27 November

10 weird and wonderful things which  happened on 27 November:

1. Bruce Lee, martial artist, actor and founder of the Jeet Kune Do combat form was born on this date in 1940. His films include The Green Hornet, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon. He once said, "I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine."
2. Also born on this date, in 1925, was Ernie Wise, comedian best known as one half of the comedy duo Morecambe and Wise.
3. Abraham De Moivre French mathematician famous for de Moivre's formula, which links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory, died on this date in 1754, at the age of 87. He wrote a book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, which was highly prized by gamblers. He had correctly predicted the day of his own death. Noting that he was sleeping 15 minutes longer each day, he figured that in due course he would he would be asleep for 24 hours a day come November 27, 1754. His prediction proved correct.
4. 1931 Paul Wittgenstein played the première of Ravel's left-handed Piano concerto. Wittgenstein lost his right hand in wartime but decided to pursue his concert career anyway.
5. In 1759 Rev. Francis Gastrell was thrown out of Stratford-upon-Avon for cutting down a tree that Shakespeare had planted.
6. In 1784, a man named John Thatcher rode his cow to the market in Stockport, and home again. This was in protest about a tax on horses that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, had imposed following the American War of Independence, when Britain was nearly bankrupt.
7. In 1726 Jonathan Swift wrote to Alexander Pope about initial reactions to Gulliver's Travels, including that of an Irish bishop who said it was "full of improbable lies." Not unlike the Tory party manifesto, then.
8. In 1889, Curtis P. Brady was issued the first permit to drive a car through Central Park in New York. Mr. Brady had to pledge that he wouldn't frighten the horses in the park.
9. Britain's first policewomen went on duty on this date in 1914. They were Miss Mary Allen and Miss E F Harburn, who reported for duty at Grantham, Lincolnshire.
10. In 1987, a young man in Somerset made seven attempts to kill himself following a row with his girlfriend. He threw himself in front of four cars and a lorry; he tried to strangle himself and jumped out of a Window. The driver of one of the cars suffered a heart attack, a policeman injured his back trying to restrain the man, and a doctor at the hospital the young man was taken to was kicked in the face.