April 18th

National Day

• Autism Awareness Day
• National Exercise Day
• Amateur Radio Day

Birthdays

• 1953 – Rick Moranis, Canadian actor (Spaceballs, Little Shop of Horrors, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Ghostbusters), born in Toronto, Canada.
• 1971 – David Tennant, Scottish actor (Doctor Who, Broadchurch, Des, Star Wars Ahsoka), born in
• West Lothian, Scotland.

On This Day

• 1949 – The first ‘Bob-a-Job week’ began when 440,000 British Scouts started a nationwide campaign to raise the £22,000 needed to cover the deficits of the Scout movement. In the first year £60,000 was raised. The variety of jobs undertaken included a 13 year old who spent four hours cleaning the silver at 10 Downing Street.
• 1968 – London Bridge was sold for £1m to American oil tycoon Robert McCullough. He decided to knock it down, brick by brick, and have it re-built at Lake Havasu in the United States.

Music

• 1987 – Aretha Franklin and George Michael started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘I Knew You Were Waiting’ also a No.1 in the UK.
• 1992 – Annie Lennox went to No.1 on the UK album chart with her debut solo release ‘Diva.’ The album won the Brit Award for British Album of the Year at the 1993 Brit Awards and received nominations for Album of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Long Form Music Video, winning the latter award at the Grammy Awards the same year.
• 2006 – A line from U2’s 1992 hit ‘One’ was voted the UK’s favourite song lyric after in a poll of 13,000 people by music channel VH1. The line “One life, with each other, sisters, brothers” came top. The Smiths lyric “So you go, and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home, and you cry, and you want to die” from the song ‘How Soon is Now’ came second in the poll, followed by “I feel stupid and contagious, here we are now, entertain us”, from Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ which was voted into third place.
• 2020 – Paul McCartney, Elton John, Taylor Swift, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and several other stars performed from their homes on the One World: Together At Home concert during the coronavirus pandemic. The event organized by Global Citizen of New York City and curated by singer Lady Gaga was in support of the World Health Organization.

History

• 1506 – The construction of St Peter’s Basilica began in the Vatican. The building (completed 18 November 1626), is the largest church in the world and is known as one of the world’s most holy Catholic shrines.
• 1740 – The birth of Sir Francis Baring, English merchant banker. Barings was the oldest merchant bank in London until it collapsed in 1995 after one of the bank’s employees, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million on speculative investing.
• 1881 – The Natural History Museum in London first opened its doors providing a permanent home for the ever-growing collection of natural history specimens originally housed in the British Museum.
• 1899 – The St. Andrew’s Ambulance Association was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria. The Association seeks to preserve the lives of people in Scotland by the provision of education and emergency first aid at events throughout Scotland.