June 26th

So it’s the 26^th June today. Is that a special day for you? Do you remember it for any reason?: perhaps someone’s birthday; perhaps an anniversary; perhaps special for some other reason like starting a job or moving house or whatever.

I thought I’d look at the day and see if anything of interest happened back in history. It’ll just be a random selection of things which I think were important at the time they happened but which we’re probably not aware of having happened on this day, 26^th June.

Here goes then:

1284 – After not having been paid for ridding the town of rats, The Pied Piper of Hamelin allegedly led 130 children out of the town; they disappeared and were never seen again. Interestingly a singer by the name of Crispian St. Peters had a UK hit with a song called The Pied Piper at the end of March 1966; it stayed in the charts for 13 weeks and peaked at number 5; it topped the charts in Canada in July that year. (It was a follow-up to You Were On My Mind earlier that year which got to no.2.) Also I reckon you probably don’t know that Bob Marley’s wife Rita covered the song in 1966. I think it’s a bit strange that there is a pop song about a guy who convinces over 100 kids to follow him and they’re never seen again! Hmmm.. not what you’d immediately think of as a subject for a very happy jolly song-a-long tune.

Here’s the Crispian St. Peters link. Note the pipe seems to have been, not very cleverly, replaced by a laundry basket! Now what’s all that about?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r0zoEBba1Y

If you fancy a read of Robert Browning’s poem about the Pied Piper then here’s the link. For some reason he gives the year as 1376 but the official Hameln town website goes with 1284. It may take you a few minutes to get through as there are 303 lines but they’re fairly short and I wonder how many of you have ever read the whole thing:

http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/piper/text.html

Or if you want to listen to someone else read it and imbue it with a bit of emotion then try these 2 Youtube vids (Parts 1 & 2) which have some nice watercour pics to go along with the sound.

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54lZYdjeojQ

Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzsCUUjqnVg

1483 – Richard Duke of Gloucester began his reign as Richard III. There is a lot on our TVs at the moment about the Tudor period and particularly the various claims to the English throne during the 15^th century. It’s believed that Richard got rid of those who stood in his way to the throne of England. His brother Edward IV died through ill health and his other brother George, Duke of Clarence was tried for treason against Edward IV and executed in the Tower of London. That left only the two sons of Edward IV (and Elizabeth Woodville) who had a right to the throne before Richard. He had them imprisoned in the Tower and soon after no more was seen of them: they are often referred to as ‘The Princes in the Tower’. Rumours abound on their fate but the consensus seems to be that Richard III had them killed so that he could become the next in line. The murder of 3 of his family members then enabled him to become King of England; and after all that scheming & plotting his reign lasted just two years. Despite outnumbering Henry’s (future Henry VII) forces by 3:1 Richard was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22^nd August 1485; Henry’s victory brought to a close the medieval period and ushered in 118 years of the Tudor Dynasty (1485-1603).

1824 - William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) was born. You remember he invented the Kelvin scale of temperature measurement. Centigrade goes from 0⁰ - 100⁰; for the same range, Fahrenheit goes from 32⁰ - 212⁰; Kelvin is not a scale in the same way as ⁰C or ⁰F but has the absolute zero temp as minus 273⁰C.

1827 – William Crompton, inventor of the spinning mule died aged 74. While still only young when his father died he had to work to support the family. He was taught to spin yarn on what was called a “spinning jenny”. Whilst working with this he had an idea of how to improve it and used his spare time and money in developing it.

1843 – Britain declared Hong Kong a crown colony. It was of course given back to the Chinese in 1997.

1846 – The Corn Laws were passed in Britain. Their purpose was to protect British cereal farmers from the cheap imports in the period 1815-46. However they didn’t work because by keeping the price up (and therefore the profits of the landowners) the average working man could not afford to buy enough to survive. Workers demonstrated demanding higher wages; there were strikes and riots. Eventually the government gave in and in 1846 the law was repealed.

1898 – Wilhelm Emil Messerschmitt was born. As you see by his name he is the designer of the aircraft named after him. More Messerschmitts were built than any other fighter aircraft in history and they played a key role in WW2.

1906 – The first Grand Prix motor race took place at Le Mans. It was run on closed roads outside the city. The original circuit was just over 64 miles (103kms) round. They had to do 6 laps on each of two consecutive days so the total distance was 769 miles (1238kms). The winner was the Hungarian driver, Ferenc Szisz. Today’s circuit is approx ⅛ of the original at just over 13kms (almost 8.5 miles). The distance covered, over the 24 hours, has gradually increased from the 3,000 kms of the early 1930s to the current record (achieved in 2010) of 5,410 kms (3,360 miles). To give you an idea, it’s like driving overland from London to beyond Baghdad (Iraq) or almost as far as Tehran (Iran) or beyond Nouakchott, the capital of Mauretania on the west coast of Africa and almost to Saint Louis just across the border in Senegal or believe it or not to Moscow and back IN A DAY! WOW!!

1926 – Queen Elizabeth II was born. Her current reign, as of today, has lasted 61 years 157 days. In terms of living monarchs, only Rama IX (of Thailand) has reigned longer (just over 67 years). In terms of British monarchs she is also second: Queen Victoria is a couple of years ahead at 63 years 216 days.

1945 – In San Francisco the United Nations Charter was signed by 50 countries. In its preamble one of the stated aims of the organisation was, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…”. What a great pity this hasn’t happened. We may have avoided a Third World War but there are plenty of little ones going on all over our world today and thousands are still dying as a result of them.

1959 – The Queen and President Dwight Eisenhower opened the 2,300 mile St Lawrence Seaway linking the Atlantic Ocean with Duluth, Minnesota on the SW shore of Lake Superior. It had cost $470 million to build and 6,500 people had had to be resettled as their villages were to be flooded. In addition to homes and farms, 17 churches and 18 cemeteries (involving over 2,000 bodies) had to be relocated.

1963 – John F. Kennedy made a speech in West Berlin expressing solidarity with the West Germans there. His famous phrase Ich bin ein Berliner is known across the world and whilst not meant literally as obviously he was American it meant he wanted those in the western section of the city to know that he was of a similar mind and against the Russian governed eastern section. The Berlin Wall was begun in 1961 and, after much political change, was eventually demolished in 1989; reunification of West and East Germany took place in October 1990.

1975 – Sonny & Cher’s divorce became final. Although they seemed to have been around for a long time it might surprise you to know that their chart successes as a duo were concentrated into just a couple of years: 3 singles in 1965, 5 in 1966, 1 in 1967, 1 in 1972. There were only two chart albums: 1 in 1965 & 1 in 1966.

1984 – George Horace Gallup was born. He was the inventor of what is called the Gallup Poll which is a statistical method of doing a survey which can then be used to project what public opinion may be on a certain subject. I can remember many years ago that each time a survey was mentioned in a news broadcast on some national issue it was quoted as the result of a Gallup Poll. It seemed that the media endorsed the results almost as proof! I never knew it was named after an actual bloke at the time.

1986 – Richard Branson left New York on his powerboat Virgin Atlantic Challenger to try and break the record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The holder of the title is said to have The Blue Riband. He did it by arriving 2 hours faster than the previous record holder the SS United States. However he cannot claim the Blue Riband officially because that award is for vessels in service (his was not) and they are not allowed to stop for fuel (which his team did). Nevertheless it was the fastest time to cross from America to England.

2000 – The international Human Genome Project and a U.S. company, Celera Genomics announced the completion of a working draft of the human genetic blueprint (the Book of Life).