Category: Date-A-Base

31 newsworthy historical anniversaries in July 2023

31 newsworthy historical anniversaries in July 2023

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Here are 31 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in July 2023
(listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into films, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more. (Find out more at the end of this article.)

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, which lists more than 3,000 anniversaries.

1 Jul 1948 – 75 years ago
New York International Airport (originally Idlewild Airport) was officially opened.
(It was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1963.)

2 Jul 1973 – 50 years ago
The National Black Network (NBN) launched in the USA. It was the first national radio network wholly owned by African Americans.

3 Jul 1423 – 600 years ago
Birth of Louis XI, King of France (1461–83).

4 Jul 1623 – 400 years ago
Death of William Byrd, English Renaissance composer. Regarded as one of the greatest British composers. Best known for his sacred music.

5 Jul 1948 – 75 years ago
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) began operating.

6 Jul 1933 – 90 years ago
The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played, at Comiskey Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

7 Jul 1948 – 75 years ago
The first six enlisted women were sworn into the regular U.S. Navy.

8 Jul 1933 – 90 years ago
Great Depression: the Public Works Administration (PWA) began operating in the USA. Its purpose was to build large-scale public projects including dams, bridges, schools, hospitals and warships to provide employment and stimulate the economy.

9 Jul 1958 – 65 years ago
Lituya Bay megatsunami, Alaska, USA.
An earthquake caused 90 million tons of rock to fall several hundred metres into the bay. The resulting tsunami destroyed vegetation up to 1,722 feet (525 metres) above the bay and sent a 98- foot (30-metre) wave across the bay.
It remains the largest and most significant megatsunami of modern times.

10 Jul 1973 – 50 years ago
John Paul Getty III, the 16-year-old grandson of the American oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped in Rome, Italy.
In November the kidnappers cut off one of his ears and sent it to a newspaper.
He was released in December after a ransom was paid.
(The kidnapping scarred him for life and he became addicted to drugs and alcohol, leading to an overdose, stroke, and severe disability. He died in 2011, aged 54.)

11 Jul 1848 – 175 years ago
Waterloo railway station in London opened.

12 Jul 1963 – 60 years ago
The Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, killed their first victim, 16-year-old Pauline Reade, on Saddleworth Moor, north-west England.

13 Jul 1923 – 100 years ago
The Hollywood Sign was officially dedicated in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
(It was originally erected as a temporary advertisement for a housing development, and read ‘Hollywoodland’.)

14 Jul 1983 – 40 years ago
Nintendo released the arcade video game Mario Bros in Japan. (USA: 20th July.)

15 Jul 1948 – 75 years ago
The British branch of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was founded in London.
(Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in the USA in 1935.)

16 Jul 1723 – 300 years ago
Birth of Sir Joshua Reynolds, English portrait artist.

17 Jul 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of John Cooper, British racing car designer. Co-founder of the Cooper Car Company (with his father, Charles). He also designed the Mini Cooper. (Died 2000.)

18 Jul 1948 – 75 years ago
Argentine racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio made his Formula One debut in the 1948 French Grand Prix.
He went on to win the F1 Driver’s Championship five times (1951, 1954–57).

19 to 20 Jul 1848 – 175 years ago
The Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention in the USA, was held in Seneca Falls, New York.

20 Jul or 20 Jun 1923 – 100 years ago
Death of Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader. (Assassinated).

21 Jul 1873 – 150 years ago
American outlaw Jesse James and the James-Younger gang staged their first train robbery. They derailed a Rock Island Line express train near Adair, Iowa, and stole $3,000 (equivalent to $64,000 today).

22 Jul 1933 – 90 years ago
American aviator Wiley Post completed the first solo flight around the world.
He flew 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes.

23 Jul 1773 – 250 years ago
Birth of Thomas Brisbane, British Army officer, colonial administrator, and astronomer. Governor of New South Wales (1821–25).
The city of Brisbane, Australia was named in his honour.

24 Jul 1923 – 100 years ago
The Treaty of Lausanne was signed in Switzerland. It was the final treaty of WWI and defined the boundaries of modern Turkey.

25 Jul 1943 – 80 years ago
World War II: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was forced out of office. He was succeeded by Pietro Badoglio (as Prime Minister).
This marked the end of Italy’s alliance with Germany.

26 Jul 1958 – 65 years ago
Debutantes were presented at the British royal court for the last time.

27 Jul 1953 – 70 years ago
The Korean War ended. The Korean Armistice Treaty was signed at Panmunjom and the 38th parallel became the official boundary between communist North Korea and anti-communist South Korea. (Tensions continued unabated.)

28 Jul 1933 – 90 years ago
Western Union delivered the first singing telegram – to American singer Rudy Vallee in New York on his 32nd birthday.

29 Jul 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Jim Marshall, British electrical engineer and businessman. Founder of Marshall Amplification. (Died 2012.)

30 Jul 1898 – 125 years ago
The world’s first advertisement for a motor car appeared in newspapers in the USA.
The ad for the Winton Motor Carriage Company in Cleveland, Ohio invited readers to ‘Dispense with a horse’.

31 Jul 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Ahmet Ertegun, Turkish-born American record company executive. Co-founder and President of Atlantic Records.
He was one of the most significant and influential figures in American popular music, and discovered many leading musicians. (Died 2006.)

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The 2028 edition will be available from April 2023. Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

How to use the anniversaries:

If you’d like to know more about how to turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines and newspapers, take a look at our free 68-page guide, Ditch Your Day Job: the easiest way to make a living (or earn some extra cash) as a writer.

It has some terrific bonuses too, including a complete month of anniversaries from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, 301 article-writing ideas and tips, plus a 25 percent discount when you buy two or more editions of The Date-A-Base Book.

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30 newsworthy historical anniversaries in June 2023

30 newsworthy historical anniversaries in June 2023

Posted on by admin

Here are 30 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in June 2023
(listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into films, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more. (Find out more at the end of this article.)

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, which lists more than 3,000 anniversaries.

1 Jun 1998 – 25 years ago
The European Central Bank was established in Frankfurt, Germany.

2 Jun 1953 – 70 years ago
The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, London.
This was also the first event where the British TV audience (20 million) was greater than the radio audience (12 million).

3 Jun 1898 – 125 years ago
Death of Samuel Plimsoll, British politician and social reformer. Best known for devising the Plimsoll line on a ship’s hull that indicates the minimum safe distance between the deck and the water line.

4 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
Daniel François Malan (commonly known as D. F. Malan) became Prime Minister of South Africa.
He championed Afrikaner nationalism, and his government implemented apartheid.

