300+ Newsworthy Anniversaries in September 2016 for you to write about (and make money from)

Instead of our usual monthly listing of just 50 anniversaries, this time we’re giving you over 300!

Please download Dave’s book Ditch Your Day Job! The easiest way to make a living as a writer. The complete Date-A-Base listing for September 2016 is contained within it. 

There’s also a detailed example of one of the entries which shows you how you could write multiple articles about it – and how to find lots of suitable (and well-paid) publications to send them to.

If you’re looking for newsworthy and notable anniversaries in 2017 you’ll love The Date-A-Base Book 2017 – on sale now!

 

What If? 31 Creative Writing Prompts for March

Here’s this month’s selection of What Ifs to stimulate your brain – what can you do with these? Some of them are deliberately vague or ambiguous so you can interpret them in different ways!

There’s one for each day of the month. If you need more please take a look at our book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

What if…

1. you decided to live the millionaire lifestyle, even though you weren’t one (yet)?

2. the police asked you to help them set a trap for one of your colleagues?

3. there was no definitive way of spelling words?

4. you were in love with an alien that had come to destroy us?

5. you were seriously injured in the line of duty, but your employer refused to support you?

6. your call for volunteers produced unexpected results?

7. you wrote a book that contained information people weren’t supposed to know?

8. you finally felt that you were making progress?

9. you always made the most of every situation?

10. you finally stopped being disappointed (in yourself or someone else) and became impressed with the change or progress?

11. you couldn’t help but smile?

12. you decided to save a language that was about to become extinct, even though you didn’t speak it yourself?

13. you could hire someone else to exercise for you?

14. everyone worked for free?

15. you were admired for your arrogance?

16. you accepted a job offer but were never given a starting date?

17. you didn’t listen?

18. all your money was missing?

19. no one would/could give you a straight answer?

20. no one was to blame?

21. wood couldn’t be used for anything ?

22. you came up with an unusual way of getting people to leave you alone?

23. your boss didn’t believe you were really sick?

24. you faked your death and went to your funeral in disguise?

25. everyone was identical?

26. people criticised your sordid past – yet it wasn’t sordid at all?

27. you weren’t allowed out on your own?

28. your last will and testament contained a series of practical jokes?

29. your reward came sooner than you expected?

30. everyone gasped when you walked into the room?

31. you lived in a place that had no name?

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Book updates

Hello! A couple of book updates to tell you about:

The Date-A-Base Book 2017 is now available on Kindle

Get yours here: UK : USA
(Other countries please search for it in the Kindle Store)

If you send us your Amazon receipt after buying it we’ll also send you the PDF version, which is designed for bigger screens and is also printable.

Printed copies should be available from our website in about 2 weeks – we just sent it off to the printers today.

To buy the PDF version please visit www.ideas4writers.co.uk/2017

We’ve also updated Ditch Your Day Job! The easiest way to make a living as a writer. It’s now been updated for 2016, and although the main text is little changed from the original 2015 edition, it now includes the complete Date-A-Base listing for September 2016 (around 300 entries). There’s also a detailed example of one of the entries from that month that shows you how you could write multiple articles about it and find suitable (paying) publications to send them to. The most profitable use of your time is to get the articles accepted before you even write them, guaranteeing that you get paid for everything you write. See the book for more details – it shows you exactly how to do this.

The PDF version is a free download from our website (www.ideas4writers.co.uk), or there’s a small charge (99p) if you want the Kindle version (UK : USA).

As it’s such a short book (only 15 pages for the main text + another 36 pages for the list of anniversaries) there’s no printed version. But the PDF version is printable.

—

Brassica Park update

Dave has completed Act 1 (15 chapters) of his new novel Brassica Park. But he’s having to take some time out to write a business plan for the swimming pool campaign charity he chairs – it has to be presented to the Town Council during the third week of March. Hopefully he’ll back up to full novel-writing speed straight after that, and will be able to crack on with Act 2.

50 Newsworthy Anniversaries in August 2016 for you to write about (and make money from)

Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in August 2016 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time to find markets, and research and write your articles.

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 August from The Date-A-Base Book 2016. There are 256 anniversaries for August in the book (five times as many as are listed here). The book covers the whole of 2016 from January to December and features more than 3,450 anniversaries in total.

Just one published article should cover the cost of your copy many times over – and the book also explains how to get your articles published.

If you need to work further ahead, The Date-A-Base Book 2017 is also available.

—–

200 years ago (14 Aug 1816)
Britain annexed the Tristan da Cunha archipelago in the south Atlantic.

