Melanie King 
ON THIS DAY: 2 November 1947 – eccentric American billionaire, film producer and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes piloted the Spruce Goose, the largest wooden aircraft ever built, on its first and only flight! The enormous Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known as the Spruce Goose, rose from the waters of Long Beach Harbor, California, briefly proving … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 24 October 1939 – something extraordinary happened in Wilmington, Delaware, USA: nylon stockings went on sale to the public for the very first time. The day became known as ‘Nylon Day’ – and women couldn’t get enough of them! Nylon had been developed by a team of chemists at DuPont, led by … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 13 October 1917 – around 50,000 people gathered at Cova da Iria, a scrubland area near Fatima in Portugal, owned by the Santos family and used for grazing their sheep. They had come to witness what three young shepherd children claimed would be an apparition of the Virgin Mary. For several months, … Read more
ON THIS DAY: 4 October 1918 – Cher Ami, a homing pigeon, saved a battalion of American soldiers. Cher Ami – French for ‘Dear Friend’ – was a homing pigeon serving with the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the First World War. His bravery on 4 October 1918 would make him one of the most … Read more
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