21 August

 10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 21 August:

1. Christopher Robin Milne, son of author Alan Alexander Milne, was born on this date in 1920. As a young child, he was the basis of the character Christopher Robin in his father's Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
2. On this date in 1959, President Dwight D Eisenhower signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union.
3. In 1984, Clint Eastwood contributed a hand print, and the words "You made my day", to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the Mann's Chinese Theatre.
4. In 1997, a pink Flamingo in Lincoln Park Zoo Illinois, known only as B9720, was fitted with a plastic artificial leg.
5. In 1940, Winston Churchill made his famous speech in tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
6. On a rainy day in 1879, people in Knock, Ireland claimed to have seen a group of religious statues come to life at the local church. Margaret Beirne, Mary Beirne, Mary McLoughlin claimed to have seen The Virgin Mary, St Joseph, St John the Evangelist, an altar, a lamb and a cross surrounded by Angels appear at the south gable of Knock Parish Church. The vision lasted for about two hours, and another thirteen people reported seeing bright lights around the church. Knock has since grown to the status of an internationally recognised Marian shrine, visited by one and a half million pilgrims each year including Pope John Paul II in 1979.
7. In 1911, Vicenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee, stole the Mona Lisa by cutting it from its frame, on a cleaning day when the museum was closed to the public. He later attempted to sell the painting to Italy for $95,000. Italian officials arrested him and returned the painting to France without a scratch. At his trial, Peruggia convinced the tribunal that his act was one of patriotism; he claimed it was revenge against all the Frenchmen who had ever called him a ‘Macaroni eater’.
8. In 1996, Rick James was released from Folsom Prison after serving a two year sentence for drugs and assault. He'd planned to marry his fiancé, Tanja Anne Hijazi, on his release but she'd been nicked for shoplifting a pair of boots two days earlier and was in prison herself.
9. In 2006, three men who broke into a shop in Liverpool were foiled by a man surfing The Internet in America. The man had logged onto a site streaming live footage of a Beatles festival, and noticed the men smashing a window of a shop and climbing inside. He phoned Merseyside police to report the crime, resulting in three arrests.
10. In Battle, East Sussex, Mary Langdon, 25, was the first woman in Britain to join the fire brigade on this date in 1976.

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