200 years ago (24 Aug 1816)
The Treaty of St. Louis was signed in Missouri by representatives from the USA and the united tribes of Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi. The tribes relinquished their rights to land ceded to the USA in 1804, and in exchange received $1,000 worth of merchandise, paid over 12 years. (The treaty came into effect on 30^th December.)

150 years ago (1 Aug 1866)
Death of John Ross, Native American Indian. Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation (1828–66). Although he devoted much of his life to resisting the USA’s attempts to seize Cherokee lands, he eventually capitulated and helped remove his people to the Oklahoma Territory.

150 years ago (8 Aug 1866)
Birth of Matthew Henson, the first African American Arctic explorer. He accompanied Robert E. Peary on most of his expeditions, including the 1909 expedition when they became the first men to reach the North Pole.

150 years ago (13 Aug 1866)
Birth of Giovanni Agnelli, Italian industrialist who founded the Fiat car company.

150 years ago (23 Aug 1866)
The Austro–Prussian War ended with the signing of the Peace of Prague. Prussian victory.

100 years ago (3 Aug 1916)
Death of Roger Casement, Irish nationalist. (Executed for treason for his role in the Easter Rising.)

100 years ago (25 Aug 1916)
The National Park Service was established in the USA.

100 years ago (29 Aug 1916)
The U.S. Congress passed the Philippine Autonomy Act (also known as the Jones Law). It created the first fully elected Philippine legislature.

80 years ago (1 – 16 Aug 1936)
The 11^th Olympic Games were held in Berlin, Germany. It was the last Olympics for 12 years due to World War II.

80 years ago (1 Aug 1936)
Birth of Yves Saint-Laurent, Algerian-born French fashion designer. (Died 2008.)

80 years ago (2 Aug 1936)
Death of Louis Blériot, French aviation pioneer, engineer and inventor. The first person to fly across the English Channel.

80 years ago (14 Aug 1936)
The last public execution in the USA. Rainey Bethea was hanged for rape in Owensboro, Kentucky.

80 years ago (26 Aug 1936)
The Anglo–Egyptian Alliance Treaty was signed in Cairo, Egypt, ending Britain’s occupation of Egypt.

75 years ago (1 Aug 1941)
The first mass-produced Jeep rolled off the production line, for service in WWII. (Before this, all Jeeps had been prototypes and test models.)

75 years ago (2 Aug 1941)
Birth of Doris Coley, American pop singer (The Shirelles). (Died 2000.)

75 years ago (14 Aug 1941)
World War II: Britain and the USA issued the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration that laid out the aims and goals of the Allied powers during and after the war.

75 years ago (14 Aug 1941)
Death of Saint Maximilian (also spelled Maksymilian) Kolbe, Polish Franciscan friar and martyr who sheltered 2,000 Jewish refugees from the Nazis and took the place of a condemned man at Auschwitz concentration camp. (Executed.)

75 years ago (15 Aug 1941)
German spy Josef Jakobs became the last person to be executed at the Tower of London. (He parachuted into Britain during WWII and was executed by a military firing squad.)

75 years ago (25 Aug – 17 Sep 1941)
World War II – Operation Countenance: the Anglo–Soviet invasion of Iran. The invasion was in response to Iran’s declaration of neutrality, its refusal to allow its territory to be used for the war effort against Germany, and its refusal to expel German nationals. Allied victory. The Shah of Iran was forced to abdicate on 16^th September.

60 years ago (3 Aug 1956)
Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor was renamed Liberty Island. (It is the site of the Statue of Liberty.)

60 years ago (11 Aug 1956)
Death of Jackson Pollock, influential American abstract expressionist artist. Best known for his drip paintings. (Car crash, aged 44.)

60 years ago (14 Aug 1956)
Death of Bertolt Brecht, German poet, playwright and theatrical director/reformer who developed the epic theatre style and promoted leftist/Marxist causes.

60 years ago (16 Aug 1956)
Death of Bela Lugosi, Hungarian-born American stage and film actor. Best known for his horror roles, most notably as Count Dracula.

60 years ago (27 Aug 1956)
Britain’s first nuclear power station, Calder Hall in Cumbria, began operating. (It was officially opened by the Queen on 17^th October. It was the first nuclear power station in the world to generate power on an industrial scale. The world’s first nuclear power station began operating in the Soviet Union in 1954, on an experimental basis, but its output was significantly lower than Calder Hall’s.)

50 years ago (1 Aug 1966)
The Cultural Revolution (also known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) began in China. It was intended to preserve China’s Maoist/Communist ideology by banishing capitalist and traditional elements from society. Millions of people were persecuted or displaced and there were violent struggles throughout the country. (The Revolution ended after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976.)

