' The War of the Worlds. Even though the item was given plenty of publicity as fiction in advance, thousands of New Yorkers panicked and jammed roads and subways trying to leave the cities before the Martians arrived.

The knock-on effect was that when the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced that we were at war with Germany ten months later, everybody assumed it was a hoax and did nothing.

In other news ...
The first television personality appeared on the screen today at the workshop of John Logie Baird in 1925. His name was William Taynton and the show was called Britain's Got Taynton.

29th October

An anonymous Belfast citizen got it absolutely right today in 1991 in the midst of appalling sectarian violence there -

'It's not the bullet with my name on it that worries me. It's the one that says "To whom it may concern".'

In other news ...

One of the great guys of Elizabethan England, Walter Ralegh, was executed today in 1618. The reason, those incomparable historians Sellar and Yeatman once said, was because he was left over from the previous reign. The real reason of course is that men as popular and larger than life as Ralegh had no place in the narrow world of that vicious paranoid freak, King James I.

28th October

Sir Richard Doll was born today in 1912. You probably haven't heard of him but he is responsible for the greatest act of victimization of the 21st century. In establishing a link between lung cancer and smoking, he undoubtedly saved millions of lives but he also caused the sad clusters of determined smokers, dying of frostbite and pneumonia outside pubs and nightclubs and for those mysterious, locked cabinets behind counters in supermarkets. You may have wondered why those poor, lost souls are sticking pins into a waz effigy - that is a likeness of Sir Richard, known as a Voodoo Doll.

In other news ...
A Puritan college in Cambridge, Massachusetts got an injection of cash today from John Harvard who died of tuberculosis in 1638. The aim was that Harvard would one rival Oxford or Cambridge.

Perhaps one day ...

27th October

Today in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson said, 'I want to take this occasion to say that the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest.'

Er ...

In other news ...
Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, was born today in 1914. The midwife described him as a milk-sopping, bed-wetting sort of kid, Cartland-purple where he wasn't puce-pink, puking over the porcelain in the parlour while Captain Jack went out for a doubler and a pint.

26th October

Gilles de Rais was executed in Nantes today in 1440. Nobleman, Satanist, child molester and passing acquaintance of Joan of Arc, he was charged by the Catholic Church with Satanism and Heresy. Recently, a Catholic Court of Enquiry dismissed the charges against him. So, that just leaves the 140 or so children he is alleged to have murdered ...

In other news ...
The Beatles got their MBEs today in 1965 much to the disgust of other MBE holders who sent theirs back. The inhabitants of a wild life park in Chipping Sodbury also returned their Ancient Order of Buffalo medals.

25th October

All right, this is the one you've all been waiting for. Balaclava Day, 1854. When 678 men of Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade (most of whom are sitting in 54mm replica in my attic) rode into the Valley of Death and into legend after a confused order took them the wrong way.

'It was a mad-brained trick, men,' Cardigan said to the survivors afterwards, 'but it was no fault of mine.'

'Go again, sir?' an anonymous soldier asked him. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

In other news ...
It was a good day for a battle today - Agincourt was fought in 1415 in the mud of Northern France. The French nobility were all but wiped out by a much smaller force, largely of archers, under Henry V. A while ago there was a move to have October 21 (Trafalgar Day) or October 25 (Agincourt Day) declared a public holiday in Britain, but that was shelved in case it upset our French colleagues in the EU. Actually, on the basis of that there ought to be no public holidays because I can't think of a day when we didn't knock seven bells out of them.

24th October

Mrs Ann Taylor went over the Niagara Falls in a barrel today in 1901 to help pay the mortgage. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put up a Building Society at the foot of the Falls should have been certified. Incidentally, Mrs Taylor remained unhurt so at least she wasn't any broker.

In other news ...
Today in 1861 the electric telegraph joined up across the States and that spelt the end for the Pony Express Company of Majors, Russell and Weddell. I think this was a shame. Just think how exciting it would be if, every time you sent an email or a message from your iPhone/iPad/Eyewash, a great hairy bloke in buckskins came galloping past and took it off you.

