Melanie King 
ON THIS DAY: 1 April 1957 – British viewers tuning in to the BBC’s news programme Panorama were treated to what would become one of the most famous April Fools’ pranks in broadcasting history: a straight-faced, three-minute report about a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from trees in the canton of Ticino, near the Italian border. … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 27 March 1966 – a four-year-old collie named Pickles made headlines around the world after discovering the stolen Jules Rimet Trophy, better known as the World Cup. Just one week earlier, on 20 March, the trophy had been stolen while on public display at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. Remarkably, the thieves … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 8 March 1912 – Foot binding, a Chinese cultural practice that lasted for nearly a thousand years, was officially banned by the newly formed Republic of China. Foot binding involved tightly binding the feet of young girls to keep them extremely small. The tradition is believed to have begun during the Five … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 1 March 1985 – The world’s highest milk-yielding cow, Ubre Blanca (‘White Udder’), died in Cuba. In 1982, she set a world record for milk production, producing over 110 litres of milk in a single day (about 30 gallons) – far exceeding typical dairy cows, which usually produce around 25-40 litres per … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 22 February 1797 – This date is remembered as the day a small Welsh town, Fishguard, became the site of the last invasion of Britain – and when a group of local women, later known as the Brave Ladies of Fishguard, helped secure a remarkable and bloodless victory. France, fired by revolutionary … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 12 February 1994 – On the same day as the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics in nearby Lillehammer, one of the most audacious art heists in history took place when four art thieves stole The Scream by Edvard Munch from the National Gallery in Oslo. Led by the notorious Norwegian art … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 6 February 1958 – British European Airways Flight 609, chartered to carry the Manchester United team home from a European Cup tie, crashed during take-off at Munich-Riem Airport in West Germany. The tragedy would become forever known as the Munich Air Disaster. Manchester United had just played a European Cup quarter-final in … Read more
ON THIS DAY – 24 January 1972 – An extraordinary discovery made headlines around the world. Shoichi Yokoi, a sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army, was found alive on the island of Guam after spending 28 years hiding in the jungle – completely unaware that World War II had ended in 1945. Yokoi was a 26-year-old … Read more
ON THIS DAY – 10 January 1897 – Ukrainian bacteriologist Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine performed the first human trial of a plague vaccine – on himself – during the devastating Bombay (Mumbai) epidemic of 1896-97. Born in 1860 to a Jewish family in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire, Haffkine studied physics, mathematics, and zoology … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 2 January 1877, Charles M. Tinker received U.S. Patent No. 187,881 for a delightfully inventive device: a dog-powered treadmill designed to churn butter. Tinker’s creation worked by having one or more dogs walk on a slanted tread-wheel or treadmill-style platform. As the dogs walked – or trotted – to keep their balance, … Read more