5 Jun 1963 – 60 years ago
Profumo affair: British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigned after it was revealed he had lied to the House of Commons about his affair with dancer/showgirl Christine Keeler.

6 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
Death of Louis Lumière, French inventor, photographic pioneer and film-maker. He developed an early film camera and projector with his brother, Auguste, and made the first-ever movie.

7 Jun 1963 – 60 years ago
The Rolling Stones released their first single – a cover version of Chuck Berry’s song Come On.

8 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
The first Porsche sports car (model 356) was completed. The hand-built aluminium prototype was road-certified on this date, entered into its first race, and won its class. The Porsche 356 would become the company’s first production car, and remained in production until 1965.

9 Jun 1898 – 125 years ago
Britain leased Hong Kong from China for 99 years and it became a British Crown Colony.
(It was transferred back to China in 1997.)

10 Jun 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Robert Maxwell, Czech-born British newspaper publisher, media proprietor and politician.
(Died 1991, after which serious discrepancies were found in his company’s finances, and he was found to have misappropriated the Mirror Group pension fund.)

11 Jun 1998 – 25 years ago
Death of Catherine Cookson, British novelist. Known for her stories set in the industrial north-east of England.
At the time of her death she was Britain’s most widely read novelist.

12 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act was enacted in the USA. It enabled women to serve as regular members of the U.S. Armed Forces.
The first women were sworn in on 7th July. (Before this, women could only serve as nurses in the military, except during times of war.)

13 Jun 1773 – 250 years ago
Birth of Thomas Young, British scientist. He made several notable contributions to science, including the wave theory of light, and studies of eyesight, physiology, language and musical harmony. He also helped translate Egyptian hieroglyphs.
His work influenced later scientists including William Herschel, James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein.

14 Jun 1923 – 100 years ago
American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins transmitted the first moving silhouette images using an experimental wireless television system, which he called ‘Radiovision’.

15 Jun 1993 – 30 years ago
Death of James Hunt, British racing driver, sports writer and television commentator. Formula One world champion in 1976.

16 Jun 1723? – 300 years ago
Birth of Adam Smith, (‘the Father of Economics’), Scottish economist and philosopher.
Known for his book The Wealth of Nations – the first modern work on economics.
(Baptised on this date – his date of birth is unknown.)

17 Jun 1873 – 150 years ago
Women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony was found guilty of voting in the 1872 U.S. presidential election, in which only men were allowed to vote.
She was fined $100 (equivalent to about $2,500 today).

18 Jun 1923 – 100 years ago
The first Checker Cab taxi rolled off the production line in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA.

19 Jun 1623 – 400 years ago
Birth of Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, inventor, theologian and philosopher. He invented one of the first mechanical calculators.
The computer programming language Pascal was named in his honour.

20 Jun 1923 or 20 July – 100 years ago
Death of Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary and guerilla leader. (Assassinated.)

21 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
The ship HMT Empire Windrush docked in London, bringing the first large group of immigrants from the West Indies to the UK.

22 Jun 1983 – 40 years ago
The U.S. space shuttle Challenger retrieved a satellite from orbit for the first time.

23 Jun 1993 – 30 years ago
Lorena Bobbitt of Virginia, USA cut off her husband John’s penis with a kitchen knife after he sexually assaulted her. She then drove off and threw the severed penis out of her car window. (It was found and successfully reattached. At her trial the jury found her not guilty due to insanity. She also accused him of raping her, and of causing her actual harm and threatening harm, but he was acquitted.)

24 Jun 1948 to 12 May 1949 – 75 years ago
Cold War: The Berlin Blockade and Airlift.
The Soviet Union began a rail, road and canal blockade of Berlin, cutting off all routes between West Germany and West Berlin.
The Allies launched a massive airlift – over 200,000 flights – to take in nearly 9,000 tons of supplies each day. One plane laden with supplies landed every minute.

25 Jun 1973 – 50 years ago
Watergate scandal: White House Counsel John Dean, testifying before the Watergate committee, became the first official to implicate U.S. President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal. He told the committee about an ‘enemies list’ that the White House kept.

26 Jun 1963 – 60 years ago
U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin, West Germany, and made his famous declaration ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (I am a Berliner) to demonstrate the USA’s support.

27 Jun 2003 – 20 years ago
The USA’s National Do Not Call Registry was launched. It allowed residential phone users to opt out of receiving telemarketing calls.

28 Jun 1973 – 50 years ago
Elections were held for the Northern Ireland Assembly. It began operating on 1st January 1974, but collapsed in May.
It was re-established in 1998 but collapsed again in 2017. The current Assembly was established in 2020.

29 Jun 1933 – 90 years ago
Death of Fatty Arbuckle, American actor, comedian and film director.

30 Jun 1948 – 75 years ago
The invention of the transistor was officially announced.
It was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at the Bell Telephone Laboratory in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA in December 1947.
They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The 2028 edition will be available from April 2023. Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

How to use the anniversaries:

If you’d like to know more about how to turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines and newspapers, take a look at our free 68-page guide, Ditch Your Day Job: the easiest way to make a living (or earn some extra cash) as a writer.

It has some terrific bonuses too, including a complete month of anniversaries from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, 301 article-writing ideas and tips, plus a 25 percent discount when you buy two or more editions of The Date-A-Base Book.

Share this:

The Date-A-Base Book Survey Results

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Our grateful thanks to everyone who took part in our 2022 survey.

We asked which version of The Date-A-Base Book you preferred, the chronological version or the day by day (sorted by date) version.

There were 114 votes.

The result was fairly evenly split, which confirmed what we suspected.

● Chronological: 59 votes (52%)

● Day by day: 52 votes (48%)

As a result, we will be publishing printed copies of the day by day versions for 2023 to 2027. We’ll let you know when they’re available.

We are also enormously grateful to those of you who emailed us to request other versions and extra features. We loved some of your ideas and we’re working on something special right now. Look out for an announcement in a couple of weeks. We think you’re going to love it too!

How to Make a Living as a Writer

How to Make a Living as a Writer

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In this article, we’ll look at how to make a living as a writer. We’ll start by writing letters and articles for newspapers, magazines and online publications, and graduate to writing books later. No experience necessary – we’re starting from scratch here.

In these troubled times, many of us feel … well, troubled.

If you have a job, you probably hate it and it eats up all your time, but you have to keep working because you need the money. (Even though it’s not nearly enough.)

If you don’t have a job, there are plenty of vacancies, but either they don’t want you or you don’t want them – I mean, who wants that sort of job?

