Born on this day 22nd February
1732 George Washington
1857 Lord Baden Powell
1908 Sir John Mills
1926 Kenneth Williams
1928 Bruce Forsyth
1933 Sheila Hancock
1933 The Duchess of Kent
1933 Bobby Smith
1942 Christine Keeler
1949 Niki Lauda
1950 Julie Walters
1974 Drew Barrymore
1974 James Blunt
1974 Chris Moyles
1978 Jenny Frost

Died on this day
1512 Amerigo Vespucci
1903 Hugo Wolf
1987 Andy Warhol

Music

1964 The Bachelors reached No.1 in the UK singles chart with ‘Diane’.

1968 Genesis released their first single, ‘The Silent Sun’.

1971 100’s of fans slept on the pavement in Sauchihall Street in Glasgow, waiting for the Box Office to open for The Rolling Stones concert on March 8th.

1975 The Average White Band reached No.1 in the US with ‘Pick Up The Pieces’

Sport

1955 American tennis player Maureen Connolly, known as ‘Little Mo’, announced her retirement from tennis.

1956 Portsmouth played Newcastle United at Fratton Park in the first floodlit Football League game, with the home team eventually losing 2-0 to Newcastle.

1980 British ice-skater Robin Cousins won a gold medal for figure-skating at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.

1992 Scottish long-distance runner Liz McColgan broke the world indoor 5,000 metres record by more than 10 seconds at an invitation meeting in Birmingham.

People & Showbiz

1371 Robert II became King of Scotland, beginning the Stuart dynasty.

1993 A poll by TV Quick magazine named soap opera ‘Eldorado’ as the worst show on television.

1995 Stehpen Fry pulled out of Simon Gray’s play ‘Cell Mates’ 3 days after the production opened. Neither his agent or the theatre knew where he was.

General Events

1879 American businessman F W Woolworth opened his first store in New York. After a near financial disaster, he moved to Pennsylvania.

1886 British daily newspaper ‘The Times’ was the first to introduce a ‘classified personal’ column.

1972 In Britain, 7 people were killed by an IRA bomb at Aldershot.

1988 The BBC External Services, broadcasting throughout the world in 37 languages had been nominated for the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize.

1997 In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.

2006 At least six men stage Britain’s biggest robbery ever, stealing £53m (about $92.5 million or 78€ million) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent.