8 August

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 8 August:

Mont Blanc

1. In 1963, a gang of 15 changed the signals to stop a Royal Mail train on a quiet stretch of track at Cheddington, Buckinghamshire and stole over £2.6 million in what became known as the Great Train Robbery. One of the gang members was 1929 Ronald Biggs, and it happened to be his 34th birthday. After being convicted and jailed, Biggs escaped from HM Prison Wandsworth by scaling the wall with a rope ladder. He fled to Paris, where he had plastic surgery to disguise his appearance, moved to Australia, and later Brazil. He spent the next three decades of his life as a fugitive.
2. In 1296, the Stone of Scone was stolen from the abbey in Scone, near Perth, Scotland by Edward I, King of England.
3. 1969 The famous photo of the Beatles' Abbey Road LP cover was taken at 10 a.m. on this date in 1969.
4. In 1576, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe began work in his observatory at Uraniborg, the first purpose-built observatory ever constructed.
5. In 1786, Dr Michel Gabriel Paccard and his porter, Jacques Balmat, reached the summit of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe.
6. In 1988, six thousand visitors descended upon the town of Eighty-Eight, Kentucky (population 300). The tourists wanted to buy postcards franked at 8.08 am with an 88 postmark. One couple were married at 8.08 on the church’s eighth step. The town got its name when one of the founders checked in his pocket and found he had only 88 cents.
7. Also in 1988, the temperature hit a high of 88 in New York City.
8. The Chinese regarded this day in 1988 as the luckiest day of the century, because the date is a palindrome: 8/8/88, and 8 is a lucky number.
9. In 1540 King Henry VIII of England married Catherine Howard.
10. In 1996, Amy Guttensohn gave birth to the first set of all-male quintuplets. Their names were Mason Fielder, Eric Tanner, Hunter Christian, Parker Allen and Taylor James Guttensohn. All weighed less than 3 pounds.

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