American spy plane pilot Gary Powers was released from jail in the USSR in an exchange deal with the USA, who released Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. (421 views)

Death of Joseph Lister, British surgeon who pioneered the use of antiseptics in surgery and promoted sterile surgery. (450 views)

Death of Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian poet, novelist, dramatist, and short story writer, widely considered to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature (377 views)

Julia Ward Howe’s poem ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ was first published in ‘The Atlantic Monthly’. Set to the music of ‘John Brown’s Body’, it became a popular Union song during the American Civil War (455 views)

I have created an auto-updating gallery of ‘Fakebook’ examples created by students and teachers around the world in a wide variety of subjects. Why not try Fakebook out with your own classes as a way of getting thinking about timelines of events / biographical summaries and relationships between historical figures? (1122 views)

Death of George Harrison, British rock guitarist, singer and songwriter (The Beatles) (454 views)

Death of Cary Grant, British-born American film actor (‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘Gunga Din’, ‘His Girl Friday’, ‘The Philadelphia Story’, ‘To Catch A Thief’, ‘North by Northwest’, and more) (470 views)

Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, an agreement to collaborate against the threat of Soviet Communism (659 views)

Death of Freddie Mercury, Zanzibar-born British rock singer and songwriter (Queen) (471 views)

Death of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, Spanish politician, founder of the Spanish fascist party, the Falange. (Executed) (489 views)

Birth of John Bright, British politician and political reformer, co-founder of the Anti-Corn Law League, and a campaigner for free trade (468 views)

Death of Vyacheslav Molotov, Russian statesman and diplomat (477 views)

American Civil War: Battle of Belmont, Missouri. A minor battle with an inconclusive outcome, but notable as it was Ulysses S. Grant’s first experience of battlefield command. (He would later become commander of the Union Army, and U.S. President) (386 views)

Alex Ferguson was appointed manager of Manchester United FC (513 views)

The first aerial bombing raid. In the Italo-Turkish War, Italian pilot Giulio Gavotti dropped 4 small bombs on Turkish troops in Libya (467 views)

William Shakespeare’s play ‘The Tempest’ was first performed, at Whitehall Palace, London, UK (425 views)

De-Stalinisation: former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow and reburied within the Kremlin walls, out of public view. (787 views)

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop. Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance and it has become…

Death of Gene Roddenberry, American screenwriter and producer, creator of ‘Star Trek’ (441 views)

Apple Computer released the first iPod digital music player (484 views)

Algerian War – Paris massacre: French police attacked Algerian protesters who were staging a peaceful demonstration in Paris. (The exact number of Algerians killed is unknown – at least 40, but possibly more than 200) (491 views)

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew within 112 miles (181 km) of Jupiter’s moon Io, sending back images and data (418 views)

The Reykjavik summit in Iceland, aimed at reducing the nuclear arsenals of the USA and USSR, ended in failure. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev failed to reach agreement on the USA’s Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) – also known as ‘Star Wars’ (473 views)

Death of Theodor Geisel, ‘Dr. Seuss’, popular American children’s writer, illustrator and film-maker (‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’, ‘The Cat in the Hat’, ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, and many more) (395 views)

The American rock band Nirvana released the album ‘Nevermind’. (407 views)

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Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummified body, was discovered by a tourist in the Tirolean Alps on the Italian-Austrian border. (589 views)

Greenpeace, the international environmental group, was founded in Vancouver, Canada (601 views)

Vikings to return to Stamford Bridge

War hits home on Downton Abbey

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The USA returned Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’ to Spain. Picasso had refused to allow it to return until democracy had been restored. It was put on display in Spain on 25th Oct – the centenary of Picasso’s birth. (422 views)

Is This the Face of Jack The Ripper?

David Starkey is a master of the past, not the present

Medieval artefacts hidden in church’s secret room

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25 years ago today – 31 Aug 1986 Death of Henry Moore, British sculptor (394 views)

30 years ago today – 25 Aug 1981 The U.S. space probe Voyager 2 reached Saturn and sent back images and data from the planet. (It travelled on to Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989) before leaving the solar system) (405 views)

30 years ago today – 24 Aug 1981 Mark Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of British rock musician John Lennon (372 views)

20 years ago today – 24 Aug 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (362 views)

150 years ago today – 22 Aug 1861 Birth of Mary Elizabeth Wood, American librarian and missionary who established a network of libraries and a training programme for librarians in China (886 views)

Firefighters attacked by thousands of fleas at abandoned house are tested for bubonic plague

100 years ago today – 21 Aug 1911 Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris by an employee. (Recovered in 1913) (381 views)

BBC defends Newsnight after David Starkey said 'white chavs have become black'

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David Starkey's down with the kids take on culture

Horrible Histories author: 'I don't like historians'

