On this day....

I have always been fascinated by diaries, journals and by things that happened ‘on this day’ in the past. Over the years I have looked at a lot of ‘On this Day’ type sites. In my view the best all round one remains one that I found very early on and which I have come to rely upon as the most accurate. It is run by Scope Sytems, a US electronics firm. The entry for the current day can be found at
http://www.scopesys.com/today
and that for any other day of the year at
http://www.scopesys.com/anyday
So far the site has had over 8 million hits so I am obviously not alone in liking it. As with most such sites it has an American bias so you have to ignore references to the Phillies and Yankees (apparently ‘sports’ teams that play some sort of bat and ball game).... You also have to ignore the fact that it uses the present tense, a most annoying habit...

Amongst the things that happened on 20th August...

1896 The dial telephone – remember them? - was patented (pronounced ‘paytented’ or ‘pattented’ depending upon which side of the Atlantic you are on. I wonder what they say in New Zealand?)

1940 British PM Churchill, in a speech to the Commons, said of the Royal Air Force, " Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few "

1965 The Rolling Stones released "Satisfaction" (their first #1 US hit and in my view their best ever song).