Did you know that it was on this day in 1773 captain James Cook and his crew become the first Europeans to sail below the Antarctic Circle? Or that it was on this day in 1904 Anton Chekhov‘s The Cherry Orchard receives its premiere performance at the Moscow Art Theatre?
And on this day in 1912 Captain Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen (poor sod), in 1929 Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Segar, first appears in the Thimble Theatre comic strip, in 1945 The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in and Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is taken into Soviet custody while in Hungary; he is never publicly seen again, in 1966 a B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea in the Palomares incident, in 1991 at the start of the Gulf War Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation and in 2007 the Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea nuclear testing.
Some birthdays to remember (or forget) on this day are Benjamin Franklin, American statesman and inventor (1706-1790), Anne Brontë, British author (1820-1849), Al Capone, American gangster (1899-1947), Betty White, American actress (1922), Eartha Kitt, American actress and singer (1927-2008), Vidal Sassoon, English cosmetologist (1928), James Earl Jones, American actor (1931), Muhammad Ali, American boxer (1942), Paul Young, English musician (1956), Susanna Hoffs, American musician (1959), Jim Carrey, Canadian actor and comedian (1962) and Lukas Moodysson, Swedish film writer and director (1969).
Need a reason to raise a glass of bubbly on this day? Why not join in the celebration of National Day (Minorca)?
For more information about historic events on this day, please go here.
A Glass of Bubbly 