What If…? 10 Creative Writing Prompts for May

Here’s this month’s selection of “What If…?” creative writing prompts to inspire you – let’s see what you can do with these!

These are all taken from our book: The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

(This is the final listing from the book as we’ve now used them all. If you’d like to send in any What Ifs of your own we’ll be happy to feature them here and include them in Vol 2 of the book, with your name credited.)

What if…

1. you were the winner?

2. you were finally forced to admit it?

3. you realised that you had been charged an unreasonable price?

4. your friend was sexist?

5. you had no regrets?

6. you had no willpower?

7. they didn’t like you?

8. you were the loser?

9. you thought of a way for someone to make a lot of money – but you weren’t about to give your secret away for free?

10. you learned to speed read?

– – – – – – –

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your currency) and you’ll receive:
Our complete collection of 5,000+ writing ideas
The Fastest Way to Get Ideas (4,400 what ifs)
The Date-A-Base Book 2014 and 2015 (plus all future editions)
The Fastest Way to Write Your Book
How to Win Short Story Competitions
Unlimited use of our exclusive online writing software
Full access to our members-only forums
And more… (total value: over £150)

Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002

50 Newsworthy Anniversaries in October 2014 for you to write about (and make money from!)

Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in October 2014 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research. Please let us know of any errors you find.

The listing below is a small sample of the entries for October from The Date-A-Base Book 2014. There are 233 anniversaries for October in the book, which covers the whole of 2014 from January to December and features more than 2,650 anniversaries in total.

Just one published article will cover the cost of your copy many times over.

The Date-A-Base Book 2015 is also available

—–

300 years ago (20 Oct 1714)
The coronation of King George I of Great Britain and Ireland.

250 years ago (2 Oct 1764)
Death of William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, British Prime Minister (1756 – 57).

250 years ago (26 Oct 1764)
Death of William Hogarth, British artist and engraver.

150 years ago (5 Oct 1864)
The city of Calcutta, India was flooded and almost totally destroyed by a cyclone. 60,000 people were killed, either directly by the cyclone or by sickness over the following weeks.

150 years ago (5 Oct 1864)
Birth of Louis Lumière, French inventor, photography pioneer, and filmmaker who developed an early film camera and projector with his brother, Auguste, and made the first-ever movie.

150 years ago (12 Oct 1864)
Death of Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the United States (1836 – 64); best known for the Dred Scott decision on slavery.

150 years ago (25 Oct 1864)
Birth of John Francis Dodge, pioneering American car manufacturer; co-founder of Dodge Brothers.

150 years ago (31 Oct 1864)
Nevada became the 36th state of the USA.

100 years ago (2 Oct 1914)
Birth of Jack Parsons, American rocket pioneer and occultist; one of the key founders of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an associate of Aleister Crowley.

100 years ago (5 Oct 1914)
World War I: the first plane to be shot down in combat. A French plane piloted by Joseph Frantz, accompanied by observer Louis Quenault, shot down a German plane over Jamoigne, Belgium using a machine gun.

100 years ago (6 Oct 1914)
Birth of Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer and adventurer; best known for the Kon-Tiki and Ra expeditions which were intended to prove that earlier civilisations could have crossed the oceans.

100 years ago (10 Oct 1914)
Death of Carol I, King of Romania (1881 – 1914).

100 years ago (15 Oct 1914)
The U.S. Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act, aimed at preventing anti-competitive practises in business.

100 years ago (19 Oct – 22 Nov 1914)
World War I – the First Battle of Ypres (also called the First Battle of Flanders) (Belgium); Allied victory.

100 years ago (27 Oct 1914)
Birth of Dylan Thomas, popular Welsh poet and writer; also known for his excessive drinking.

80 years ago (9 Oct 1934)
Alexander I, King of Yugoslavia, and the French foreign minister, Louis Barthou, were assassinated by Croatian terrorists in Marseilles, France.

80 years ago (16 Oct 1934 – Oct 1935)
The Long March. Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong began an 8,000-mile (12,500 km) march from south-east to north-west China to evade the armies of the Chinese National Party and establish a new base. (This led to the founding of the People’s Republic of China.)

75 years ago (7 Oct 1939)
Death of Harvey Cushing, pioneering American neurosurgeon/brain surgeon; the father of modern neurosurgery.

