February 25th

National Day

• Chocolate Covered Nut Day
• Quiet Day

Birthdays

• 1957 – Stuart John “Woody” Wood, Scottish musician, songwriter and guitarist with rock band Bay City Rollers (“Bye Bye Baby”, “Shang‐A‐Lang”), born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
• 1964 – Lee Evans, English stand-up comedian (Big Live At The O2) and actor (The Fifth Element, There’s Something About Mary), born in Avonmouth, Bristol.
• 1971 – Daniel Powter, Canadian singer and musician (“Bad Day”), born in Vernon, Canada.
• 1971 – Sean Astin, American actor (Mikey in “The Goonies”, Samwise Gamgee in “The Lord of the Rings trilogy”), born in Santa Monica, California, United States.
• 1986 – James and Oliver Phelps, English actors and twin brothers (Fred and George Weasley in the Harry Potter film series), born in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham.

On This Day

• 1913 – English suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst went on trial for a bomb attack on the home of David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
• 1939 – The first Anderson air raid shelters appeared. Between then and the outbreak of the war in September, around 1.5 million shelters were distributed to people living in areas expected to be bombed by the Luftwaffe. During the war a further 2.1 million were erected.
• 1982 – The European Court of Human Rights ruled that corporal punishment in schools (if it was against the parents’ wishes) was a violation of the Human Rights Convention.
• 2013 – British born actor Daniel Day-Lewis made Oscar history by becoming the first person to win the best actor prize three times. He was rewarded for his role in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’.

Music

• 1989 – Simple Minds were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Belfast Child.’ The song uses the music from the Irish folk song ‘She Moved Through the Fair’, but has completely different words. At 6 minutes 39 seconds it became the second-longest running No.1 after The Beatles ‘Hey Jude’.
• 2006 – George Michael was found slumped over in a car in Hyde Park, London. A concerned personspotted the singer and called police who after being checked by paramedics was arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs and then released on bail. Michael made a public statement about the incident and said “I was in possession of class C drugs which is an offense and I have no complaints about the police who were professional throughout.” He also said that the event was “my own stupid fault, as usual.”
• 2015 – On what would have been George Harrison’s 72nd birthday, a new tree was planted in his memory in Griffith Park Los Angeles to replace one that was earlier killed (ironically) by a beetle infestation. This new yew tree had been chosen to replace the original, as it was far less susceptible to insects.

History

• 1765 – The birth of Jean Armour, wife of the poet Robert Burns. They had nine children, three of whom survived into adulthood. She was buried beside her famous husband in the mausoleum in Saint Michael’s Cemetery, Dumfries.
• 1843 – Lord George Paulet occupies the Kingdom of Hawaii in the name of Great Britain in the Paulet affair.
• 1890 – The birth of Dame Myra Hess, English pianist. Her fame came during World War II when concert halls were closed at night to avoid being targets of German bombers. For a period of six years she organized some 1700 lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery which had been emptied of its paintings for the duration of the war. For her contribution to maintaining the morale of the people of London, King George VI awarded her the Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1941.
• 1897 – The birth of Peter Llewelyn Davies, the namesake of Peter Pan. The author, J. M. Barrie publicly identified him as the source of the name for the title character in his famous play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. This identification as ‘the original Peter Pan’ plagued Davies throughout his life.