23rd October

Today marks the 370th anniversary of the battle Edge Hill in Warwickshire. It was the first battle of the English Civil War (I stress English here to remind our American cousins that we had one over two centuries before they did). The result was; Cavaliers 1, Roundheads 0. Did the Roundheads give up, realizing they were totally outclassed? No, they got God on their side and as for as the Cavaliers it was all Down Hill after that.

In other news ...
Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party today in 1926. He'd only heard about the bash on Facebook and turned up uninvited, insisting everybody needed the bottle of vodka he'd brought, not to mention the ice and the pick to go with it.

Uncle Joe Stalin didn't like Leon's status and is officially No Longer His Friend. So there!

22 October

'Pretty Boy' Floyd was killed today in 1934 in a gunfight with FBI agents. They were actually trying to find 'Gorgeous Features' Mulwinnie after a tip-off from 'Impossibly Handsome' Bomperini.

In other news ...

Dr Crippen was found guilty of murdering his wife, Belle Elmore, today in 1910. I have blogged this once before because his execution was a gross miscarriage of justice. The body in the cellar was that of a man, we now know, not a woman so even if HH killed that individual, the corpse was not that of his wife so the case should have been dismissed. Why the error? A basic mistake by the pathologist Bernard Spilsbury who, even that early in his career, was revered by all and sundry as a God. And Belle Elmore? She later changed her name to Ann Widdecombe and the rest is History.

21st October

Truly great events spawn truly great quotations. Here are three from October 21st 1805, the day the British fleet under Horatio Nelson trounced the Franco-Spanish ships of Admiral Villeneuve at Trafalgar and saved England from invasion.

'England expects that every man shall do his duty.'
This was the coded message sent by a flag signalling system to the entire fleet by Nelson. He wanted to send 'England confides [trusts]' but they hadn't got that in the code book. It was the only cock-up the fleet made that day.

'Now, gentlemen, let us do something today which the world may talk of hereafter.'
Admiral Collingwood who led a column that smashed the enemy line (Nelson led the other).

'I do not say the French will not come; I only say they will not come by sea.'
Sorry, I can't remember whose this is, but it was a speech to the House of Commons, soon after Trafalgar.

In other news ...
Katsushika Hokusai was born today in 1760. Nobody, nobody does waves better (except Teasy-Weasey - and if you remember him, it's time for your cocoa).

20th October

Richard Burton died in Trieste today at the age of 69. It was 1890 and the explorer was one of the giants of Victorian England, never fully recognized (despite a knighthood) because of his penchant for translating the Kama Sutra, naughty bits and all. He was the first Englishman to visit Mecca during the Hajj (then punishable by death) and discovered hitherto unknown parts of Africa, some of which belonged to native girls.

In other news ...
Dame Annan Eagle was born today in 1904. I can't really tell you any more than that.

19th October

George Cornwallis surrendered to the American Forces at Yorktown today in 1781. They re-enact the moment for tourists every year, except that there are a few things missing ... like the colonists' German allies, the troops of the Marquis de Lafayette, a lot of Dutch and Spanish cash to by weapons and mercenaries. Oh, and half the French navy.

Apart from that, of course, Yorktown was a fair fight.

In other news ...
Auguste Lumiere, inventor of the cinematograph, was born today in 1862. His eldest boy was know as Son of Lumiere.

18th October

I must just interrupt my daily trip down Memory Lane to register the winning of the Man Booker Prize - for the second time - by Hilary Mantel. Now, Ms Mantel won it the first time by writing a novel about Thomas Cromwell. She won it the second time by writing a novel about ... Thomas Cromwell. Is it only me who sees a pattern here? Next year, if we all write a novel about Thomas Cromwell, we're all bound to win. Incidentally, old TC was a thoroughgoing b.....d, but in that sense no worse than anybody else in the Tudor period. And of course, he's now waiting in the Other Place for the arrival of Ms Mantel, with whom I'm sure he'll have a few words ...