Wouldn’t you rather … write a book or something?

Okay, maybe writing a book is too big a step at this stage if you haven’t written anything before.

(But if you fancy giving it a go, check out my books The Fastest Way to Write Your Book and The Fastest Ways to Edit, Publish and Sell Your Book.)

Let’s start with something simpler

How about writing some letters? That’s easy enough, right?

So, what will you write about?

Well, it needs to be something that interests you (because writing should be fun and interesting) and it needs to be something that interests other people. Does that help?

Okay, so what newspapers and magazines do you read? Do any of them have readers’ letters pages? If not, go shopping and look for an interesting publication that has a letters page. Let’s write a letter for them!

What will you write about?

Historical anniversaries are my suggestion: this day in history, the 100th anniversary of Interpol (September 2023), the 175th anniversary of the invention of chewing gum (also September 2023), that sort of thing. Readers (and radio listeners – another potential market) love this stuff. They’re really easy to research and write, and there are so many that you should always be able find some interesting ones.

Where do you find them?

Well, definitely don’t start by searching online. Yes, there are lists of anniversaries, but they’re not particularly helpful for our purposes. For example, Wikipedia has a long list of anniversaries for each day of the year, but nobody has heard of most of them, most of them aren’t notable (as I’ll explain below), and a lot of the dates and facts are just plain wrong. You could waste a lot of time here – or write a letter or article that’s full of errors, which is even worse.

Wouldn’t it be better if there was a book that listed all the good anniversaries months in advance, and they had all been properly checked? There is! Check out The Date-A-Base Book.

(Don’t rush off and buy a copy just yet. I’ll show you how to get some of the anniversaries for free – as well as other bonuses – at the end of this article.)

How to do it

Let’s jump ahead: you now have a good list of notable anniversaries in front of you.

1. Choose an anniversary

Browse through them and have a look for one that’s interesting (to you and to the readers of whichever newspaper or magazine you chose).

There’s no shortage of great anniversaries to choose from – there are at least 3,000 in each annual edition of The Date-A-Base Book.

2. Select a market

Let’s say you’re really interested in cycling (for example). So are lots of other people. And there are several good cycling magazines available. You’ve found one that has a readers’ letters page and a “star letter” spot too, for which you can win a small prize. Perfect!

Now, hunt through your list for some good cycling anniversaries: a notable race, the birth or death of a famous cyclists, the invention of an important bicycle component, the founding of a major bicycle manufacturer – anything like. It needs to be a notable anniversary – the 50th, 75th, 100th or 150th, for example – not the 23rd, 87th or 119th, which no one is particularly interested in.

(The Date-A-Base Book only lists notable anniversaries.)

3. A little bit of research

Once you’ve chosen your anniversary, you can look it up online. Google is the best starting point. Wikipedia isn’t bad either. But don’t trust anything they say without checking it properly.

See what you can find out about the anniversary. Look for facts that are interesting and intriguing, but most people might not know. You want something that will make your readers say, “Oooh, I never knew that!”

4. Write a letter

And then you can write your letter telling the readers all about it.

Don’t write a long letter: check how long the other letters are, and keep yours around the same length. You won’t have much space, but cram in as much as you can, and make it as entertaining and informative as possible.

If your letter isn’t published, just try again. Choose a different anniversary (or a different cycling magazine), write another letter, and keep trying until you succeed. (You will succeed.)

5. Repeat.

Keep doing this until you’ve had several letters published, and (ideally) won the “star letter” prize at least once as well.

How to make a living as a writer

Now, you might be thinking, why I am writing all these letters if I won’t get paid for writing them? Well, this is all about getting people to notice you – especially the editor.

This would be a great time to ask the editor if he would be interested in some short articles about other anniversaries. Send him a quick email, mention your letters that he’s published, and enclose a sample article to show the sort of article you’re planning to write. Just like your letters, it should be interesting, intriguing, and highly entertaining.

Hopefully he’ll say yes – and he’ll tell you how much he’s willing to pay you for writing them.

After that, just keep sending new articles in every month. You now have a regular slot in the magazine, and a regular income from writing.

You won’t make a living as a writer just by writing small articles for one magazine, of course. But there are other tens of thousands of other magazines in the world, and they’re all just an email away. You might end up with regular slots in dozens of them, if you can write that many articles each month (which you can – see my free guide below!)

And then write a book – the easy way

After a year or two of writing articles, you might have enough of them to fill a book – or, more likely, several books on several different subjects, all of which you’re interested in. Turning them into books is exactly what I suggest you do. And you can mention your books (and where to buy them) at the end of each article you write – so your books should pretty much sell themselves. And then you really will be making a living as a writer!

More information (free!)

By this point, I’m sure you’re crying out for more details and proper instructions. It’s all very well saying things like “turn your articles into books”, for example, but how do you get your books published and printed and distributed? How do you even contact newspaper and magazine editors in the first place? What exactly should you say to them to persuade them to accept your articles?

All the information you need is right here in my FREE 68-page guide Ditch Your Day Job. It walks you through the whole process in easy steps.

You get some really useful bonuses too, including a free ebook of 301 article-writing ideas.

Hop over to ideas4writers.com now to grab your copy of Ditch Your Day Job. It’s a free download, and you’re welcome to forward it to anyone who needs it.

***

Dave Haslett is the founder of ideas4writers and the author of Ditch Your Day Job, The Date-A-Base Book series, The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Ways to Edit, Publish and Sell Your Book, How to Win Short Story Competitions (co-authored with Geoff Nelder), a 35-volume collection of ideas for writers, and more.

31 newsworthy historical anniversaries in May 2023

31 newsworthy historical anniversaries in May 2023

Posted on by admin

Here are 31 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in May 2023
(listed six months in advance so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features, articles, biographies and other anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with newspaper and magazine readers and radio stations, and editors, producers and presenters love them. They’re easy to research too. You can also turn them into films, documentaries, novels, use them to plan events and exhibitions, and much more. (Find out more at the end of this article.)

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, which lists more than 3,000 anniversaries.

1 May 1873 – 150 years ago
Death of David Livingstone, Scottish missionary and explorer. Best known for his search for the sources of the Nile, and for going missing (and being found) in Africa.

2 May 1933 – 90 years ago
The first modern sighting of Scotland’s Loch Ness monster was reported in the Inverness Courier.

3 May 1923 – 100 years ago
U.S. Army Air Service Lieutenants Oakley G. Kelly and John Arthur Macready made the first non-stop coast-to-coast flight across the USA. They flew from New York to San Diego in 26 hours and 50 minutes.