50 years ago (1 Aug 1966)
University of Texas at Austin spree shooting, USA. American engineering student Charles Whitman shot and killed 15 people and wounded 31 others before being shot dead by police. (In the early hours of the same morning he had also killed his wife and mother. It was the deadliest college campus shooting until 2007.)

50 years ago (3 Aug 1966)
Death of Lenny Bruce, American stand-up comedian, satirist and free speech activist. Noted for his black humour and controversial routines punctuated by obscenity.

50 years ago (4 & 5 Aug 1966)
U.S. newspapers and radio stations republished an extract from a British newspaper article dated March 1966 in which John Lennon of the Beatles said his band was ‘more popular than Jesus’. It provoked widespread protests, with radio stations in many states refusing to play their records. (He apologised on 12^th August during a press conference in Chicago to promote the start of their final tour.)

50 years ago (5 Aug 1966)
The album Revolver by the Beatles was released in the UK. (USA: 8^th August.)

50 years ago (10 Aug 1966)
NASA launched its Lunar Orbiter I spacecraft to the Moon to map its surface and photograph potential landing sites for the Apollo missions. It also took the first photo of the Earth from the Moon’s orbit.

50 years ago (24 Aug 1966)
The sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage was released in the USA. (UK: 14^th October.)

50 years ago (26 Aug 1966 – 21 Mar 1990)
Namibian War of Independence. SWAPO victory. South-West Africa gained its independence from South Africa and became the Republic of Namibia.

50 years ago (29 Aug 1966)
The Beatles performed their final concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California, USA.

40 years ago (1 Aug 1976)
Trinidad and Tobago severed its links with the British monarchy and became an independent republic.

40 years ago (1 Aug 1976)
Austrian racing driver Niki Lauda suffered life-threatening burns and was left with permanent disfigurement when he crashed in the German Grand Prix. (As a result of this accident, the Nürburgring circuit was declared too dangerous to race on. It was rebuilt and shortened.)

30 years ago (9 Aug 1986)
British rock band Queen performed their final live concert before the death of singer Freddie Mercury, at Knebworth Park, Stevenage, UK.

30 years ago (17 Aug 1986)
Pixar released its first film, Luxo Jr. The 2-minute film stars a computer-animated desk lamp. It was the first CGI film to be nominated for an Academy Award.

25 years ago (5 Aug 1991)
Death of Paul Brown, American football coach who introduced numerous innovations both on and off the field, including filmed reviews of games, classroom study and written tests for players, and new blocking tactics.

25 years ago (5 Aug 1991)
Death of Soichiro Honda, Japanese industrialist and engineer who founded the Honda Motor Company.

25 years ago (6 Aug 1991)
The first ever website (info.cern.ch) went live. The web’s inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, also posted a description of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup and provided a link to download the first web browser, though it could only run on NeXT workstations. (The World Wide Web was opened up to new users on 23^rd August.)

25 years ago (8 Aug 1991)
British journalist John McCarthy was released by Islamic Jihad in Lebanon after being held hostage for over 5 years.

25 years ago (19 – 21 Aug 1991)
Attempted coup in the Soviet Union. Hard-line members of the Communist Party tried to seize control from President Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup failed after just 3 days and eventually led to the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the USSR. On 24^th August Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On 29^th August the Soviet Parliament voted to suspend all activities of the Communist Party.

25 years ago (20 Aug 1991)
The following former Soviet states gained their independence this month: Estonia (20^th), Latvia (21^st), Ukraine (24^th), Belarus (25^th), Moldova (27^th), Azerbaijan (30^th), Kyrgyzstan (31^st), Uzbekistan (31^st).

25 years ago (25 Aug 1991)
German racing driver Michael Schumacher made his Formula 1 debut in the Belgian Grand Prix.

20 years ago (6 Aug 1996)
NASA reported that a meteorite (ALH 84001) found in Antarctica and believed to have come from Mars showed possible signs of primitive life, including hydrocarbons, minerals and microfossils consistent with bacterial activity.

20 years ago (13 Aug 1996)
Microsoft released its Internet Explorer 3 web browser. It was the first widely used version and led to a browser war with Netscape Navigator.

20 years ago (16 Aug 1996)
A female gorilla, Binti Jua, rescued a three-year-old boy who had fallen into the primate enclosure at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago, USA.

20 years ago (28 Aug 1996)
Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana were divorced. Princess Diana could no longer be addressed as Her Royal Highness but would be known as Diana, Princess of Wales.

