Did you know that on this day in 1066, during the Norman Conquest, the Battle of Hastings took place? In England on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, the Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeat the English army and kill King Harold II of England. Or that on this day in 1773, just before the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, several of the British East India Company‘s tea ships are set ablaze at the old seaport of Annapolis, Maryland?
On this day in 1867 the 15th and last military Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate resigns in Japan, returning his power to the Emperor of Japan and thence to the re-established civil government of Japan, in 1888 Louis Le Prince films first motion picture: Roundhay Garden Scene, in 1912, while campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, is shot and mildly wounded by John Schrank, a mentally-disturbed saloon keeper. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Mr. Roosevelt still carries out his scheduled public speech, in 1913 Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, the United Kingdom’s worst coal mining accident, occurs, and it claims the lives of 439 miners and in 1926 the children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne, is first published.
It was also on this day in 1940 Balham subway station disaster, in London, England, occurs during the Nazi Luftwaffe air raids on Great Britain, in 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis begins as a U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane and its pilot fly over the island of Cuba and take photographs of Soviet missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads being installed and erected in Cuba, in 1969 the United Kingdom introduces the British fifty-pence coin, which replaces, over the following years, the British ten-shilling note, in anticipation of the decimalization of the British currency in 1971, and the abolition of the shilling as a unit of currency anywhere in the world and in 2006 a College football brawl between University of Miami and Florida International University leads to suspensions of 31 players of both teams.
Some birthdays you may want to remember on this day are E. E. Cummings, American poet (1894-1962), Roger Moore, English actor (1927), Empress Farah Diba of Iran (1938), Ralph Lauren, American fashion designer (1939), Cliff Richard, English singer (1940), Art Shamsky, American baseball player (1941), Floyd Landis, American cyclist (1975) and Usher, American singer and actor (1978).
If you need a reason to raise a glass of bubbly on this day, perhaps you should look into the celebration of World Standards Day (International), Day of the Cathedral of Living Pillar (Georgian Orthodox Church) or National Education Day, formerly Teachers’ Day (Poland)?
For more information about historic events on this day, please go here.
A Glass of Bubbly 