4 May 2003 – 20 years ago
The first member of the horse family to be cloned: a mule named Idaho Gem was born at the University of Idaho, USA.

5 May 1948 – 75 years ago
The Organization of American States was officially founded.

6 May 1953 – 70 years ago
The first successful open-heart surgery on a human, using a heart-lung machine, was performed by John Gibbon in Pennsylvania, USA.

7 May 1963 – 60 years ago
The USA launched the Telstar 2 communications satellite. It transmitted the first colour transatlantic television broadcasts. It was shielded against the radiation that had damaged its predecessor, Telstar 1.

8 May 1933 – 90 years ago
Polythene was discovered (by accident) by chemists Reginald Gibson and Eric Fawcett at ICI in Wallerscote, Cheshire, UK.

9 May 1873 – 150 years ago
Birth of Anton Cermak, Mayor of Chicago (1931–33).
(Shot in 1933 during an assassination attempt on U.S. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. He died three weeks later – but most likely from ulcerative colitis rather than the wound.)

10 May 1933 – 90 years ago
The Nazis staged massive public burnings of ‘un-German’ books outside Berlin University.

11 May 1998 – 25 years ago
India exploded three atomic bombs underground – its first nuclear tests for 24 years – violating a global ban on testing and shocking the world. It carried out a second round of tests on 13th May. In response, Pakistan exploded five underground nuclear bombs on 28th May.

12 to 25 May 1943 – 80 years ago
World War II: the Trident Conference (also called the Third Washington Conference) took place in the USA. Delegations led by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made plans for the next phase of the war. Topics included planning for the Allied invasion of Sicily, setting the date of the Normandy Landings (Operation Overlord/D-Day – 1st May 1944 but later delayed to 6th June), and the progress of the Pacific Campaign.

13 May 1973 – 50 years ago
The first Battle of the Sexes tennis match: Bobby Riggs v. Margaret Court, in Ramona, California, USA. Riggs won the two-set exhibition match.
(On 20th September 1973 Riggs played Billie Jean King in the three-set Battle of the Sexes II. King won.
In 1992, Jimmy Connors played Martina Navratilova in the Battle of the Sexes III. Connors won.)

14 May 1973 – 50 years ago
NASA launched Skylab – the USA’s first manned space station. The first manned mission launched on 25th May, and included three space walks to repair damage that Skylab suffered during launch.

15 May 1948 – 75 years ago
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War began when the Arab states of Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq invaded Israel in support of the Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia joined the invasion on 18th May.

16 to 17 May 1943 – 80 years ago
World War II – the Dambusters Raid.
Britain’s RAF launched Operation Chastise, deploying bouncing bombs (invented by Barnes Wallace) to bypass anti-torpedo nets and breach dams, causing catastrophic flooding in Germany’s Ruhr Valley.

17 May 1973 – 50 years ago
The Watergate hearings began in the U.S. Senate, and were televised nationally.

18 May 1958 – 65 years ago
Italian racing driver Maria Teresa de Filippis became the first woman to compete in a Formula One Grand Prix.

19 May 1898 – 125 years ago
Death of William Ewart Gladstone, British Prime Minister (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, 1892–94).

20 May 1873 – 150 years ago
American businessman Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis were granted a U.S. patent for blue jeans.

21 May 1898 – 125 years ago
Birth of Armand Hammer, American business magnate and art collector. Best known as the chairman of Occidental Petroleum (1957–90). He was also known for his close ties with the Soviet Union and for advocating citizen diplomacy.

22 May 1923 – 100 years ago
Stanley Baldwin became British Prime Minister after Bonar Law was diagnosed with terminal cancer and immediately retired.

23 May 1873 – 150 years ago
The North-West Mounted Police was founded in Canada. It became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920.

24 May 1948 – 75 years ago
Benjamin Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera was performed for the first time, in Cambridge, England.

25 May 1973 – 50 years ago
The album Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield was released. It was the first album released by Virgin Records.

26 to 27 May 1923 – 100 years ago
The first Le Mans 24 hours endurance motor race was held.

27 May 2003 – 20 years ago
WordPress, the blogging/content management system, was released.

28 May 1993 – 30 years ago
British nurse Beverley Allitt was convicted of killing four children and attacking nine others between February and April 1991 in the children’s ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire. She was sentenced to 13 concurrent life sentences in a secure hospital and is unlikely to be released.

29 May 1953 – 70 years ago
New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

30 May 1848 – 175 years ago
The Mexican–American War officially ended when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo came into effect.

31 May 1898 – 125 years ago
Birth of Norman Vincent Peale, American clergyman, writer, speaker, and advocate of positive thinking.
Best known for his book The Power of Positive Thinking.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The 2028 edition will be available from April 2023. Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

How to use the anniversaries:

If you’d like to know more about how to turn the anniversaries listed here and in The Date-A-Base Books into articles for magazines and newspapers, take a look at our free 68-page guide, Ditch Your Day Job: the easiest way to make a living (or earn some extra cash) as a writer.

It has some terrific bonuses too, including a complete month of anniversaries from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, 301 article-writing ideas and tips, plus a 25 percent discount when you buy two or more editions of The Date-A-Base Book.

Share this:

How We Create The Date-A-Base Book

How We Create The Date-A-Base Book

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You might be wondering how we create The Date-A-Base Book series. It’s a heck of a lot of work, as you’ll see below. But it’s great fun, we learn a lot, and we’ve been doing it for twenty years now, so we’ve got the process pretty well nailed down. But, as you’ll also see, there’s still plenty of room for improvement – when the technology allows.

Step 1: Data collection

We create the books in a five-year cycle, as we’ll explain below.

Every five years we visit fifteen or so websites that list historical anniversaries, including Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, History.com, and several more. None of them are as accurate as we would like, but we deal with that later. We copy the information we need from each site and paste it into a massive text file.

Processing time: about a month.

Step 2: Data processing

The anniversaries are in different date formats, and they all need to be the same. So we do lots of searching, replacing, sorting and manual corrections to fix it.

We then run the file through a piece of software (written by Dave) that:

  • splits the dates into day, month, and year
  • sorts them into years ending 0 and 5, 1 and 6, 2 and 7, 3 and 8, and 4 and 9
  • puts these years into five separate text files

This gives us the raw data for the next five editions of The Date-A-Base Book.

We import the five text files into Microsoft Excel and insert two new columns: the year we’re interested in (for example 2024) and the anniversary (2024 minus the year of the event). We then sort the spreadsheet by anniversary, month, and day of the month.

At this stage we usually have around 36,000 entries for each month.

Processing time: another month.