10 years ago (23 Aug 2006)
Austrian kidnapping victim Natascha Kampusch escaped from captivity after 8 years. (She had been kidnapped by Wolfgang Priklopil at the age of 10 and held in a secret cellar beneath his garage in Strasshof an der Nordbahn.)

10 years ago (24 Aug 2006)
Pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefined the term ‘planet’.

---

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Price if purchased individually: £214.56
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What If? 29 Creative Writing Prompts for February

Here’s this month’s selection of What Ifs to stimulate your brain – what can you do with these? Some of them are deliberately vague or ambiguous so you can interpret them in different ways!

There’s one for each day of the month. If you need more please take a look at our book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

What if…

1. the FTSE or Dow Jones share index fell to 0?

2. green was no longer a colour?

3. you thought you were a robot?

4. someone cast a spell on you – with or without your knowledge?

5. you suffered a crisis of conscience?

6. you were in a Catch-22 situation?

7. you learned that someone, who was not your partner, was in love with you?

8. someone was injuring all the children in a particular class, in alphabetical order?

9. every time you drove along a particular road you came across the same person standing/sitting/lying there and had to drive around them?

10. one of the major countries of the world was at war with every other country?

11. you tried to learn something as an adult that just about everyone else had learned as children?

12. every year you set yourself a new challenge?

13. you retreated into your mind to escape your real-life situation?

14. everyone you met today seemed to come from a place you had never heard of?

15. someone walked into a police station and announced that he/she had killed God?

16. the residents of a small island nation that you had never visited elected you as their monarch?

17. you were the child of a monarch and expected to inherit the role – but the populace hated you?

18. you were one of a small number of survivors and were given an essential role within the group that you had little or no prior experience of?

19. you were rehired to do a job you had left years ago?

20. you were given the task of listing 101 great things about the place you lived in, but you could only think of 5?

21. you experienced the downsides of celebrity?

22. you quickly learned a new skill and became highly renowned after discovering you had a talent for it, but you incurred the wrath of those who had been struggling with it for years?

23. the greatest hurricane the world had ever known made it all the way across the Atlantic without losing any of its strength?

24. it was declared that one of the world’s most notorious serial killers, who had been in prison for decades, was in fact entirely innocent?

25. whenever you held a book-signing session someone in the queue was killed?

26. you were asked to help the police track down someone you had once worked with?

27. you were left a business in a will, and were required to turn it from the third-biggest in town to the biggest within five years or you would forfeit both the business and the millions you would inherit if you succeeded?

28. you made the most of the freedom that comes with electronic/self-publishing and invented an entirely new genre (or hybrid genre)?

29. during your wedding ceremony your spouse-to-be said, loudly and clearly, someone else’s name rather than yours?

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The Date-A-Base Book 2016 corrections

Hello. We need to tell you about a correction we’ve made to the 2016 edition of The Date-A-Base Book.

Correction

The first football (soccer) penalty kick was on 6th June 1891, not 6th January.

More details here:

www.scottishsporthistory.com/sports-history-news-and-blog/born-in-scotland-the-story-of-the-penalty-kick

Many thanks to Jonathan and Mike for alerting us.

***

If you need (or want) to know what will be making the news in the months to come, try The Date-A-Base Book series. It’s the easy way to see into the future!

Current editions:

2016: www.ideas4writers.co.uk/2016

2017: www.ideas4writers.co.uk/2017

2018: due for release late spring

 

50 Newsworthy Anniversaries in July 2016 for you to write about (and make money from)

Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in July 2016 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time to find markets, and research and write your articles.

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 July from The Date-A-Base Book 2016. There are 317 anniversaries for July in the book, which covers the whole of 2016 from January to December and features more than 3,450 anniversaries in total.

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

If you need to work further ahead, The Date-A-Base Book 2017 is also available.

—–

800 years ago (16 Jul 1216)
Death of Pope Innocent III, succeeded by Honorius III

250 years ago (8 Jul 1766)
Birth of Dominique Jean Larrey, Baron Larrey, innovative French military surgeon during the Napoleonic Wars. He introduced mobile field hospitals and an army ambulance corps, used carriages to rapidly transport wounded soldiers from the battlefield, manned the carriages with trained personnel, and introduced a triage system so that the most seriously injured were treated first.

200 years ago (7 Jul 1816)
Death of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish-born playwright, poet, theatrical impresario and politician. Owner of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. Best known for his play The School for Scandal.

200 years ago (9 Jul 1816)
Argentina declared its independence from Spain.

