23 October

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 23 October:

1. According to 17th century divine James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, and Dr. John Lightfoot of Cambridge, the world was created on this date in 4004 BC, at 9am GMT. The Almighty was clearly on a creative roll after creating the universe yesterday. There's just one plot hole. This date in 4004 BC was a Sunday, according to Ussher, and wasn't God supposed to have rested on the Sunday?
2. On this date in 42 BC, Brutus committed suicide, after losing a battle with Octavian and Mark Antony. Brutus had betrayed and murdered Julius Caesar, plunging the Roman world into a civil war that lasted for years and cost many lives. Cassius too died today, stabbing himself with the very dagger he'd used to murder Caesar.
3. In 1988, there was a bloodbath in Buenos Aires. It started when a dog fell from the 13th floor of a building and landed on a 75 year old woman, killing her instantly. A woman in the ensuing crowd of rubber-neckers was run over by a bus, and a man who witnessed both incidents dropped dead from a heart attack.
4. Britain’s first recorded Tornado hit London on this date in 1901, killing two people and damaging houses and churches.
5. In 1910, Blanche S. Scott became the first woman to make a solo, public aeroplane flight, reaching an altitude of 12 feet in a park in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
6. In 1995, Rapper Tone-Loc was ordered to take an anger management class after starting a fight with a Pizza delivery person because he didn't like the pizza.
7. In San Antonio, Texas, a burglar sentenced to seven years on this date in 1987 complained that seven was his unlucky number. The judge promptly raised the sentence to eight years.
8. In 1997, British au pair Louise Woodward, charged with murdering a baby in her care, testified at her trial in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that she'd never hurt eight month old Matthew Eappen, saying, "I love kids." (Barbecued, perhaps, with a nice chianti?)
9. (Does my bum...?) a woman was detained on this date in 1992 for having "unusually large buttocks". She was attempting to smuggle 1½ pounds of surgically implanted heroin through a Columbian airport.
10. In 1998 there was a very special birthday. A papillon dog named Fred, show name Shima Goldfinch, turned 27, becoming Britain's oldest Dog.

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