Back to the blog -

Canaletto was born today in 1697. With a name like that of course he couldn't paint anything but canals. So Michelangelo called himself Bibletto; Stubbs was professionally known as Horsetto and Geronimo Monteverdi the master forger was Falsetto.

In other news ...
Lord Palmerston died today in 1865 with the famous words 'Die, my dear doctor? That's the last thing I shall do.'

And do you know, it was! Spooky, huh?

17th October

John Wilkes was born today in 1727. This man took on the corrupt government of George III single-handedly and almost toppled it. Womanizer, gambler, member of the notorious Hellfire Club and all round pain in the Arras, you couldn't help but love him.

And no, Ten Aitch Why, he did not kill Abraham Lincoln!! How many more times do I have to say it?

In other news ...
Charles II was defeated by Oliver Cromwell's Ironsides at Worcester today in 1651. About 20,000 people claimed later it was their oak tree Charles hid in before nipping across to France. The king had the last laugh however. When he got his throne back nine years later, Cromwell was already dead. Undeterred (get it?!) they dug him up and dragged his body around the streets of London. Where was Health and Safety?!

16th October

It was a great day for executions today. In 1555 Bishops Latimer and Ridley went to the stake in Oxford for their religious beliefs. And in 1793 'the Austrian woman', Marie Antoinette, went to the guillotine in Paris. somebody drew her in a tumbril on her way to the Place de Guerre. She was 38 and looks a hundred. How are the mighty fallen?

In other news ...

Angela Lansbury was born today in 1925. Check out (as her countrymen would say) this amazing lady - she was brilliant in The Court Jester, gorgeous in The Three Musketeers, a national treasure in Murder She Wrote. She is about to tour Australia with the great James Earl Jones in Driving Miss Daisy. And she's related to a British Labour Leader, George Lansbury.

They don't make them like her any more.

In a personal note, I would like to wish a very happy birthday to my very good friend M J Trow. I am reluctant to give his year of birth - like Cliff Richard, I suspect him of having a portrait in the attic - but he is an all round nice chap and altogether much too modest, so, Happy Birthday, M J Trow, from your staunchest fan. I have been chortling over his latest offering on the crime novel front, written with his good lady, Witch Hammer - I haven't finished it yet, having only started it yesterday but I have no idea whodunnit; always a good sign!

15th October

Yesterday I told you the world came to an end in 1969 but there are those who argue it happened today in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar, thereby losing nearly eleven days. Millions of people therefore died before their time. Has the Vatican apologised for this, the greatest mass slaughter in history? Has it Heaven!

In other news ...
Virgil was born today in 70 BC, which is astonishing really. How old must he have been at the OK Corral when he faced the Clantons and McLowerys with brothers Wyatt and Morgan and Doc Holliday?!

14th October

Cliff Richard was born on this day in 1940. If you've seen recent photos of the man, you'll know this has to be a typo. He was clearly born in 1990.
Or does he have a painting of himself in the attic ...?

In other news ...

The world came to an end today - although Mother Shipton never noticed it - in 1969. The ten bob note was replaced by a nasty-foreign-looking coin called a 50p. I'd have been happier had it been called a 120p, but you can't have everything.

13th October

The Turin Shroud, allegedly the cloth wrapped around Jesus' crucified body, was finally exposed as a hoax today in 1988. This shouldn't have surprised anybody. For centuries, the Catholic Church had been making money out of exhibiting the chains of St Peter, the finger of St Anthony and the foreskin of Sister Ursula (oh no, that can't be right!) and all of those where fakes, so why not the shroud?

The real miracle is how did a brilliant 14th century artist fake the thing in the first place?

In other news ...
The Queen, God Bless Her, made her first broadcast to the nation today in 1940. She was only 14 and said, on Children's Hour 'We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well.'

And the old girl's been calming us all down ever since.