75 years ago (8 Oct 1939)
World War II: Germany annexed western Poland.

75 years ago (15 Oct 1939)
New York Municipal Airport was officially opened by mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. (It was renamed LaGuardia Airport in his honour in 1947.)

75 years ago (23 Oct 1939)
Death of Zane Grey, American writer of western novels.

75 years ago (27 Oct 1939)
Nylon stockings were sold publicly for the first time, in a department store in Wilmington, Delaware, USA (as a trial).

70 years ago (2 Oct 1944)
World War II – the Warsaw Uprising in Poland ended. German victory. The city was destroyed, 200,000 civilians were killed and 700,000 expelled.

70 years ago (2 – 21 Oct 1944)
World War II – the Battle of Aachen, Germany; Allied victory. (This was the first German city to be captured by the Allies.)

70 years ago (21 Oct 1944)
World War II: the Japanese carried out the first-ever kamikaze attack. A Japanese pilot deliberately crashed his plane into HMAS Australia during the invasion of Leyte Gulf (see below), killing 30 people. (Note: historians now believe the pilot acted on his own initiative; the first official [i.e. pre-planned] kamikaze attack was on 25th Oct.)

65 years ago (1 Oct 1949)
The People’s Republic of China was proclaimed by Mao Zedong.

65 years ago (7 Oct 1949)
The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was established.

60 years ago (10 Oct 1954)
The communist Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam following the partitioning of Vietnam at the end of the First Indochina War.

60 years ago (30 Oct – 13 Nov 1954)
The first Rugby League World Cup was held, in Paris, France. Great Britain beat France 16 – 12 in the final.

50 years ago (1 Oct 1964)
The Bullet Train (Shinkansen) service was launched in Japan.

50 years ago (10 – 24 Oct 1964)
The 28th Olympic Games were held in Tokyo, Japan. This was the first Olympic games to be broadcast live around the world by satellite.

50 years ago (12 Oct 1964)
The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1, the first space flight with a multi-person crew and the first space flight where the crew did not wear space suits. The three-man crew landed safely 24 hours later after orbiting the Earth 16 times.

50 years ago (14 Oct 1964)
Leonid Brezhnev became Leader of the Soviet Union, replacing Nikita Khrushchev.

50 years ago (15 Oct 1964)
Death of Cole Porter, American composer and lyricist; one of Broadway’s main songwriters; known for the wit and sophistication of his songs. His musicals include Anything Goes, Kiss Me, Kate and many more.

50 years ago (16 Oct 1964)
Harold Wilson became British Prime Minister for the first time. (He became prime minister again in 1974.)

50 years ago (20 Oct 1964)
Death of Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States.

50 years ago (24 Oct 1964)
Northern Rhodesia gained its independence from the UK and became the Republic of Zambia. Kenneth Kaunda became the first president.

40 years ago (5 Oct 1974)
Guildford pub bombings, England. The IRA detonated bombs at two pubs that were popular with British Army personnel. 5 people were killed and 65 injured. (The ‘Guildford Four’ and the ‘Maguire Seven’ were convicted, but their convictions were ruled unsafe in 1989 and 1991 respectively.)

40 years ago (5 Oct 1974)
The first episode of the TV comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus was broadcast in the UK.

30 years ago (12 Oct 1984)
An IRA bomb exploded during the Conservative Party conference at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, UK, killing 5 people. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was apparently the primary target but she escaped injury.

30 years ago (31 Oct 1984)
Death of Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards); succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi.

25 years ago (1 Oct 1989)
The world’s first same-sex civil unions were introduced in Denmark.

25 years ago (19 Oct 1989)
The ‘Guildford Four’ were released from prison after their convictions for IRA pub bombings were quashed by the British Court of Appeal.

20 years ago (13 Oct 1994)
Three main loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland announced a ceasefire following the IRA ceasefire announcement on 31st August.

15 years ago (5 Oct 1999)
Ladbrook Grove train crash, near Paddington Station, west London, England. 31 people were killed and over 500 injured.

10 years ago (4 Oct 2004)
SpaceShipOne made its second successful space flight within two weeks and claimed the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

10 years ago (7 Oct 2004)
Death of Kenneth Bigley, British civil engineer (kidnapped and beheaded by an Islamic extremist group in Iraq).