200 years ago (14 Jul 1816)
Death of Francisco de Miranda, Venezuelan revolutionary who paved the way for the independence of the Spanish-American colonies. His own plans failed, but those who followed him &endash; most notably Simón Bolívar – were more effective.

200 years ago (21 Jul 1816)
Birth of Paul Julius Reuter, Baron von Reuter, German-born British journalist and media owner who pioneered the use of the electric telegraph in news-gathering and dissemination. Founder of Reuters news agency.

150 years ago (3 Jul 1866)
Austro-Prussian War – the Battle of Königgratz. Prussian victory. This was the decisive battle of the war.

150 years ago (20 Jul 1866)
Death of Bernhard Riemann, influential German mathematician whose contributions to analysis, number theory and differential geometry laid the mathematical foundation for Einstein’s theory of relativity.

150 years ago (24 Jul 1866)
Tennessee became the first U.S. state to rejoin the Union following the American Civil War. (It had also been the last to secede.)

150 years ago (25 Jul 1866)
Ulysses S. Grant (later U.S. President) became the first General of the Army of the United States. (This rank is now called 5-star general.)

150 years ago (27 Jul 1866)
The first successful telegraph cable was laid across the Atlantic Ocean between Valentia, Ireland and Heart’s Content, Newfoundland. (The first cable, laid in 1858, failed after only a few weeks when attempts to send higher voltages through it melted the insulation. A second attempt in 1865 failed when the cable broke and the end was lost – it was found later in 1866 and spliced to a new cable, but was never as good as the 1866 cable.)

150 years ago (28 Jul 1866)
The Metric Act of 1866 came into effect in the USA, authorising the use of the metric system. (In December 1975 the U.S. Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act, making the metric system the preferred system for weights and measures in trade and commerce – though customary units were still permitted.)

150 years ago (28 Jul 1866)
Birth of Beatrix Potter, British children’s writer and illustrator who created enduring animal characters including Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck and many others.

100 years ago (1 Jul – 18 Nov 1916)
World War I – the Battle of the Somme (France). Result: inconclusive. This was the first battle to use tanks.

100 years ago (4 Jul 1916)
Birth of Tokyo Rose (Iva Toguri D’Aquino), American broadcaster of Japanese propaganda to Allied troops stationed in the South Pacific during WWII. (She was later convicted of treason and served 6 years in prison.)

100 years ago (8 Jul 1916)
Coca-Cola introduced its iconic contoured bottle.

100 years ago (9 Jul 1916)
Birth of Sir Edward Heath, British Prime Minister (1970–74).

100 years ago (15 Jul 1916)
The Boeing Company was founded in the USA (as Pacific Aero Products).

80 years ago (17 Jul 1936 – 1 Apr 1939)
The Spanish Civil War. Nationalist victory.

80 years ago (24 Jul 1936)
The speaking clock telephone service was launched in the UK. (The world’s first speaking clock service began in France in Feb 1933.)

75 years ago (1 Jul 1941)
Commercial broadcasting was legalised in the USA. NBC and CBS both launched their television services. NBC beat CBS onto the air by 1 hour, becoming the first commercial TV station in the USA. NBC was also the first to broadcast a TV commercial (for Bulova watches). The USA also formally adopted the NTSC standard on this day.

75 years ago (6 Jul – 5 Aug 1941)
World War II – Operation Barbarossa – the Battle of Smolensk. The first major battle during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. German victory, but the two-month delay it caused would prove costly later, since Hitler had assumed the operation would be over quickly and had not prepared for a winter war. (By the end of November, Germany had lost nearly a quarter of its forces, and supplies and ammunition were running low.)

75 years ago (10 Jul 1941)
Death of Jelly Roll Morton, American ragtime and jazz pianist and composer.

75 years ago (12 Jul 1941)
World War II: the Anglo-Soviet Agreement was signed by Britain and the Soviet Union, establishing a formal military alliance against Germany. They agreed to assist each other and not make separate peace deals with Germany.

75 years ago (19 or 20 Jul 1941)
World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his ‘V for Victory’ campaign.

75 years ago (20 Jul 1941)
Death of Lew Fields, American actor, comedian, vaudeville star and theatrical producer. Noted for his partnership with Joe Weber (Weber and Fields) – they performed slapstick routines in a fake Dutch dialect.

60 years ago (26 Jul 1956)
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, froze the assets of the Suez Canal Company and closed the canal to Israeli shipping, after the USA refused to finance the Aswan High Dam. (This sparked international condemnation and led to the Suez Crisis in October.)

