13 October

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 13 October:

1. Today has been a day for the births of future female Conservative politicians. In 1925, Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She had earlier commented, "I don't think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime." In the House, she once quipped, "The prime minister is stealing our clothes... but he’s going to look pretty ridiculous walking around in mine!" Then in 1946, Edwina Currie, Junior Health Minister for two years, before resigning in 1988 over a controversy over salmonella in Eggs. She once said, "I don’t bring my work into the bedroom. Once we’re in bed, we’ll usually talk about things like Dickens." Hardly surprising, perhaps, if all her husband wanted to do was talk about Dickens in bed that she had a four-year affair with John Major.
2. Also born on this date in 1959 was Marie Osmond, singer, and the only girl in the Osmond family, whose hits include Paper Roses and My Little Corner of the World. She also had two duet hits with her brother Donny: I'm Leaving It All Up to You and Morning Side of the Mountain.
3. In 1999, a handyman named Colin Vincent, aged 57, beheaded himself, two months to the day after the death of his beloved wife, Joan. He constructed a guillotine in the stairwell of an outside cellar door at his home in Halifax. When the police found his body, there was a level nearby to make sure that the blade was set true; he still had a pair of pliers in his left hand that he'd used to cut the retaining wire, and release the heavy blade, which required three men to move. There was evidence that test drops had been made.
4. In 1884, Greenwich Mean Time was introduced as the time standard of Britain, whence it became the base measure of universal time. Greenwich, near London, was adopted as the universal meridian of longitude (0 degrees).
5. In 1923, Ankara, formerly Angora, became the new capital of Turkey as Turkish President Kemal Ataturk named it the capital of the new republic.
6. In 2016, American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
7. In 1997, South Florida announced they had bought 108 plastic Flamingos which they intended to paint White and place in marshlands in the hope they'd attract snowy egrets, ibis and wood Storks to nest there.
8. In 1915, in London, buying rounds of drinks was prohibited in an effort to reduce drunkenness. People who offered to buy others drinks faced a £100 fine or 6 months in jail.
9. The cornerstone of the White House, was laid during a Masonic ceremony in the District of Columbia by President George Washington on this date in 1792. It would not be occupied until 1800 by John Adams and his family.
10. In 1944, at midnight on Friday the 13th, a ceremony was held in Great Leighs, Essex, to replace a 2-ton stone in the ground which had been dislodged some days earlier by a bulldozer. The stone was traditionally believed to pin down the evil spirit of ‘the witch of Scrapfaggot Green’, a Witch who'd been buried with a stake through her heart in the 17th Century. The local village had allegedly been beset by extreme poltergeist activity since the stone’s dislodgement.

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