10 years ago (10 Oct 2004)
Death of Christopher Reeve, American stage, film and television actor and medical research activist; best known for his lead role in the Superman series of films; became quadriplegic after a horse-riding accident in 1995.

10 years ago (19 Oct 2004)
Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan, director of CARE International in Iraq, was abducted by insurgents in Baghdad. (killed by her captors on 8th Nov).

10 years ago (25 Oct 2004)
Death of John Peel, influential British radio disc jockey who championed emerging artists.

– – – – – – –

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your local currency) and you’ll receive The Date-A-Base Books for 2014 and 2015 (plus and all future editions as soon as they are published) as well as The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas, How to Win Short Story Competitions, our complete collection of 5,000+ writing ideas, unlimited use of our forums and exclusive online writing software, and more.
(Total value: over £150!)
Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002!

What If…? 10 Creative Writing Prompts for April

Here’s this month’s selection of “What If…?” creative writing prompts to inspire you – let’s see what you can do with these!

These are all taken from our book: The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

What if…

1. your town/city/village had its own unique micro-climate?

2. you tried to carry out the world’s most difficult crime?

3. polygamy was legalised and encouraged?

4. you had nothing to worry about?

5. you felt that you had achieved perfection?

6. you didn’t know where you were going?

7. they didn’t want what you had to offer?

8. you didn’t want to escape?

9. you had to carry on regardless?

10. you worked for free just to gain experience?

– – – – – – –

Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring the world’s writers since 2002

30 Newsworthy Anniversaries in September 2014 for you to write about (and make money from!)

This is the final month of our trial of the potential new format for the Date-A-Base list. Please let us know if you prefer this format and whether you’d like to see it adopted in the books as well.

As always, the anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time for research and writing. We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research. Please let us know of any errors you find.

The listing below is a small sample of the entries for September from The Date-A-Base Book 2014. There are 266 anniversaries for September in the book, which covers the whole of 2014 from January to December and features more than 2,650 anniversaries in total.

Just one published article will cover the cost of your copy many times over.

The Date-A-Base Book 2015 is also available

—–

1st Sep 1939 (75 anniversary)
Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II.

2nd Sep 1939 (75th anniversary)
The National Service Act was passed, making all British men aged between 18 and 41 liable for military service.

3rd Sep 1939 (75th anniversary)
World War II: Britain, Australia, New Zealand and France declared war on Germany.

4th Sep 1964 (50th anniversary)
The Forth Road Bridge opened in Scotland. It links Edinburgh and Fife across the Firth of Forth. (A second road bridge being constructed alongside it is due for completion in 2016.)

5th Sep 1984 (30th anniversary)
Capital punishment was abolished throughout Australia when Western Australia became the last state to outlaw it.

6th Sep 1989 (25th anniversary)
41,000 Parisians received letters charging them with murder, extortion and prostitution instead of traffic offences (due to a computer error).

7th Sep 1914 (100th anniversary)
Birth of James Van Allen, American scientist who discovered the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding the Earth.

8th Sep 1974 (40th anniversary)
Former U.S. President Richard Nixon was granted a full pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford. (Nixon had resigned in August over the Watergate scandal.)

9th Sep 1954 (60th anniversary)
The ground-breaking ceremony was held for the first full-scale atomic power station in the USA, at Shippingport, Pennsylvania. (It began generating power in Dec 1957 and ceased operations in Oct 1982.)

10th Sep 1939 (75th anniversary)
World War II: the British submarine HMS Oxley was sunk by another British submarine HMS Triton near Norway. The Oxley was out of position and failed to respond to signals, so was assumed to be an enemy vessel. It was the Royal Navy’s first loss of the war.

11th Sep 1989 (25th anniversary)
Hungary opened its border with Austria and lifted East German visa restrictions, allowing thousands of East Germans to flee to the West.

12th – 15th Sep 1939 (200th anniversary)
War of 1812 – the Battle of Baltimore (Maryland); American victory.
(Francis Scott Key watched part of the battle and it inspired him to write his poem The Defence of Fort McHenry, which later became the lyrics to the U.S. national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner).

13th Sep 1989 (25th anniversary)
Customers of Citibank received an extra £2 billion in Britain’s biggest-ever banking computer error. 99.3% of the money was later returned.

14th Sep 1914 (100th anniversary)
Birth of Clayton Moore, American film and television actor. Best known for his lead role in the TV series The Lone Ranger.