60 years ago (30 Jul 1956)
‘In God We Trust’ was officially adopted as the U.S. national motto.

50 years ago (1 Jul 1966)
The Medicare health insurance programme began operating in the USA. It offered health insurance to those aged 65 and older.

50 years ago (2 Jul 1966)
France carried out its first nuclear test in the Pacific, at Moruroa Atoll (also spelled Mururoa), French Polynesia. (The bomb was codenamed Aldébaran.)

50 years ago (18 Jul 1966)
NASA launched its Gemini 10 manned spacecraft, with astronauts John W. Young and Michael Collins on board. It returned safely to Earth 3 days later, having made 43 orbits.

50 years ago (23 Jul 1966)
Death of Montgomery Clift, American stage and film actor. Noted for his emotional depth and sense of vulnerability in films such as Red River, A Place in the Sun, I Confess, From Here to Eternity, The Young Lions and The Misfits.

50 years ago (30 Jul 1966)
The 1966 FIFA World Cup final was played in London. England beat Germany 4–2. English player Geoff Hurst became the only man to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final. (At the time of writing this remains England’s only World Cup win.)

40 years ago (1 Jul 1976)
The first Apple computer, the Apple I, went on sale (for $666.66). Buyers received a single circuit board and had to provide (or build) their own case, power supply, keyboard, TV (for display) and a cassette recorder (for storage – though this required an add-on interface, sold separately). About 200 were built, of which about 175 were sold.

40 years ago (2 Jul 1976)
North Vietnam and South Vietnam were reunited as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with Hanoi as its capital. (Hanoi was formerly the capital of North Vietnam.)

40 years ago (10 Jul 1976)
Seveso disaster, northern Italy. An industrial accident at a chemical plant released a cloud of dioxins into residential areas, affecting around 120,000 people. 3,300 farm animals died and a further 80,000 were slaughtered. Some people suffered long-term health issues.

40 years ago (20 Jul 1976)
NASA’s Viking 1 lander successfully landed on Mars and sent back the first photo taken from the surface of Mars.

40 years ago (21 – 23 Jul 1976)
Legionnaire’s Disease: the American Legion held its annual convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Within a week, 25 attendees had died from the first recognised cases of Legionnaire’s Disease. In total, 221 attendees contracted the disease and 34 of them died (some sources give different figures). The new bacterium was discovered in the hotel’s air conditioning system and named Legionella after its first victims.

40 years ago (28 Jul 1976)
Tangshan earthquake, China. More than 240,000 people were killed (some sources claim at least 650,000, as the official figure only included those in the immediate area). Going by the larger estimate, it was the world’s worst earthquake of the 20th century (by death toll) and the second-worst in recorded history.

40 years ago (28 Jul 1976)
The official world airspeed record was broken by Captain Eldon W. Joersz and Major George T. Morgan in a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird at Beale Air Force Base, California, USA. The record of 2,193.2 mph (3,529.6 km/h) still stands.

30 years ago (23 Jul 1986)
Britain’s Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson in Westminster Abbey, London, and they became the Duke and Duchess of York.

30 years ago (28 Jul 1986)
British estate agent Suzy Lamplugh failed to return from an appointment in London, sparking the biggest missing person investigation since Lord Lucan. She has never been found.

25 years ago (1 Jul 1991)
Death of Michael Landon, American television actor, director and producer (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven).

25 years ago (2 Jul 1991)
Death of Lee Remick, American film and television actress.

25 years ago (5 Jul 1991)
International regulators shut down the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) due to money-laundering and other financial crimes.

25 years ago (10 Jul 1991)
Boris Yeltsin was sworn in as the first directly elected President of Russia.

25 years ago (22 Jul 1991)
British Prime Minister John Major launched the Citizen’s Charter, which aimed to measure, improve and maintain the standard of public services.

20 years ago (5 Jul 1996)
Birth of Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal. (Died 2003.)

20 years ago (27 Jul 1996)
A bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, during the Olympic Games. 2 people were killed and over 100 injured.

10 years ago (15 Jul 2006)
Twitter, the online micro-blogging service, was publicly launched.

---

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Price if purchased individually: £214.56
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What If? 31 Creative Writing Prompts for January

Here’s this month’s selection of What Ifs to stimulate your brain – what can you do with these? Some of them are deliberately vague or ambiguous so you can interpret them in different ways!

There’s one for each day of the month. If you need more please take a look at our book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

What if…

1. events from real life sounded too implausible to include in your novel?

2. everyone’s IQ dropped by 50 points overnight?

