19th June 1269 – King Louis IX of France ordered all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver. 1306 – The Earl of Pembroke's army defeated Bruce's Scottish army at the Battle of Methven. 1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, […]

7th April 1795 – France adopted the metre as the basic measure of length. 1827 – John Walker, an English chemist, sold the first friction match. 1947 – Henry Ford, the American automobile manufacturer and industrialist died. 1948 – The World Health Organization was established by the United Nations. 1994 – The massacre of Tutsis […]

28th March 1854 - Britain and France joined the Ottoman empire in the Crimean War against Russia, to halt Russian expansion. 1930 - Constantinople was renamed Istanbul as part of Kemal Atatürk's campaign to create a secular Turkey.

20th March 1956 - Tunisia gained independence from France. 1993 - Johnathan Ball, aged 3, died in a bomb attack in Warrington. He was in town with his babysitter buying a Mothering Sunday Card. Tim Parry, 12, was fatally injured and died five days later in hospital. 1997 - The Liggett Group, the fifth-largest U.S. […]

8th February 1974 - The Loch Ness Monster was allegedly photographed in Scotland. 1996 - Francois Mitterand died.   Seemingly for his last meal he decided to eat a tiny little yellow songbird called an ortolan, which is illegal, even in France. A typical ortolan weighs only 55 g and is about the size of a […]

In a survey that examines the good each country does for humanity as well as what it takes away, Britain has ranked 4th. (The Good Country Index placed Sweden first, Denmark second, and the Netherlands third, but the UK came above France and Germany because Britain does more “good” and less harm than more than […]