15th Sep 1964 (50th anniversary)
The Sun newspaper was first published – it is Britain’s biggest-selling daily newspaper.

16th Sep 1914 (100th anniversary)
Birth of Allen Funt, American radio and television personality, writer, producer and director. Created and hosted the TV show Candid Camera.

17th Sep 1964 (50th anniversary)
The first episode of the TV sitcom Bewitched was broadcast on ABC in the USA.

18th Sep 1964 (50th anniversary)
The first episode of the TV series The Addams Family was broadcast on ABC in the USA.

19th Sep 1934 (80th anniversary)
Birth of Brian Epstein, British rock group manager (The Beatles). (Died 1967.)

20th Sep 1989 (25th anniversary)
F. W. de Klerk became President of South Africa.

21st Sep 1964 (50th anniversary)
Malta gained its independence from the UK.

22nd Sep 1989 (25th anniversary)
IRA bomb attack at the Royal Marines School of Music in Deal, Kent, UK. 11 people were killed and more than 20 injured.

23rd Sep 1889 (125th anniversary)
Nintendo was founded in Japan. (It originally produced Japanese playing cards, but later became the world’s largest video game company.)

24th Sep 1939 (75th anniversary)
Death of Carl Laemmle, pioneering German-born American film producer who founded Universal Pictures.

25th Sep 1764 (250th anniversary)
Birth of Fletcher Christian, British sailor who led the famous mutiny on the HMS Bounty against Captain William Bligh in 1789.

26th Sep 1914 (100th anniversary)
The Federal Trade Commission was established in the USA.

27th Sep 1954 (60th anniversary)
The first episode of the long-running television series The Tonight Show was broadcast on NBC in the USA. Steve Allen was the first host.

28th Sep 1914 (100th anniversary)
Death of R(ichard) W(arren) Sears, American businessman who (with Alvah C. Roebuck) founded Sears, Roebuck and Company.

29th Sep 1954 (60th anniversary)
CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) was established in Geneva, Switzerland.

30th Sep 1924 (90th anniversary)
Birth of Truman Capote, American novelist, short story writer and playwright (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood and others). (Died 1984.)

– – – – – – –

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002!

What If…? 10 Creative Writing Prompts for March

Here’s this month’s selection of “What If…?” creative writing prompts to inspire you – let’s see what you can do with these!

These are all taken from our book: The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

What if…

1. you always made a point of telling smelly people that they had a problem?

2. you found your house unexpectedly empty?

3. you copied someone else?

4. you spread lies about a competitor?

5. there was an anti-gravity bomb?

6. you could create more time whenever you needed it?

7. you discovered that you couldn’t keep secrets?

8. you were faced with an impossible choice?

9. you had everything you’d ever wanted?

10. you went on a ghost hunt (or organised one), but ran out screaming?

– – – – – – –

Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring the world’s writers since 2002

The Date-A-Base Book 2015 now available

We are delighted to announce that the long-awaited Date-A-Base Book 2015 (part 1: January to June) is now available.

Buy your copy today and we’ll send you Part 2 (July to December) as soon as it becomes available – at no additional cost. (Expected end of April.)

Part 1 features over 2,000 newsworthy and notable anniversaries in 2015 – events, discoveries, inventions, births, deaths, etc – for you to write about and make money from. (And there will be another 2,000+ anniversaries in part 2.)

Here’s the link to get your copy:
www.ideas4writers.co.uk/2015

(Or if you’re a lifetime member of ideas4writers, log in to the members’ area at www.ideas4writers.co.uk to download your free copy.)

31 Newsworthy Anniversaries in August 2014 for you to write about (and make money from!)

We’re continuing our trial of the new format for the Date-A-Base list again this month. Please let us know if you prefer this format and whether you’d like to see it adopted in the books as well.

The listing below is a small sample of the entries for August from The Date-A-Base Book 2014. There are 225 anniversaries for August in the book, which covers the whole of 2014 from January to December and features more than 2,650 anniversaries in total.

Just one published article will cover the cost of your copy many times over.

The Date-A-Base Book 2015 is coming soon.
Once again, we apologise for the delay. Cross-checking is taking far longer than we expected due to the erroneous information given out by supposedly trustworthy websites.

—–

1st Aug 1714 (300th anniversary)
Death of Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, the last Stuart monarch; succeeded by King George I.

