24 October

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 24 October:

1. This date in 1933 saw the birth of Ronald and Reginald Kray, identical twin brothers, and the foremost organised crime leaders dominating London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s. The Krays were involved in armed robberies, arson, protection rackets, violent assaults including torture and the murders of Jack "The Hat" McVitie and George Cornell.
2. Danish astronomer and mathematician Tycho Brahe died on this date in 1601 at the age of 54. Together with Kepler, he'd proved that the planets orbit the sun in ellipses. He died in Prague of a burst bladder – a result of forgetting to go to the loo before a banquet, drinking too much and being too polite to ask to be excused.
3. In 1980, Paul McCartney received a rhodium-plated disc from the Guinness Book of World Records for being history's all-time best-selling songwriter and recording artist.
4. The George Washington Bridge, spanning 3,800 ft long and connecting New York and New Jersey, opened to traffic on this date in 1931. The bridge became a famous New York landmark and has been featured in many movies and TV shows.
5. In 1886, The New York Sun reported that water had been falling steadily for fourteen days out of a cloudless sky onto one piece of ground in Chesterfield County, South Carolina.
6. Two of Uranus' moons, Ariel and Umbriel, were discovered on this date in 1851 by William Lassell.
7. In 1901, widow Anna Edson Taylor, aged 43, became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and live to tell the tale. She made the attempt for the cash award offered, which she put toward the mortgage on her Texas ranch. On completing the challenge, she said, “No one ought ever do that again.” Needless to say, many people did.
8. In 2003 Concorde flew passengers from New York for the final time.
9. Sheffield F C, the first football club was formed by a group of Cambridge University Old Boys in Sheffield on this date in 1857.
10. In 1843, 14 workmen sat down to a dinner of rump steak, 145ft off the ground. They were on top of Nelson's column, ten days before Nelson’s statue was put in place.

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