12th October

The first non-religious piece of music was published today in 1609. It was Three Blind Mice and isn't it an off thing to kick of Showbiz with? Burt Bacharach, who wrote it, dined out on the royalties for the rest of his life.

In other news ...
Aleister Crowley was born today and spent the rest of his life telling everybody what a beast he was. His phone number was 666 (as opposed to the Pope's which is VAT 69); his favourite dish was devilled kidneys and he liked children, but couldn't eat a whole one.

11th October

Jean Cocteau, poet, artist, film-maker and all round brilliant wit died today in 1963. Of all the cool things he ever said, my favourite must be 'Tact consists in knowing how far we may go too far.'

Ain't it the truth?

In other news ...
And talking of wits and great lines, how about this today in 1991 from Auberon Waugh (whom I actually met once) - 'Politicians can forgive almost anything in the way of abuse; they can forgive subversion, revolution, being contradicted, exposed as liars, even ridiculed but they can never forgive being ignored.'

Takes one to know one, Aub!

10th October

Charles Darwin published what he considered to be his major opus today in 1881. It was called Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Notes on Their Habits. Just a reminder about other immortal works penned by the greats: Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Outbuilding belonging to a family Relative Whose Name was Thomas: Karl Marx's A List of the Principles and Beliefs of People Who Believe in Complete Equality: Robert Graves's Myself, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus and finally Peter Benchley's The Mandibles of a Large, Pale Predator Fish and Its Homicidal Habits.

Darwin's book was later filmed as Tremors and Its Many Sequels.

In other news ...
Thelonius Monk was born today in 1920. For years I thought his name was Felonius and that he was probably a defrocked priest. His crime? He virtually invented bebop.

'Nuff said.

9th October

'Che' Guevara was shot dead by the Bolivian army today in 1967. Let's forget how ludicrous it was that a self-centred, rather useless asthmatic medical student could become the icon of a generation (mine) appearing on posters and t-shirts without number. Let's have a closer look instead at the Bolivian Army. They shot Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid too. Is nobody doing anything about this?

In other news ...
Today in 1897, Henry Sturmey drove away from Land's End in a 4.5 hp Daimler with the intention of being the first person to drive to John O'Groats - 929 miles. Today, because of roadworks, contraflow, traffic cones and utterly unnecessary 50 mph speed limits on open roads, that journey would take five days.

Turn around when it is safe to do so.

8th October

Count Metternich (no, not the furry version, the real one) was appointed Foreign Minister in Vienna today in 1809. He stayed in office until 1848 as 'the coachman of Europe' directing and manipulating everybody with his craftiness and army of secret police. That's why I gave that cute little bundle of fur the name all those years ago - I can recognize a serial killer when I see one.

In other news ...
Chicago almost burned to the ground today in 1871 when Mrs O'Leary's cow knocked over a lantern in a barn in Dekoven Street. Under interrogation, using the good cow, bad cow (and incidentally giving the name to an otherwise anonymous disease) system we've all seen so many times, the animal confessed to being a serial arsonist, admitting to similar fires in London (1666), Warwick (1694) and London again in 1861.

7th October

Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of Cape Town, was born today in 1931. He's a brilliant guy, loved and respected throughout the world. I must share with you, though, the unexpected thing for which he will always be remembered. If you are of average university ability, you will acquire a 2.2 (or Lower Second) degree; now affectionately known as a Desmond.

In other news ...
It was today in 1905 that one critic, viewing the works of Matisse in Paris, said, 'A paint pot has been flung in the face of the public.' He should have stuck around. Since then, 'art' has got much, much worse.

6th October

Two men died today in the electric chair in Florida in 1941. Their names were Frizzel and Willburn.

In other news ...
You don't mess with Basil II, Holy Roman Emperor. Today in 1014 he trounced the Bulgarian Army of Tsar Samuel and ordered that the prisoners should be blinded. Every hundredth man was to have one eye spared so that they could find their way back to the Tsar. Ah, the good old days.