2nd Aug 1939 (75th anniversary)
Albert Einstein wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging the creation of an atomic weapons research programme.

3rd Aug 1934 (80th anniversary)
German Chancellor Adolf Hitler became absolute dictator of Germany, combining the roles of Chancellor and President into one: Führer.

4th Aug 1914 (100th anniversary)
World War I: Britain declared war on Germany.

5th Aug 1914 (100th anniversary)
The world’s first electric traffic lights were installed in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. (The world’s first traffic lights were lit by gas and hand-operated by police officers – the first was installed in London in Dec 1868.)

6th Aug 1889 (125th anniversary)
The Savoy Hotel in London opened.

7th Aug 1944 (70th anniversary)
One of the earliest computers, the Harvard Mark I, was dedicated at Harvard University. It was an electro-mechanical computer built by IBM, where it was called the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC).

8th Aug 1974 (40th anniversary)
U.S. President Richard Nixon announced his resignation, effective from 9th Aug. He was facing impeachment over the Watergate scandal. Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as President the following day.

9th Aug 1814 (200th anniversary)
The Creek War in the American South ended with the signing of the Treaty of Fort Jackson. 23 million acres of Creek land (half of Alabama and part of southern Georgia) was surrendered to the United States.

10th Aug 1814 (200th anniversary)
Birth of Henri Nestlé, German-born Swiss confectioner and industrialist; founder of Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company.

11th Aug 1934 (80th anniversary)
The first federal prisoners arrived at Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay.

12th Aug 1939 (75th anniversary)
The U.S. première of the movie The Wizard of Oz. (USA release: 25th Aug; UK première: 9th Nov.)

13th Aug 1964 (50th anniversary)
The last executions in Britain took place. Two murderers were hanged: Gwynne Evans at Strangeways Prison in Manchester and Peter Allen at Walton Prison in Liverpool.

14th Aug 1984 (30th anniversary)
Death of J. B. Priestley, British novelist and playwright.

15th Aug 1914 (100th anniversary)
The Panama Canal was officially opened.

16th Aug 1954 (60th anniversary)
The first issue of Sports Illustrated magazine was published in the USA.

17th Aug 1989 (25th anniversary)
Electronic tagging of a criminal was used for the first time in Britain.

18th Aug 1964 (50th anniversary)
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned South Africa from taking part in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics because of its apartheid policies. (The ban remained in place until 1992.)

19th Aug 14 (2000th anniversary)
Death of Augustus, founder and first Emperor of the Roman Empire.

20th Aug 1989 (25th anniversary)
Marchioness disaster, River Thames, London. A dredger crashed into a pleasure cruiser, killing 51 people.

21st Aug 1939 (75th anniversary)
Civil Defence – a grouping of civilian emergency services – began in Britain to provide a controlled response to German bombing raids.

22nd Aug 1999 (15th anniversary)
British farmer Tony Martin was arrested (and later convicted of murder) after he shot and killed a burglar at his farmhouse in Norfolk.

23rd Aug 1944 (70th anniversary)
Freckleton Air Disaster, Lancashire, England. A U.S. Army Air Force bomber crashed into a village school killing 61 people (38 children).

24th Aug 1949 (65th anniversary)
The North Atlantic Treaty came into effect, establishing NATO.

25th Aug 1939 (75th anniversary)
Britain and Poland signed the Anglo-Polish Agreement of Mutual Assistance (also called the Polish-British Common Defence Pact). Its aim was to prevent Germany from attacking Poland. (Hitler had planned to invade Poland on 26th Aug but postponed it to 1st Sept because of the signing of this pact. The invasion then went ahead, starting WWII.)

26th Aug 1974 (40th anniversary)
Death of Charles Lindbergh, American aviation pioneer.

27th Aug 1984 (30th anniversary)
U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced the Teacher in Space Project. (Over 11,000 teachers applied, and Christa McAuliffe was selected. She died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on 28th Jan 1986.)

28th Aug 1994 (20th anniversary)
Sunday trading was legalised in England and Wales.

29th Aug 1949 (65th anniversary)
The Soviet Union successfully exploded its first atomic bomb (known as First Lightning or Joe 1) at a remote test site in Kazakhstan.

30th Aug 1939 (75th anniversary)
With WWII imminent, the evacuation of children from British cities began.