Step 3: Delete if not a significant year

We now delete the anniversaries we aren’t interested in. For example, we keep the 70th, 75th and 80th anniversaries, but delete the 71st – 74th and the 76th – 79th.

Processing time: one day.

Step 4: Delete the duplicates

Many of the websites we harvested the anniversaries from list the same anniversaries, and we only need them once. So we go through them one by one and delete the duplicates.

Processing time: one week for each of the five files, or about a month in total.

Step 5. Delete if not notable

This is where we put our general knowledge and memories to good use. We have to decide whether each anniversary is newsworthy and notable enough to be included in the book. We go through them several times, using the following criteria, gradually whittling them down:

  • Have we heard of the person or event?
  • Is there an entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica, or an image and a comprehensive entry in Wikipedia?
  • Do we think the person or event is important enough to include in the book?

By the end, around 4,000 anniversaries will remain, but we’ll lose several hundred of them in the next stage.

Processing time: one month for each edition.

Step 6: Cross-checking

After importing the file into Microsoft Word, we go through each anniversary in detail. We check it in Encyclopaedia Britannica again, and on any official websites we can find. We also follow the references in Wikipedia, and make heavy use of Google.

Where there is any disagreement (which there frequently is) we search for obituaries, photos of graves, birth certificates, patent applications, official plaques, and so on.

Quite often, we find that the date given for an anniversary is wrong. Sometimes we can simply correct it or move it to a different month. But hundreds of them will be so completely wrong that they have to be removed.

If we can’t find any official confirmation of the dates or facts, we have to decide whether to include it in the book with a question mark or footnote, or delete it.

As each anniversary is confirmed, we rewrite the description to make it as clear as possible and to conform to our style guide.

We’ll end up with around 3,000 anniversaries that will appear in the book.

Processing time: two to three months for each edition.

Step 7: Layout 1

The Date-A-Base Book is laid out in a grid format, with columns for the anniversary, the date, and the description.

The grid is created in Serif PagePlus X9 (which has been discontinued). We’re hoping to migrate to Affinity Publisher soon, but it doesn’t yet have the Book Plus feature we need.

This stage simply involves lots of copying and pasting.

We also update the title pages and Introduction in each edition, and check that the Table of Contents shows the correct page numbers.

Processing time: about a week.

Step 8: Proofreading

We print a copy of the book and go through it with a red pen, checking date formats, spellings, hyphenation, line breaks, superscripts, and so on. We then make the corrections in PagePlus.

Processing time: about a week.

Step 9: Layout 2

We surveyed readers of The Date-A-Base Book a few years ago and asked which format they preferred – chronological or sorted by date. Half said they wanted chronological and half said they wanted sorted by date. So we publish both versions every year.

For this stage, we go through the chronological version and pick out all the anniversaries dated 1st January and move them to Page 1. Then we go through the anniversaries again, pick out the 2nd January anniversaries and put them after the 1st January entries. And so on for every day of the year. We haven’t found an automated way of doing it (yet).

After a quick proofread to check the line breaks, word wrapping and hyphenation, the British edition is finished.

Processing time: about a week.

Step 10: The USA edition

We surveyed our American readers a few years ago, asking if they were happy to receive the British version. No, they were not. So we create versions for them too.

First, we take the British chronological version, change the Page Size from A4 to Letter, and alter the margins and headers.

We haven’t found any shortcut way of changing the date format from British to American (and believe me we’ve tried) so we have to change them all manually.

Then we change the spellings and punctuation in the descriptions, update the Table of Contents, and give it a brief proofread. The U.S. chronological version is now complete.

We create the U.S. sorted by date version in exactly the same way that we created the British version.

Processing time: two weeks for each edition.

Step 11: The cover

We have a standard cover template, created in Adobe Photoshop, that we use every year.

We change:

  • the year
  • the edition number
  • the number of anniversaries in the book
  • the three images at the bottom of the front cover
  • the spine width – depending on the number of pages

The images illustrate anniversaries from 150, 100, and 50 years ago. We choose anniversaries that are known worldwide, and images that are instantly recognisable (and free to use).

Processing time: about half a day.

Step 12: Publishing

The final step. We create PDF versions of the covers and contents and upload them to Amazon, which prints copies one at a time as customers order them.

We upload the same files to our e-book distributor, Payhip.

Once Amazon has approved the book and given us a link we can send buyers to, we add it to the ideas4writers website.

And then we announce it to the world via our blog, Facebook, Twitter, our mailing list of previous buyers, and so on.

Processing time: two days.

Summary

It takes around seven months to create the first edition in a five-year cycle, and about five months for the following four editions.

We work five years ahead, and as I write this at the end of 2022, we’re about to start work on the 2028 edition, which will be released in the spring of 2023. This will be the fifth and last edition in the current five-year cycle. The 2029 edition will be the first in the next cycle, so we’ll need to start work two months earlier next year.

Although it takes us five to seven months to create each edition, you can buy it for just £12.95 (about $14.99 in the USA).

Here are our current editions.

30 newsworthy historical anniversaries in April 2023

30 newsworthy historical anniversaries in April 2023

Posted on by admin

Here are 30 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in April 2023 (so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features, biographies and anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with readers and viewers, and editors and producers love them. They’re easy to research too. And you can easily turn them into newspaper and magazine articles, TV/radio features, films, documentaries, and more.

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, which features more than 3,000 anniversaries. . The 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead.

1 Apr 1948 – 75 years ago
The Big Bang theory was first proposed in a paper by the Russian-born American theoretical physicist and cosmologist George Gamow and his associates. It was published in the magazine Physical Review.

2 Apr 1963 – 60 years ago
The Soviet Union launched its Luna 4 spacecraft on a mission to the Moon. It missed the Moon by over 5,000 miles after failing to make a mid-course correction.

3 Apr 1948 – 75 years ago
The USA’s Marshall Plan for European recovery after WWII went into effect.

4 Apr 1923 – 100 years ago
Death of John Venn, British logician and philosopher. Best known for inventing the Venn diagram.

5 Apr 1923 – 100 years ago
Death of George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, British aristocrat and Egyptologist who financed the search/excavation of Tutankhamen’s Tomb.

6 Apr 1993 – 30 years ago
Tomsk-7 nuclear accident, Seversk, Russia. A tank at a nuclear waste reprocessing facility exploded while being cleaned, releasing a cloud of highly radioactive gas. Several villages became permanently uninhabitable as a result.

7 Apr 1933 – 90 years ago
Prohibition in the USA: the Cullen–Harrison Act came into effect, legalising the sale of low alcohol beer and wine (up to 3.2% alcohol by weight) for the first time since 1920.

