James Owen - The Times On This Day - Facts and trivia for every day of the year

They are not meant to represent a complete history of the world. Rather, they are a random, often quirky, frequently diverting list of things you feel better for knowing. That said, the collective mind that put them together seems to have had some idiosyncratic interests, including notable firsts in astronomy, key moments in Britain’s withdrawal from empire, and opera premieres. The broad-minded reader of The Times naturally takes all these in his or her stride. What can the rest of us learn from this midden heap of the past?

Perhaps it is that the past is just that. Rooting about in it disinters things which were once prized but are now of little account. Events which made headlines – “40 skaters drowned in Regent’s Park” – are long forgotten. How quickly things change, one might think (maybe contemplating an entry whilst adding to one’s own midden heap), a thought soon followed by: “Did that happen 20 years ago already?”

And then there are the secret harmonies one fancies hearing in time’s dance music. Can it be just coincidence that Sir Winston Churchill died on the same day of the year (January 24th) as not only his father but also Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of the Churchills’ family seat at Blenheim? That Rolls-Royce should commission its proud emblem Spirit of Ecstasy exactly 60 years to the day before declaring bankruptcy? What unseen force sent King Louis XVI to the guillotine on the anniversary of its inventor having proposed it as a humane method of execution?

Another newspaper – now itself passed into history – once claimed of its contents that “All human life is here”. That may not be precisely true of this selection, but it is good to be reminded of the breadth and diversity of mankind’s achievements. Sometimes one can even be surprised by them: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 21; Sid Vicious rose to fame with the Sex Pistols when a year younger; the first public flushing lavatory for women opened in London as early as 1852.

So, read on and find your own path through the past, be it by lucky dip, joining the dots, using the date index at the back of the book or through dates that mean something to you. Discover something that prompts you to learn more, or to think “I never knew that!”, a fact to share with a friend and make you muse upon all that has gone before us down the ages: a glorious gallimaufry of happenings.

And then turn the page and read the Obituaries.

James Owen

1785 The Daily Universal Register was founded. It was renamed The Times on January 1, 1788.

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1801 the Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland came into force.

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1901 the Commonwealth of Australia was established, allowing the nation to govern itself.

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1962 the Beatles were not signed by Decca Records because guitar groups were “on the way out”.

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1973 Britain entered the Common Market, later named the European Union.

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1999 the euro was introduced, giving 11 countries a shared currency — the first time since the Roman Empire that much of Europe had had one.

17 Roman poet Ovid died, a decade after mysteriously being banished to modern-day Romania by Emperor Augustus.

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1769 the Royal Academy met for the first time, with Sir Joshua Reynolds as president.

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1896 Leander Starr Jameson surrendered after his raid failed to provoke an uprising by British workers against the Boers in the Transvaal.

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1959 the Russians launched the rocket Luna 1 on the first close fly-by mission to the moon.

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1971 66 football fans were killed in a crush at Ibrox Park, Glasgow.

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1981 police arrested serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.

1521 the Pope excommunicated Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism.

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1892 JRR Tolkein, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , was born.

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1924 Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.

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1946 William Joyce (better known as Lord Haw-Haw), broadcaster of Nazi propaganda, hanged.

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1980 Joy Adamson, wildlife conservationist and author of Born Free , was murdered.

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1981 Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, the last survivor of Queen Victoria’s 37 grandchildren, died aged 97.

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1990 Panama’s leader Manuel Noriega surrendered to US forces after ten days under siege in the Vatican Embassy.

1642 King Charles I entered Parliament with soldiers in a bid to arrest five MPs, sparking the English Civil War.

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1643 Sir Isaac Newton, physicist and mathematician, was born.

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1877 Cornelius Vanderbilt, financier and transport magnate whose steamship service flourished with the 1849 Gold Rush, died.

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1948 after more than 100 years of British rule, Burma became an independent republic.

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1951 Chinese Communist and North Korean troops captured Seoul during the Korean War.

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1967 world speed record breaker Donald Campbell was killed in Bluebird on Coniston Water, Cumbria, during a record attempt.

1066 Edward the Confessor, King of England since 1042, died.

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1592 Shah Jahan, Mogul emperor of India, who ordered the building of the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife, was born.

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1855 King Camp Gillette, inventor of his eponymous safety razor, was born in Wisconsin.

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1941 Amy Johnson, record-breaking aviator, died after her aircraft crashed in the Thames estuary.

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1968 Alexander Dubcek became First Secretary of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party, ushering in the Prague Spring.

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1971 international one-day cricket was born when England played Australia in Melbourne, the Test match having been abandoned due to rain.

1066 Harold Godwinson was crowned King of England in succession to Edward the Confessor, prompting the Normans to invade.

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1412 St Joan of Arc, French heroine, was born into a peasant family at Domrémy, (later called Domrémy-la-Pucelle) in the Vosges.

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1681 the first recorded boxing match in the UK was arranged by the Duke of Albemarle between his butler and his butcher.

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1838 in New Jersey, Samuel Morse gave the first public demonstration of his electric telegraph system.

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1852 Louis Braille, who invented a reading and writing system for blind people, died in Paris.

1714 a patent was granted to the English engineer Henry Mill for his typewriter design.

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1785 Blanchard and Jeffries made the first hot-air balloon crossing of the Channel.

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1789 the first nationwide election was held in America, with George Washington elected as president.

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1827 Sandford Fleming, Scottish engineer who divided the world into time zones, was born.

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1955 Marian Anderson was placed under contract by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the first African-American to be so engaged.

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1999 the impeachment trial of President Clinton began in Washington.

1337 Giotto, painter and architect, died in Florence.

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1642 Galileo Galilei, mathematician and astronomer, died in Arcetri, Tuscany.

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1742 Philip Astley, founder of Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre, a forerunner of the modern circus, was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

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1824 Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White , was born.