5th October

'Gangin' doon, Geordie, gangin' doon, to the toon where the power lies.'

The unemployed men of the Tyneside shipyards marched to London today in 1936. Jarrow had a 66% unemployment rate and, wearing flat caps and blankets, 200 men set off to a rousing cheer. Everybody en route gave them tea and sandwiches, even the odd pint of beer. The hunger march didn't achieve much but it was a far cry from a similar march in 1817 when the Blanketeers set off from Manchester to protest about poverty. They were met by the army at Stockport and dispersed.

In other news ...
Monty Python's Flying Circus first appeared on the BBC today in 1969.

Why?

4th October

Karl Baedecker, the German publisher, died today in 1859. This is quite remarkable and an astonishing piece of research on my part (eat your heart out, Eric Hobsbawm RIP). Because during WW2 the Baedecker raids hit the very cities in Britain listed by Baedecker nearly a century earlier. Coincidence? I think not! Clearly, Karl Baedecker was an early member of the Nazi Party. Has nobody else noticed this?

In other news ...
As a kid I could never understand how the gadget developed by Paul Zoll at the Harvard Medical School actually worked. It was designed to control heartbeat and, as far as I knew, was called a peacemaker. I couldn't understand how a six-shot revolver carried by cowboys could be any help at all in that respect. That's why I became an historian rather than a cardiac surgeon and probably just as well.

3rd October

Elias Howe died today in 1867. Who he? i hear you cry. He was the chappie who invented the sewing machine and (unusually for pioneers in any field in the past) made a mint out of it (not literally, Seven Eff Em - he wasn't that clever). They even wrote a song about the sewing machine - 'A sewing machine, a sewing machine, a girl's best friend. If I didn't have my sewing machine, I'd go round the [expletive supplied by Seven Eff Em] bend.'

They don't make them - or write them - that way any more.

In other news ...
Postcodes were introduced in Britain today in 1959. Yes, I was surprised by that too. It was the start of the End of Civilization, of course and another step on the road to 1984 (naturally!). What happened to those glorious postal triumphs of the past when General Wilson of the First World War fame addressed an envelope to himself as 'The Ugliest Man in the British Army' (that was all he wrote) and it actually reached him.

2nd October

Can we get this straight once and for all, please? Today was the day in 1780 when John Andre  was executed by the American colonists as a spy and working with the traitor Benedict Arnold. Andre knew the risks he was taking and was unlucky; that's Africa. But Benedict Arnold was not a traitor. Today, thinking Americans equate him with Adolf Hitler, Vlad Dracula and Attila the Hun, but he was actually doing his duty as a British subject, which all American colonists were. it was all the rest who were the traitors, whatever gloss the slave-owning, line-pinching Thomas Jefferson tried to put on it in the Declaration of Independence.

In other news ...
'There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - they need the money.'

(With sincere apologies to John Fowles, who said something totally different today in 1977).

1st October

Kaiser Wilhelm II (he of the silly moustache and pickelhaube) gave orders to his generals today in 1914 - 'It is my royal and imperial command that you ... exterminate first the treacherous English and ... walk over General French's contemptible little army.'

He was obviously a tad confused. General French was an Englishman, despite his contrary surname and the German generals clearly weren't listening carefully enough. They didn't exterminate the British because the 'contemptibles' stopped them at Mons. I know I don't have to remind you of the score: Britain 1, Germany 0.

In other news ...
Louis Leakey died today in 1972. He was the brilliant, self-taught anthropologist who discovered 'Lucy', a partial skeleton in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. His findings put him at odds with almost every other anthropologist over the issue of who was descended from whom. You and I, for example, dear reader, are descended from homo sapiens by way of homo habilis and all points south. Year Ten at Leighford High School are descended from homo deeply-stupidicus and, according to his mother at least, the testicles of Henry Guttersnipe (not his real name) haven't descended at all. Although why that should excuse the late delivery of his most recent essay, I am at a loss to explain.