James Owen - On This Day: Facts and trivia for every day of the year

In amongst the unchanging, comforting bric-a-brac of the Register section of each edition of The Times nestles the record of anniversaries of events which fall On This Day. The feature has the feel of having been there for ever, alongside the royal engagements and what the weather has in store. Yet in fact, in terms of the newspapers two centuries and more of history, it is a relatively recent innovation, with this selection compiled from those entries which have appeared during the last decade or so.

They are not meant to represent a complete history of the world. Rather, they are a random, often quirky, frequently diverting list of things you feel better for knowing. That said, the collective mind that put them together seems to have had some idiosyncratic interests, including notable firsts in astronomy, key moments in Britains withdrawal from empire, and opera premieres. The broad-minded reader of The Times naturally takes all these in his or her stride. What can the rest of us learn from this midden heap of the past?

Perhaps it is that the past is just that. Rooting about in it disinters things which were once prized but are now of little account. Events which made headlines 40 skaters drowned in Regents Park are long forgotten. How quickly things change, one might think (maybe contemplating an entry whilst adding to ones own midden heap), a thought soon followed by: Did that happen 20 years ago already?

And then there are the secret harmonies one fancies hearing in times dance music. Can it be just coincidence that Sir Winston Churchill died on the same day of the year (January 24th) as not only his father but also Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of the Churchills family seat at Blenheim? That Rolls-Royce should commission its proud emblem Spirit of Ecstasy exactly 60 years to the day before declaring bankruptcy? What unseen force sent King Louis XVI to the guillotine on the anniversary of its inventor having proposed it as a humane method of execution?

Another newspaper now itself passed into history once claimed of its contents that All human life is here. That may not be precisely true of this selection, but it is good to be reminded of the breadth and diversity of mankinds achievements. Sometimes one can even be surprised by them: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 21; Sid Vicious rose to fame with the Sex Pistols when a year younger; the first public flushing lavatory for women opened in London as early as 1852.

So, read on and find your own path through the past, be it by lucky dip, joining the dots, using the date index at the back of the book or through dates that mean something to you. Discover something that prompts you to learn more, or to think I never knew that!, a fact to share with a friend and make you muse upon all that has gone before us down the ages: a glorious gallimaufry of happenings.

And then turn the page and read the Obituaries.

James Owen