3. everyone’s IQ rose by 50 points overnight?

4. everyone’s IQ reversed overnight, so the most intelligent became the least intelligent and vice versa?

5. trouble had a way of finding you?

6. you did all of your children’s homework while they got on with something that you felt was far more important and worthwhile?

7. your partner became suspicious when you said you were working late – and they were right to be, but not for the reason they thought?

8. you were addicted to having cosmetic surgery?

9. people said you really needed cosmetic surgery and offered to pay for it?

10. a stranger offered to make you a star?

11. a stranger offered to dress you like a million dollars?

12. a stranger identified that you had a hidden talent and offered to pay for you to develop it?

13. Christmas was moved to once every four years as it had become too commercialised and expensive, and older people felt it came around too soon?

14. Christmas products were not allowed to be sold until 7 days before Christmas?

15. birthdays were held when you and your friends and family agreed that a full year had passed since the last one, irrespective of what the calendar said?

16. you disappeared?

17. you found yourself somewhere else and had no idea how you’d got there?

18. you were told you apologised too much, so resolved to fix it?

19. you refused to let your nerves get the better of you?

20. you were accused of being vulgar, which might or might not have come as a surprise?

21. readers said your stories sounded ‘too fictional’?

22. readers said your stories didn’t sound fictional enough?

23. your reputation lay in ruins?

24. your reputation was restored?

25. bathing became (or was still) a public activity?

26. everyone thought you were lucky – but you didn’t?

27. everyone thought you were unlucky – but you didn’t?

28. you decided you would no longer settle for an ordinary life?

29. someone gave you a truly inconvenient gift?

30. you learned that you’d been studying the wrong subject?

31. you discovered that you had donated the money to the wrong cause?

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New Year – New Plans – New Offers!

Happy New Year from Dave and Kate at ideas4writers!

We’re already hard at work on the new books we’re planning to bring you this year.

Dave is engrossed in Chapter 6 of his novel, Brassica Park, which features the characters Stan and Martha Bean. You may have seen them having little adventures in the 35 volumes of our ideas collection. Now they’re involved in a book-length adventure that will not only change their lives but several other peoples’ too. The writing and publishing industry features quite heavily, of course. (Stan’s publisher is pure evil!) Dave has promised a short teaser next month.

Meanwhile Kate is looking after our non-fiction department. She’s currently preparing The Date-A-Base Book 2017 for printing – the ebook version is already on sale. And she’s downloading the source files for the 2018 edition, which they’ll work on together once Dave has finished Brassica Park.

The Date-A-Base is our annual collection of forthcoming newsworthy and notable anniversaries. It’s hugely popular with writers, journalists, TV and film companies, event organisers and all sorts of other people, who get to see thousands of things that will be making the news in months, or even years, to come. That gives them plenty of time to research and write their stories and articles, and prepare them for publication or broadcast, to coincide with the anniversaries themselves.

The Date-A-Base Books are the subject of this year’s New Year Giveaway. If you buy either the 2016 or 2017 edition during January, you can also choose one of the 35 ebooks* in our ideas collection as our gift to you. If you buy both editions then you can choose two books from the collection!

All you have to do is email us (mail@ideas4writers.co.uk) once you’ve placed your order, and tell us which book(s) you want as your gift.

If you’ve already bought the books earlier this month, you’re still eligible.

This offer is valid until midnight (UK time) on 31st January 2016.

*Only the 35 single-category books in the ideas collection are included in the giveaway, not the 5 multi-category volumes.

You can see all our books here.

Happy writing!

50 Newsworthy Anniversaries in June 2016 for you to write about (and make money from)

Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in June 2016 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time to find markets, and research and write your articles.

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 June from The Date-A-Base Book 2016. There are 301 anniversaries for June in the book, which covers the whole of 2016 from January to December and features more than 3,450 anniversaries in total.

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

If you need to work further ahead, The Date-A-Base Book 2017 is also available.

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200 years ago (13 Jun 1816)
The Gas Light Company of Baltimore was founded in Maryland, USA. It was the first gas company in the Western hemisphere. (It later became the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, then became part of Constellation Energy, which later became part of Exelon.)

200 years ago (19 Jun 1816)
Battle of Seven Oaks (near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) between the North West Company and the Hudson Bay Company. North West Company victory.

150 years ago (7 Jun 1866)
Death of Seattle (also spelled Sealth or Seathl), Native American leader. Chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes of the Puget Sound area. The city of Seattle, Washington is named after him.

150 years ago (14 Jun – 23 Aug 1866)
Austro-Prussian War (also known as the Seven Weeks’ War). Prussian victory.

