4 August

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 4 August:

1. Born this date in 1792 was Percy Bysshe Shelley, English romantic poet. He eloped to Scotland with Harriet Westbrook but then fell in love with Mary Godwin, 16, daughter of philosopher William Godwin and writer Mary Wollstonecraft, abandoned his wife and eloped with Mary. He was a close friend of Lord Byron and an advocate of vegetarianism.
2. In 1900 Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was born. She met her future husband, Prince Albert, at a children's party, and in due course her daughter became Queen Elizabeth II and she became the Queen Mother. In 2000, she received a birthday telegram from her daughter on her 100th birthday.
3. Born this date in 1961 was Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United States.
4. In 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were axed to death in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie Borden, Andrew Borden's daughter from a previous marriage, was accused of the killings, but acquitted at trial.
5. In 1914, Britain declared war on Germany after the Germans had violated the Treaty of London, and World War I began.
6. In 1944 Nazi police in Amsterdam, Netherlands, acted on an informant's tip, and discovered Anne Frank and her family in hiding. They had lived in a single secret room for 728 days.
7. In 1923, the BBC first used six pips as a broadcast time signal – later, the sixth pip was elongated for emphasis.
8. In 1990, British aviatrix Naomi Christie celebrated her 79th birthday with a flight standing on the roof of a Tiger Moth.
9. In 1621, during a fox hunt, George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, accidentally shot Peter Hawkins in the arm with an arrow, severing an artery, causing him to bleed to death. Abbot gave Hawkins’s widow and orphans an annuity, and fasted one day every month to try and atone for the accident. Coincidentally, he died on this date in 1633.
10. In 2005 The longest garage sale in the world was held on Highway 127 and Lookout Mountain Parkway, Alabama. The sale stretched for about 450 Miles with around 5,000 people taking part. Mike Walker had come up with the idea of the longest garage sale in 1987 to bring traffic to America's less travelled highways. (I took the road less travelled... and ended up buying a load of junk!)

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