8 Apr 1973 – 50 years ago
Death of Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist. Co-founder of the Cubism movement. One of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

9 Apr 1963 – 60 years ago
Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was proclaimed the first Honorary Citizen of the United States.

10 Apr 1998 – 25 years ago
The Good Friday Agreement was signed in Northern Ireland.

11 Apr 1958 – 65 years ago
Birth of Stuart Adamson, Scottish punk/rock/new wave singer, guitarist and songwriter (Skids, Big Country). (Died 2001.)

12 Apr 1898 – 125 years ago
Birth of Lily Pons, French-born American operatic soprano.

13 Apr 1873 – 150 years ago
The Colfax Massacre, Louisiana, USA. More than 60 black men (some sources say 150) were killed by a white Southern militia in a racially motivated attack.

14 Apr 2003 – 20 years ago
The Human Genome Project was successfully completed, with over 99% of the human genome sequenced and mapped, including all of the genes.

15 Apr 1923 – 100 years ago
Insulin became generally available for the treatment of diabetes.

16 Apr 1943 – 80 years ago
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD after accidentally absorbing some through his fingertips during an experiment at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory. On 19th April he deliberately took the drug to determine its true effects, but underestimated its potency and experienced an intense psychotic reaction.

17 Apr 1973 – 50 years ago
FedEx, the courier service, began operating (as Federal Express).

18 Apr 1973 – 50 years ago
The première of the dystopian thriller film Soylent Green in Los Angeles, California, USA. (New York première: 19th April, released: 9th May. UK: June 1973.)

19 Apr 1943 to 16 May – 80 years ago
Holocaust: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Poland. The Jewish resistance revolted against Nazi Germany’s efforts to transport those who remained in the ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp.

20 Apr 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Tito Puente, American Latin jazz/mambo musician, songwriter and record producer. He helped popularise Latin dance music and jazz in the USA.

21 Apr 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Sir John Mortimer, British barrister, playwright, novelist, screenwriter and short story writer. Best known for creating Rumpole of the Bailey, and for the stage play A Voyage Round My Father. (Died 2009.)

22 Apr 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Aaron Spelling, American television and film producer (Charlie’s Angels, T. J. Hooker, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, Beverly Hills 90210 and many more). (Died 2006.)

23 Apr 1998 – 25 years ago
Death of James Earl Ray, American criminal convicted of assassinating the civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

24 Apr 1993 – 30 years ago
An IRA truck bomb exploded in the Bishopsgate financial district in London. One person was killed (a press photographer) and 44 injured. It was the last major IRA bombing in England. Reconstruction cost £350 million.

25 Apr 1873 – 150 years ago
Birth of Walter de la Mare, British poet, children’s writer, short story writer and novelist.

26 Apr 1933 – 90 years ago
The Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police force, was established.

27 Apr 1848 – 175 years ago
Slavery was abolished in the French colonies.

28 Apr 1923 – 100 years ago
Wembley Stadium in London opened (as the British Empire Exhibition Stadium, commonly known as the Empire Stadium). It was demolished in 2003. The new Wembley Stadium opened on the same site in March 2007.

29 Apr 1993 – 30 years ago
Queen Elizabeth II announced that Buckingham Palace would open to the public for the first time, to raise funds to repair fire damage at Windsor Castle.

30 Apr 1948 – 75 years ago
The Land Rover, a British all-terrain vehicle, was officially launched at the Amsterdam Motor Show in the Netherlands.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The 2028 edition will be available from April 2023. Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

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30 newsworthy historical anniversaries in April 2023 (U.S. Edition)

30 newsworthy historical anniversaries in April 2023 (U.S. Edition)

Posted on by admin

Here are 30 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in April 2023 (so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features, biographies and anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with readers and viewers, and editors and producers love them. They’re easy to research too. And you can easily turn them into newspaper and magazine articles, TV/radio features, films, documentaries, and more.

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, which features more than 3,000 anniversaries. . The 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead.

Apr 1, 1948 – 75 years ago
The Big Bang theory was first proposed in a paper by the Russian-born American theoretical physicist and cosmologist George Gamow and his associates. It was published in the magazine Physical Review.

Apr 2, 1963 – 60 years ago
The Soviet Union launched its Luna 4 spacecraft on a mission to the Moon. It missed the Moon by over 5,000 miles after failing to make a mid-course correction.

Apr 3, 1948 – 75 years ago
The USA’s Marshall Plan for European recovery after WWII went into effect.

Apr 4, 1923 – 100 years ago
Death of John Venn, British logician and philosopher. Best known for inventing the Venn diagram.

Apr 5, 1923 – 100 years ago
Death of George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, British aristocrat and Egyptologist who financed the search/excavation of Tutankhamen’s Tomb.

Apr 6, 1993 – 30 years ago
Tomsk-7 nuclear accident, Seversk, Russia. A tank at a nuclear waste reprocessing facility exploded while being cleaned, releasing a cloud of highly radioactive gas. Several villages became permanently uninhabitable as a result.

Apr 7, 1933 – 90 years ago
Prohibition in the USA: the Cullen–Harrison Act came into effect, legalizing the sale of low alcohol beer and wine (up to 3.2% alcohol by weight) for the first time since 1920.

Apr 8, 1973 – 50 years ago
Death of Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist. Co-founder of the Cubism movement. One of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

Apr 9, 1963 – 60 years ago
Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was proclaimed the first Honorary Citizen of the United States.

Apr 10, 1998 – 25 years ago
The Good Friday Agreement was signed in Northern Ireland.

Apr 11, 1958 – 65 years ago
Birth of Stuart Adamson, Scottish punk/rock/new wave singer, guitarist and songwriter (Skids, Big Country). (Died 2001.)

Apr 12, 1898 – 125 years ago
Birth of Lily Pons, French-born American operatic soprano.

Apr 13, 1873 – 150 years ago
The Colfax Massacre, Louisiana, USA. More than 60 black men (some sources say 150) were killed by a white Southern militia in a racially motivated attack.

Apr 14, 2003 – 20 years ago
The Human Genome Project was successfully completed, with over 99% of the human genome sequenced and mapped, including all of the genes.

Apr 15, 1923 – 100 years ago
Insulin became generally available for the treatment of diabetes.

Apr 16, 1943 – 80 years ago
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD after accidentally absorbing some through his fingertips during an experiment at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory. On April 19th he deliberately took the drug to determine its true effects, but underestimated its potency and experienced an intense psychotic reaction.

