17 October

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 17 October:

1. A wedding took place in Edinburgh on this date in 1827, Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh. It wasn't destined to be a happy marriage. Samuel Butler commented: "It was good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four."
2. More weddings in 1997: ex-politician Wu Jung-chang and stripper Hsu Shao-tan, had a nude ceremony; while NEC Birmingham divers Paul Leighton and Lorinda Gwyther had Britain’s first underwater nuptials.
3. In 1962, The Beatles appeared on TV for the first time, on the Grenada TV Network, with a live performance of Love Me Do on People and Places.
4. Richard Branson opened the world's first commercial spaceport, Spaceport America, in the U.S. state of New Mexico on this date in 2011.
5. In 1994, the longest taxi ride ever came to an end in Cape Town. Carlos Arrese, Jeremy Levine, Mark Aylett had travelled in a cab from London, England, setting out on 3 June, covering 34,908 Km – 21,691 Miles at a Cost of $64,656. It wasn't recorded whether, at the end, they told the driver, "anywhere here will be fine."
6. In 1933, Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
7. In 1999, the London Eye was raised to vertical and became the fourth highest London structure after Telecom and NatWest towers and 1 Canada Square Canary Wharf.
8. In 2003, the pinnacle was fitted on the roof of Taipei 101, a 106-floor skyscraper in Taipei, allowing it to surpass the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur by 50 metres and become the world’s tallest building.
9. In 1997, a sketch, believed to be by a contemporary pupil of Leonardo da Vinci of a pedal Bicycle, was exposed to be no more than a monk’s doodle around 2 circles.
10. 1931, US gangster Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison for income tax evasion, the only charge that could be sustained against him.

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