31st Aug 1994 (20th anniversary)
The IRA agreed to a complete ceasefire after 25 years.

– – – – – – –

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your local currency) and you’ll receive The Date-A-Base Book for 2014 (plus the 2015 edition and all future editions as soon as they are published) as well as The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas, How to Win Short Story Competitions, our complete collection of 5,000+ writing ideas, unlimited use of our forums and exclusive online writing software, and more.
(Total value: over £150!)
Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002!

ideas4writers publications update

Lots of you are asking when The Date-A-Base Book 2015 will be published.

The bad news is we just don’t know – there’s still a huge amount of work left to do on it, even though we’ve been working on it for 7 months and these books usually only take 3 months to produce. This is mainly due to the worsening accuracy of information available online, which is making cross-checking each entry much harder and more time-consuming, since formerly trusted sources can no longer be trusted.

The good news is that the first half (January to June) is just about done, so we’re going to do what we did with the 2013 edition and split it into two parts. Part 1 should be available (in PDF format) before the end of February – and hopefully by the end of next week.

Rather than sell the two parts separately (which got a bit complicated last time), we’re going to sell part 1 for the usual price (£8.99) and then send the full version (when it’s ready) free of charge to everyone who buys part 1.

While you’re waiting, how about entering a short story competition? Our book How to Win Short Story Competitions is on sale this month for just 99p for the PDF edition or 77p for the Kindle edition.

(You can read Kindle books on any PC, Mac, smartphone or tablet – no Kindle device required. There’s a link to the free Kindle app on every Kindle book page on Amazon’s website.)

What If . . . ? 10 Creative Writing Prompts for February

Here’s this month’s selection of “What If…?” creative writing prompts to inspire you – let’s see what you can do with these!

These are all taken from our book: The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

What if…

1. you finally did something about all those cars speeding down your street?

2. you couldn’t get enough people to attend?

3. it called for a drastic change of tactics?

4. you could choose to keep (or enhance) one of your five main senses, but you would lose the other four?

5. you disobeyed an order?

6. you thought you had gone too far, but in fact you hadn’t gone far enough?

7. you would be in hospital for months?

8. you were about to set up your 100th company?

9. people thought you were stupid?

10. you wished you didn’t know some of the things you knew?

– – – – – – –

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your currency) and you’ll receive:
Our complete collection of 5,000+ writing ideas
The Fastest Way to Get Ideas (4,400 what ifs)
The Date-A-Base Book 2014 (plus all future editions)
The Fastest Way to Write Your Book
How to Win Short Story Competitions
Unlimited use of our exclusive online writing software
Full access to our members-only discussion forums
And more… (total value: over £150)

Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring the world’s writers since 2002

31 Newsworthy Anniversaries in July 2014 for you to write about (and make money from!)

By popular demand, we’re trying out a new format for the Date-A-Base list this month. Let us know if you prefer this format and whether you’d like to see it adopted in the books as well.

We usually list the anniversaries sorted by anniversary, so in July all the 200th anniversaries are listed together, followed by all the 175th anniversaries, then all the 150th, and so on.

But we’ve been asked to consider sorting the anniversaries by date instead, so that all the 1st July anniversaries are listed together, followed by all the 2nd July anniversaries, and so on. With that in mind, this month we’ve compiled the list in date order, with one anniversary for each day of the month.

The listing below is a small sample of the entries for July from The Date-A-Base Book 2014. There are more than 219 anniversaries for July in the book, which covers the whole of 2014 from January to December and features more than 2,650 anniversaries in total.

Just one published article will cover the cost of your copy many times over.

The Date-A-Base Book 2015 is coming soon.
We apologise for the delay. Cross-checking is taking far longer than we expected due to the erroneous information given out by supposedly trustworthy websites.

—–

1st July 1934 (80th anniversary)
The Federal Communications Commission took over the role of regulator of broadcasting in the USA from the Federal Radio Commission.

2nd July 1964 (50th anniversary)
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 came into effect in the USA. The landmark act outlawed racial and sexual discrimination.

3rd July 1939 (75th anniversary)
The first episode of the radio sitcom Blondie was broadcast in the USA. (It was developed from Chic Young’s comic strip and ran until 1950.)