Apr 17, 1973 – 50 years ago
FedEx, the courier service, began operating (as Federal Express).

Apr 18, 1973 – 50 years ago
The premiere of the dystopian thriller movie Soylent Green in Los Angeles, California, USA. (New York premiere: April 19th, released: May 9th. UK: June 1973.)

Apr 19 to May 16, 1943 – 80 years ago
Holocaust: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Poland. The Jewish resistance revolted against Nazi Germany’s efforts to transport those who remained in the ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp.

Apr 20, 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Tito Puente, American Latin jazz/mambo musician, songwriter and record producer. He helped popularize Latin dance music and jazz in the USA.

Apr 21, 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Sir John Mortimer, British barrister, playwright, novelist, screenwriter and short story writer. Best known for creating Rumpole of the Bailey, and for the stage play A Voyage Round My Father. (Died 2009.)

Apr 22, 1923 – 100 years ago
Birth of Aaron Spelling, American television and film producer (Charlie’s Angels, T. J. Hooker, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, Beverly Hills 90210 and many more). (Died 2006.)

Apr 23, 1998 – 25 years ago
Death of James Earl Ray, American criminal convicted of assassinating the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Apr 24, 1993 – 30 years ago
An IRA truck bomb exploded in the Bishopsgate financial district in London. One person was killed (a press photographer) and 44 injured. It was the last major IRA bombing in England. Reconstruction cost over $400 million.

Apr 25, 1873 – 150 years ago
Birth of Walter de la Mare, British poet, children’s writer, short story writer and novelist.

Apr 26, 1933 – 90 years ago
The Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police force, was established.

Apr 27, 1848 – 175 years ago
Slavery was abolished in the French colonies.

Apr 28, 1923 – 100 years ago
Wembley Stadium in London opened (as the British Empire Exhibition Stadium, commonly known as the Empire Stadium). It was demolished in 2003. The new Wembley Stadium opened on the same site in March 2007.

Apr 29, 1993 – 30 years ago
Queen Elizabeth II announced that Buckingham Palace would open to the public for the first time, to raise funds to repair fire damage at Windsor Castle.

Apr 30, 1948 – 75 years ago
The Land Rover, a British all-terrain vehicle, was officially launched at the Amsterdam Motor Show in the Netherlands.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The 2028 edition will be available from April 2023. Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

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31 newsworthy historical anniversaries in March 2023

31 newsworthy historical anniversaries in March 2023

Posted on by admin

Here are 31 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in March 2023 (so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features, biographies and anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with readers and viewers, and editors and producers love them. They’re easy to research too. And you can easily turn them into newspaper and magazine articles, TV/radio features, films, documentaries, and more.

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, which features more than 3,000 anniversaries. . The 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead.

1 Mar 1873 – 150 years ago
Remington began producing the first practical typewriter – the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, also known as the Remington No. 1. It went on sale on 1st July 1874.

2 Mar 1933 – 90 years ago
The première of the film King Kong, in New York City, USA. (Released 7th April.)

3 Mar 1923 – 100 years ago
The first issue of Time magazine was published in the USA.

4 Mar 1933 – 90 years ago
Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States.

5 Mar 1623 – 400 years ago
The first American temperance law came into effect in the Colony of Virginia in an effort to control the consumption of alcohol.

6 Mar 1973 – 50 years ago
Death of Pearl S. Buck, American writer. The first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1938).

7 Mar 1848 – 175 years ago
The Great Mahele, Hawaii. The land of Hawaii was divided to protect it from foreign ownership. 1/3 was given to the Crown, 1/3 to the chiefs and managers, and 1/3 to the common people. The law required people to claim their land within two years. Many did not make a claim and the land was sold.

8 Mar 1723 – 300 years ago
Death of Sir Christopher Wren, English architect. Best known for designing St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

9 Mar 1993 – 30 years ago
Death of C. Northcote Parkinson, British historian and writer. Noted for his books on naval history and for formulating Parkinson’s Law (work expands to fill the time available for its completion).

10 Mar 1933 – 90 years ago
The Long Beach earthquake, California, USA. 120 people were killed.

11 Mar 1948 – 75 years ago
Reginald Weir became the first African American to play in an official United States Lawn Tennis Association event, after several years of lobbying to be accepted. His acceptance paved the way for Althea Gibson to take part the following year.

12 Mar 1933 – 90 years ago
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the first of his ‘fireside chats’ – a radio address to the nation. His first chat was about the banking crisis.

13 Mar 1933 – 90 years ago
Joseph Goebbels became the German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

14 Mar 1983 – 40 years ago
OPEC agreed to cut oil prices for first time since it was founded in 1961.

15 Mar 1998 – 25 years ago
Death of Dr Benjamin Spock, American paediatrician and writer. Known for his best-selling book Baby and Child Care.

16 Mar 1898 – 125 years ago
Death of Aubrey Beardsley, British illustrator. His black ink drawings, influenced by Japanese woodcuts, contributed to the development of Art Nouveau.

17 Mar 1973 – 50 years ago
The new London Bridge opened in the UK.

18 Mar 1963 – 60 years ago
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Miranda decision: states must provide defendants in criminal cases with a lawyer if they are unable to afford their own. This led to the creation of the public defender system.

19 Mar 1848 – 175 years ago
Birth of Wyatt Earp, legendary American lawman, gambler and gunfighter of the Old West. Noted for his role in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881.

20 Mar 1993 – 30 years ago
An IRA bomb exploded at a shopping mall in Warrington, England. Two children were killed and more than 50 people were injured.

21 Mar 1963 – 60 years ago
The U.S. Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, California, closed.

22 Mar 1933 – 90 years ago
The first Nazi concentration camp opened in Dachau, Germany. The Nazis eventually established over 1,000 concentration camps throughout occupied Europe.

23 Mar 1983 – 40 years ago
U.S. President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (’Star Wars’) system, which would use satellites to detect and destroy enemy missiles.

24 Mar 1953 – 70 years ago
Death of Queen Mary of the United Kingdom, (Mary of Teck), Queen Consort of King George V. Mother of King Edward VIII and King George VI. Grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II.

25 Mar 1948 – 75 years ago
The first official tornado forecast/warning. U.S. Air Force Captain Robert C. Miller and Major Ernest Fawbush predicted a high risk of a tornado strike at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Two large tornadoes struck the base that evening, damaging or destroying aircraft and buildings.

26 Mar 1923 – 100 years ago
BBC radio began broadcasting a daily weather forecast.

27 Mar 1963 – 60 years ago
Dr Richard Beeching, the chairman of British Railways, issued a report (The Reshaping of British Railways) which led to the closure of thousands of miles of railway lines and stations across the country – about a third of the rail network.

