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On this day in history

THIS DAY IN HISTORY MAY 13th 1940.

Churchill announces: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”.
 
On this day in 1943 Operation Chastise: No. 617 Squadron RAF begins the famous Dambusters Raid, bombing the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley with bouncing bombs
 
On this day in 1858 a new Royal Opera House theatre opened - it had been rebuilt in just six months following a fire in 1856 that destroyed the previous theatre

Much of the current building dates back to this rebuild, including the beautiful velvet-clad auditorium!
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On this day last year I was at the NW200 enjoying some road racing and the odd Guinness or two. Sadly, not to be this year though.
Poxy virus :cry::cry:
 
On this day in 1858 a new Royal Opera House theatre opened - it had been rebuilt in just six months following a fire in 1856 that destroyed the previous theatre

Much of the current building dates back to this rebuild, including the beautiful velvet-clad auditorium!
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I 've always wondered what the acoustics were like ?
 
What impressed me the most in Chas’s post was............, “had been rebuilt in just six months following a fire in 1856 that destroyed the previous theatre“. I wonder how long it would take them today with all the H&S regs etc.
 
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16th May 2020

we should have been sat round a roaring fire, beers in hand & banter at Lincomb, but.......................
 
What impressed me the most in Chas’s post was............, “had been rebuilt in just six months following a fire in 1856 that destroyed the previous theatre“. I wonder how long it would take them today with all the H&S regs etc.
Well, the present ROH shut down for rebuilding in 1997 when they rebuilt everything backstage but kept the front of house the same and that took just over two years, I was made redundant when they closed down but was the first one they rehired on opening of the 'new' house.
While it was closed I was still hired to work in other theatres they performed at, plus I did other freelance work as well.
I also got a part time job with Wimbledon Carriage Company collecting and delivering used cars, that was a great job, I got to drive some lovely cars and got paid for it. :sunglasses:
Oh, and I should mention I got a very handsome redundancy payment, £30000, paid off my mortgage with that, and all the part time I did for the ROH alone brought in an average of £115 per week for all the time I was redundant, with what I was earning with all my other jobs I was laughing. :dance:
 
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On this day in 2010, ventriloquist Ray Alan passed passed away. His act with Lord Charles Always creases me up!
 
On this day in 1962 “Stranger On the Shore” topped the American pop charts—something that would happen 173 more times over the course of the next 35 years. It proved to be the only significant hit for Mr. Acker Bilk, whose greatest legacy is possessing the honor of being the very first British artist to top the American pop charts—something that would happen 173 more times over the course of the next 35 years. If you’d told a randomly selected group of American music fans in the spring of 1962 that a British act would soon achieve total dominance of the American pop scene, change the face of music and fashion and inspire a generation of future pop stars to take up an instrument and join a band, they would probably have scratched their heads and struggled to imagine such a thing. And if any image popped into their heads, it wouldn’t have been of young lads playing guitars in mop tops and Nehru jackets. The Beatles, after all, were complete unknowns at this point. No, if there was any image that would have come to mind, it would have been of middle-aged men playing the clarinet in bowler hats and stripey waistcoats. Up to that point, the single, solitary Briton ever to have reached the top of the American charts in the rock and roll era was a man by the name of Acker Bilk. His instrumental single, “Stranger On the Shore” provided the first hint of the British Invasion to come
 
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On this day, 20 June 1967, boxing legend Muhammad Ali was convicted for refusing the draft for the Vietnam war in Houston, Texas. His courage , honesty & eloquence is sorely missed
 
On this day in 1963 Former Foreign Office official Harold Philby is confirmed as the "third man" in the infamous Cambridge Five spy ring​
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1 July 1916

On this day, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, in northern France, was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army and one of the most infamous days of World War One. On 1 July 1916, the British forces suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 fatalities. They gained just three square miles of territory
 
On this day, 80 years ago was the first day of the Battle of Britain

If we had lost there would be no right to demonstrate.

I hope that those who vandalised the Cenotaph and Churchill’s statue reflect upon this.

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Churchill is not universally seen as a hero by a fair amount of people , especially miners from South Wales & the North East. My grandad came back from WW1 on a stretcher & then faced officers from his old regiment commanding troops with fixed bayonets ,machine guns & tanks against him & his comrades during the general strike .He hated Churchill with a passion until the day he died.
 
before you read this please remember that "Pikey" "did" , "nacker" & "tinker" are racist insults to Gypsy . Romani & Traveller people .


On this day, 2 August 1944, around 4000 Roma people in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp resisted being taken to the gas chambers. The SS swarmed into the Roma camp, but prisoners had armed themselves with sticks and crowbars, and barricaded themselves indoors, fighting the Nazis with hands and nails. A non-Roma prisoner who survived described that everyone was fighting, and that "women [were] the fiercest in their fight" as they were "younger and stronger" than the other detainees and were "protecting their children". Eventually they were overcome, and all murdered in the gas chambers in Birkenau.
The date of the rebellion was initially reported as being May 16, hence that day being designated the annual Romani Resistance Day, but subsequent research by the Auschwitz Museum determined it was actually August 2.
 
On This Day 75 years ago: Japan is devastated when the atomic bomb "Little Boy" is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and some tens of thousands die in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning.
 
On This Day in 1964: Charlie Wilson, one of the so-called Great Train Robbers, is broken out from Winson Green Prison prison by a gang of three men.
 
On This Day in 1961: A border is erected between East and West Berlin, becoming the foundations of the Berlin Wall, which would divide the city for 28 years
 
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