4th July 1954 (60th anniversary)
All food rationing in Britain ended following the end of WWII. (Food rationing began in Jan 1940. De-rationing began in 1948 but progress was slow. The last items to be de-rationed were meat and bacon.)

5th July 1954 (60th anniversary)
The BBC launched the first daily TV news programme in the UK.

6th July 1964 (50th anniversary)
Nyasaland gained its independence from the UK and changed its name to Malawi.

7th July 1999 (15th anniversary
A jury in Miami, Florida, USA found the tobacco industry liable for making a defective product that causes emphysema, lung cancer and other illnesses. (It later awarded $144.8 billion damages to 500,000 Florida smokers.)

8th July 1839 (175th anniversary)
Birth of John D. Rockefeller, American industrialist and philanthropist; founder of Standard Oil.

9th July 1984 (30th anniversary)
York Minster in England was struck by lightning which set fire to the roof and destroyed the south transept.

10th July 1989 (25th anniversary)
Death of Mel Blanc, American voice actor who supplied voices for over 400 cartoon characters including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig.

11th July 1914 (100th anniversary)
American baseball legend Babe Ruth played his first Major League Baseball game (Boston Red Sox).

12th July 1994 (20th anniversary)
The ban on German troops fighting outside their own country was lifted, allowing Germany to join UN and NATO peace-keeping missions. The ban had been in place since the end of WWII.

13th July 1954 (60th anniversary)
Death of Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist; best known for her intensely coloured self-portraits.

14th July 1989 (25th anniversary)
The Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP) was inaugurated at CERN in Switzerland. It is 16.8 miles (27 km) in circumference.

15th July 1934 (80th anniversary)
Continental Airlines began operating in the USA. (In Mar 2012 in merged with United Airlines.)

16th to 22nd July 1994 (20th anniversary)
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter.

17th July 1989 (25th anniversary)
The U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Stealth Bomber made its first flight.

18th July 1914 (100th anniversary)
The Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps was established. It was the military aviation service of the U.S. Army until 1918, and became the U.S. Air Force in 1947.

19th July 1814 (200th anniversary)
Birth of Samuel Colt, American inventor and firearms manufacturer who popularised the revolver.

20th July 1944 (70th anniversary)
World War II: the 20th July plot. The German Resistance movement attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in Berlin and remove the Nazi Party from power in a coup. The attempt failed. The movement’s central figure, Claus von Stauffenberg, and his fellow conspirators were executed the following day. The Gestapo also arrested at least 7,000 members of the resistance movement, of whom 4,980 are known to have been executed. This effectively ended the German Resistance movement.

21st July 1954 (60th anniversary)
The first part of J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings was published. (Part 2: 11th Nov 1954, Part 3: 20th Oct 1955.)

22nd July 1934 (80th anniversary)
Death of John Dillinger, American bank robber, ‘Public Enemy No. 1’, shot and killed outside a Chicago theatre by FBI agents.

23rd July 1764 (250th anniversary)
Death of Gilbert Tennent, Irish-born American religious leader; one of the leaders of the Great Awakening in Colonial America.

24th July 1974 (40th anniversary)
Watergate: the U.S. Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to surrender the White House tape recordings that had been subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee in April. Nixon released them on 30th July. (He resigned on 9th Aug, faced with almost certain impeachment.)

25th July 1934 (80th anniversary)
Death of Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, assassinated by the Nazis.

26th July 1914 (100th anniversary)
Birth of Erskine Hawkins, American jazz/swing trumpeter and bandleader; best known for composing the song Tuxedo Junction.

27th July 1994 (20th anniversary)
Death of Kevin Carter, Pulitzer Prize-winning South African photojournalist; best known for his photo of a starving child watched by a vulture during the 1993 famine in Sudan (suicide).

28th July 1914 (100th anniversary)
World War I began. (Ended 11th Nov 1918.)

29th July 1974 (40th anniversary)
Death of Cass Elliot, ‘Mama Cass’, American singer, best known as a member of The Mamas & the Papas.

30th July 1954 (60th anniversary)
The Television Act was passed in the UK. This led to the establishment of the commercial TV network. The Independent Television Authority (ITA) began operating on 4th Aug. (ITV began broadcasting in the London area on 22nd Sept 1955 and was available in all regions by Sept 1962.)

31st July 1964 (50th anniversary)
The U.S. space probe Ranger 7 sent back the first close-up images of the Moon.

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