28 Mar 1963 – 60 years ago
The première of Alfred Hitchcock’s horror-thriller film The Birds, in New York City, USA. (Released: 29th March. UK première: 10th September, released 12th September.)

29 Mar 1948 – 75 years ago
Death of Harry Price, British psychic investigator. Best known for his investigation of the supposedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex.

30 Mar 1953 – 70 years ago
Albert Einstein’s equations for a revised Unified Field Theory were published. They represented the relationship between the forces of gravity and electromagnetism, and their relationship to space, time and physical forces.

31 Mar 1973 – 50 years ago
The racehorse Red Rum won Britain’s Grand National steeplechase for the first time. The tightly fought battle for the finish is considered one of the greatest sporting moments. It was also a record-breaking time.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The 2028 edition will be available from April 2023. Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

Share this:

31 newsworthy historical anniversaries in March 2023 (U.S. edition)

31 newsworthy historical anniversaries in March 2023 (U.S. edition)

Posted on by admin

Here are 31 newsworthy and notable historical anniversaries in March 2023 (so you have time to write about them)

Historical anniversaries are great for “On This Day in History” features, biographies and anniversary tie-ins. They’re popular with readers and viewers, and editors and producers love them. They’re easy to research too. And you can easily turn them into newspaper and magazine articles, TV/radio features, films, documentaries, and more.

We’ve randomly picked one anniversary for each day of the month from The Date-A-Base Book 2023, which features more than 3,000 anniversaries. . The 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead.

Mar 1, 1873 – 150 years ago
Remington began producing the first practical typewriter – the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, also known as the Remington No. 1. It went on sale on July 1, 1874.

Mar 2, 1933 – 90 years ago
The premiere of the movie King Kong, in New York City, USA. (Released April 7th.)

Mar 3, 1923 – 100 years ago
The first issue of Time magazine was published in the USA.

Mar 4, 1933 – 90 years ago
Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States.

Mar 5, 1623 – 400 years ago
The first American temperance law came into effect in the Colony of Virginia in an effort to control the consumption of alcohol.

Mar 6, 1973 – 50 years ago
Death of Pearl S. Buck, American writer. The first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1938).

Mar 7, 1848 – 175 years ago
The Great Mahele, Hawaii. The land of Hawaii was divided to protect it from foreign ownership. 1/3 was given to the Crown, 1/3 to the chiefs and managers, and 1/3 to the common people. The law required people to claim their land within two years. Many did not make a claim and the land was sold.

Mar 8, 1723 – 300 years ago
Death of Sir Christopher Wren, English architect. Best known for designing St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Mar 9, 1993 – 30 years ago
Death of C. Northcote Parkinson, British historian and writer. Noted for his books on naval history and for formulating Parkinson’s Law (work expands to fill the time available for its completion).

Mar 10, 1933 – 90 years ago
The Long Beach earthquake, California, USA. 120 people were killed.

Mar 11, 1948 – 75 years ago
Reginald Weir became the first African American to play in an official United States Lawn Tennis Association event, after several years of lobbying to be accepted. His acceptance paved the way for Althea Gibson to take part the following year.

Mar 12, 1933 – 90 years ago
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the first of his “fireside chats” – a radio address to the nation. His first chat was about the banking crisis.

Mar 13, 1933 – 90 years ago
Joseph Goebbels became the German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

Mar 14, 1983 – 40 years ago
OPEC agreed to cut oil prices for first time since it was founded in 1961.

Mar 15, 1998 – 25 years ago
Death of Dr Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician and writer. Known for his best-selling book Baby and Child Care.

Mar 16, 1898 – 125 years ago
Death of Aubrey Beardsley, British illustrator. His black ink drawings, influenced by Japanese woodcuts, contributed to the development of Art Nouveau.

Mar 17, 1973 – 50 years ago
The new London Bridge opened in the UK.

Mar 18, 1963 – 60 years ago
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Miranda decision: states must provide defendants in criminal cases with a lawyer if they are unable to afford their own. This led to the creation of the public defender system.

Mar 19, 1848 – 175 years ago
Birth of Wyatt Earp, legendary American lawman, gambler and gunfighter of the Old West. Noted for his role in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881.

Mar 20, 1993 – 30 years ago
An IRA bomb exploded at a shopping mall in Warrington, England. Two children were killed and more than 50 people were injured.

Mar 21, 1963 – 60 years ago
The U.S. Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, California, closed.

Mar 22, 1933 – 90 years ago
The first Nazi concentration camp opened in Dachau, Germany. The Nazis eventually established over 1,000 concentration camps throughout occupied Europe.

Mar 23, 1983 – 40 years ago
U.S. President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) system, which would use satellites to detect and destroy enemy missiles.

Mar 24, 1953 – 70 years ago
Death of Queen Mary of the United Kingdom, (Mary of Teck), Queen Consort of King George V. Mother of King Edward VIII and King George VI. Grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II.

Mar 25, 1948 – 75 years ago
The first official tornado forecast/warning. U.S. Air Force Captain Robert C. Miller and Major Ernest Fawbush predicted a high risk of a tornado strike at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Two large tornadoes struck the base that evening, damaging or destroying aircraft and buildings.

Mar 26, 1923 – 100 years ago
BBC radio began broadcasting a daily weather forecast.

Mar 27, 1963 – 60 years ago
Dr. Richard Beeching, the chairman of British Railways, issued a report (The Reshaping of British Railways) which led to the closure of thousands of miles of railroad lines and stations across the country – about a third of the railroad network.

Mar 28, 1963 – 60 years ago
The premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s horror-thriller movie The Birds, in New York City, USA. (Released: March 29th. UK premiere: September 10th, released September 12th.)

Mar 29, 1948 – 75 years ago
Death of Harry Price, British psychic investigator. Best known for his investigation of the supposedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex.

Mar 30, 1953 – 70 years ago
Albert Einstein’s equations for a revised Unified Field Theory were published. They represented the relationship between the forces of gravity and electromagnetism, and their relationship to space, time and physical forces.

Mar 31, 1973 – 50 years ago
The racehorse Red Rum won Britain’s Grand National steeplechase for the first time. The tightly fought battle for the finish is considered one of the greatest sporting moments. It was also a record-breaking time.

More anniversaries:

You’ll find hundreds more anniversaries for this month in The Date-A-Base Book 2023. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 and 2027 editions are also available if you work further ahead. The 2028 edition will be available from April 2023. Find out more at ideas4writers.com.

Share this: