Melanie King 
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
ON THIS DAY: 16 June 1963 – Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she launched aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6. Born in 1937 in the village of Maslennikovo, in what is now Russia, Tereshkova came from a working-class family. Her father, a tractor driver, was killed during the Soviet-Finnish War. She … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 4 June 1913 – during the running of the famous Epsom Derby at Epsom Downs Racecourse, Emily Wilding Davison stepped onto the racetrack as the horses thundered past. She was struck by the horse Anmer, owned by King George V. The collision knocked Davison to the ground and brought down both horse … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 30 May 1971 – Norman Wilkinson, the British inventor of dazzle camouflage for ships during World War I, died on this day. During World War I, German submarines (U-boats) posed a severe threat to Allied shipping. Traditional camouflage – making ships blend into the sea – proved ineffective, because ships were still … Read more