England take on amateur Aussies, and still fail to win...
Today in 1945 saw the start of the first ever Victory Test between England and a team of Australian servicemen. Coming only two weeks after the end of World War II, the games were seen as a way to get back to normal way of life, and a combined total of 367,000 people watched the five three-day matches at Lords, Old Trafford and Bramall Lane. The final game at Lords attracted a whopping 93,000 spectators. And they thought the 2005 Ashes were popular. Despite it's popularity, the games were only awarded first class status, predominantly because the Australian Cricket Board were worried that their side would not be good enough to compete with England's Test side. Sure enough they needn't have worried, as the series ended in a draw, with each side claiming two victories and one finishing a draw.
Elsewhere in the world on this day history, in 1935 T. E Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, died after crashing his beloved motorcycle. The man who led Arab forces against the Turks was world famous for his work during World War I, and would later have a David Lean epic film retelling his story. Also today, in 1997 the British government announced that all sports sponsorship by tobacco companies would be banned. That's all except Forumla One motor racing however, which was given a temporary exemption. The fact that Bernie Ecclestone had donated £1m, to the Labour Party only a few months before came as pure coincidence of course.
In 1993, all 132 passengers and crew on board a Boeing 727 that crashed in Colombia were killed, while in 1992, two doctors who performed the autopsy on assassinated US Prtesident John F Kennedy confirmed that he had infact been killed by two bullets, one fired from above and the other from behind, which only served to fuel the conspiracy theories surroudning his death. BUt there was little confusiuon as to the cause of death of one Anne Boleyn, today in 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII was beheaded for being an adultress. Even though in turth, she probably just forgot to do the dishes one night.
And we say Chris Martin! as they say in New Zealand to Kenya's leading pace bowler at the 1996 World Cup, yep you've guessed it, it's Edward Odumbe (43), Arsenal's number one flapper Manuel Almunia (31), former floppy haired Manchester United flop Diego Forlan (29), The Who guitarist Pete Townshend (63), former daytime TV berk Robert Kilroy-Silk (66) and British 'comic' Victoria Wood (55).