20 years ago today – 19 Aug 1991 Attempted coup in the Soviet Union. Hard-line members of the Communist Party tried to seize control from President Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup failed after just 3 days, and eventually led to the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the USSR (450 views)

75 years ago today – 19 Aug 1936 Death of Federico García Lorca, Spanish poet and playwright (409 views)

50 years ago today – 13 Aug 1961 East Germany sealed off the border between East and West Berlin to prevent the exodus of refugees to the West. Initially barbed wire fences were erected; construction of the Berlin Wall began on 15th August (448 views)

300 years ago today – 11 Aug 1711 The first horse race meeting at Ascot took place, initiated by Queen Anne (370 views)

100 years ago today – 10 Aug 1911 British Members of Parliament voted to receive salaries for the first time. (392 views)

Captain Morgan's Pirate Ship Found

100 years ago (31 Jul 1910) American physician Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was arrested aboard the SS Montrose as it docked in Quebec. He had fled England after murdering his wife, and was the first criminal to be caught using wireless telegraph [more]. (582 views)

75 years ago today – 1 Aug 1936 The XI Olympic Games opened in Berlin, Germany. It was the last Olympics for 12 years due to World War II 75 years ago today – 1 Aug 1936 Birth of Yves Saint-Laurent, Algerian-born French fashion designer 75 years ago today – 2 Aug 1936 Death of…

Blitz Britain: Amazing colour pictures of London under siege from Nazi bombers during World War II

Nazi Rudolf Hess exhumed from 'pilgrimage' grave

he 1980 Moscow Olympics are perhaps most famous for the US-led boycott that saw only 80 out of 147 nations compete, the lowest number since the 1956 Melbourne Games. The boycott was made in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the year before, one of the many conflicts that took place as the Americans…

Arrogant, rebellious and a murderer, Caravaggio’s short and tempestuous life matched the drama of his works. Characterised by their dramatic, almost theatrical lighting, Caravaggio’s paintings were controversial, popular, and hugely influential on succeeding generations of painters all over Europe [more]. (384 views)

This new tool allows teachers to create “Treasure Hunt” challenges based on QR codes. You can create your own QR Treasure Hunt by simply providing a list of questions and answers. You can even go back and edit it later if you like. This program will then dynamically create QR codes for each question which…

Live Aid was a dual-venue concert that was held on 13 July 1985. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the “global jukebox”, the event was held simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom (attended by 72,000 people)…

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The Dreyfus affair (French: l’affaire Dreyfus, pronounced: [a.f?? d??.fys]) was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military…

100 years ago (12 Jul 1910) Death of Charles Stewart Rolls, British driver, aviator and car manufacturer, co-founder of Rolls-Royce, first person to fly cross the Channel and back non-stop, first British pilot to die in a plane crash [more] (508 views)

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author’s observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near…

The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique, was an operation by the “action” branch of the French foreign intelligence services, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), carried out on July 10, 1985. It aimed to sink the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, the Rainbow Warrior in the port of Auckland, New…

The Battle of Britain (German: Luftschlacht um England or Luftschlacht um Großbritannien, literally “Air battle for England” or “Air battle for Great Britain”) is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged by the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940. The objective of…

200 years ago (9 Jul 1810) Napoleon annexed Holland and made his brother Louis its King (404 views)

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Thomas Jefferson

China marks 90 years of Communism

Relic of St Thomas Becket carried in procession to London Bridge

(‘Nye’) Bevan was the British politician responsible for establishing the National Health Service. (372 views)

Elmo

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Mummy Stash Found in Italian Church: Photos

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200 years ago (5 Jul 1810) Birth of P.T. Barnum, American showman and circus founder 50 years ago (6 Jul 1960) Death of Aneurin (‘Nye’) Bevan, British politician responsible for establishing the National Health Service 200 years ago (9 Jul 1810) Napoleon annexed Holland and made his brother Louis its King 70 years ago (10…

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Forget two world wars and one World Cup… geneticists reveal 50 per cent of Britons are GERMAN

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25 years ago today (22nd June 1986) The ‘Hand of God’ goal – Argentine footballer Diego Maradona scored a goal against England using his hand in the quarter-final of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico City. (461 views)

70 years ago today (22nd June 1941) World War II: Operation Barbarossa – Germany invaded the Soviet Union (436 views)

150 years ago today (19th June 1861): Birth of Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, British field marshal who commanded Britain’s forces in France during WWI (370 views)

50 years ago today (16th June 1961): Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris (489 views)

200 years ago today (14th June 1811): Birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe, American abolitionist and novelist (‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’) (370 views)

20 years ago today (12th June 1991): Boris Yeltsin became the first directly elected President of Russia. (Inaugurated 10th July) (430 views)