Melanie King 
ON THIS DAY: 20 September 1973 – Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ It was billed as a tennis match, but the stakes were far greater than sport. By 1973, Bobby Riggs was 55 years old, but he was no ordinary retired tennis player. A former world No. 1, … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 13 September 1848 – Phineas Gage survived a large iron rod blasted through his head. Phineas Gage was supervising the construction of the Rutland & Burlington Railroad near Cavendish, Vermont, where his crew was blasting rock to prepare the railway bed. The process involved drilling a hole into the rock, filling it … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 7 September 1901 – China signs the Boxer Protocol formally ending the Boxer Rebellion. The agreement imposed devastating terms on the Qing Empire, leaving China humiliated, heavily indebted, and under greater foreign influence than ever before. By the end of the nineteenth century, China had suffered a series of military defeats and … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 29 August 1930 – The last 36 residents of St Kilda were evacuated from one of Britain’s oldest and most isolated communities, bringing to an end more than 4,000 years of continuous human settlement on the remote Scottish archipelago. In the early hours of 29 August, the islanders packed their belongings aboard … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 6 August 1975 – Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, became the only fictional character to receive an obituary on the front page of The New York Times. It appeared shortly after the publication of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, the final Poirot novel. The newspaper treated Poirot’s death as though he … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 4 August 1945 – One of the most ingenious espionage devices ever created, known simply as ‘The Thing’, was presented to the American ambassador in Moscow, hidden inside a beautifully carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States. The plaque was presented to W. Averell Harriman at the American … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 26 July 1919 – One of the most remarkable, yet largely forgotten, episodes in British history took place when nearly 1,800 officers, soldiers and civilian camp followers of the Indian Army arrived at Hampton Court Palace. For the next two months, they lived in a specially constructed tented camp in Home Park … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 12 July 1827 – John Wroe, a self-proclaimed prophet, wandered the streets of Bradford, Yorkshire, dressed in torn rags that deliberately exposed his buttocks. Far from an act of madness or public indecency in his own mind, Wroe believed God had commanded him to become a living prophecy, following the example of … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 4 July 1882 – The ‘Last Great Buffalo Hunt’ began on the northern Great Plains near Hettinger, North Dakota. Thousands of Lakota and Yanktonai Sioux accompanied by their families left reservation lands near the Standing Rock Agency to join the hunt. For centuries, the buffalo (American bison) had been the foundation of … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 28 June 1928 – Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen flew into the Arctic on a rescue mission from which he would never return. Amundsen, already famous as the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911, undertook what would become his final and fatal expedition when he joined an international effort to … Read more