150 years ago (26 Jun 1866)
Birth of George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, British aristocrat and Egyptologist who financed Howard Carter’s search and excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

100 years ago (3 Jun 1916)
The National Defense Act came into effect in the USA. It expanded the Army and National Guard, established the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, began the creation of an Army aviation division, and allowed the federal government to produce and stockpile gunpowder to ensure its immediate availability.

100 years ago (5 Jun 1916 – Oct 1918)
World War I – the Arab Revolt (Ottoman Empire).

100 years ago (5 Jun 1916)
Death of (Horatio) Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (Lord Kitchener), British Army officer, field marshal and colonial administrator. Secretary of State for War (1914-16). Best known today for his appearance on the iconic posters which encouraged men to sign up for army service. (Killed when his ship HMS Hampshire hit a German mine near the Orkney Islands, Scotland.)

100 years ago (8 Jun 1916)
Birth of Francis Crick, British biophysicist. Joint winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the molecular structure of DNA.

100 years ago (12 Jun 1916)
Birth of Irwin Allen, (‘the Master of Disaster’), Academy Award-winning American film, television and documentary producer and director (Lost in Space, The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and more).

100 years ago (21 Jun 1916)
Birth of Joseph Cyril Bamford, British businessman and engineer who founded JCB, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of mechanical diggers, backhoes, excavators and other construction equipment.

100 years ago (23 Jun 1916)
Birth of Sir Leonard (‘Len’) Hutton, British cricketer (Yorkshire and England).

100 years ago (24 Jun 1916)
American actress Mary Pickford signed a contract with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players film company which granted her a record-breaking salary of $10,000 a week as well as full control over the production of the films she starred in. (Some commentators say this was the first million-dollar film contract.)

90 years ago (23 Jun 1926)
The College Board administered the first SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) in the USA.

80 years ago (7 Jun 1936)
The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (a trade union) was established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. (It was disbanded in 1942 and became the United Steel Workers of America.)

80 years ago (26 Jun 1936)
The first practical helicopter, the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, made its first successful test flight in Bremen, Germany. (The first successful helicopter flight was made by the Breguet-Dorand ‘Gyroplane’ in France exactly 1 year earlier, on 26th June 1935.)

80 years ago (30 Jun 1936)
Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind was published.

75 years ago (1 Jun 1941)
World War II: the Battle of Crete ended. Crete surrendered to Germany.

75 years ago (2 Jun 1941)
Death of Lou Gehrig, (‘Iron Horse’), American baseball player. He died of a rare degenerative disorder of the nervous system, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), now known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

75 years ago (4 Jun 1941)
Death of Kaiser Wilhelm II (also known as William II), last Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia.

75 years ago (6 Jun 1941)
Death of Louis Chevrolet, Swiss-born American car designer and racing driver. Co-founder of the Chevrolet Motor Car Company.

75 years ago (12 Jun 1941)
The Inter-Allied Declaration (also known as the The Declaration of St. James’s Palace) was signed in London. Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the exiled governments of Europe agreed to work together, both in war and in peace. It was the first step towards the establishment of the United Nations.

75 years ago (14 Jun 1941)
The June deportation. The Soviet Union carried out the first in a series of mass deportations of tens of thousands of people from the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. The men were sent to Siberian prison camps where they later died, while the women were resettled in other parts of the Soviet Union.

75 years ago (20 Jun 1941)
The U.S. Army Air Forces was established, replacing the U.S. Army Air Corps. (In September 1947 it became the U.S. Air Force.)

75 years ago (22 Jun – 5 Dec 1941)
World War II: Operation Barbarossa – the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The largest military operation in history. Soviet victory – the German invaders were repelled when they reached Moscow and then driven out of the country by a Soviet counter-attack. The operation began with the Battle of Bialystok-Minsk (22nd June – 3rd July. German victory.)

75 years ago (22 Jun 1941)
Holocaust: Nazi Germany’s death squads (Einsatzgruppen) began the systematic killing of Jews, initially in the Soviet Union, but later throughout Occupied Europe. (Exact date uncertain, but it immediately followed the German invasion of the Soviet Union – see above.)

75 years ago (29 Jun 1941)
Birth of Stokely Carmichael, Trinidad-born American black activist. Leader of black nationalism in the USA. Member of the Black Panthers. Originator of the phrase ‘black power’.

70 years ago (1 Jun 1946)
Television licences were introduced in Britain.

70 years ago (6 Jun 1946)
The National Basketball Association (NBA) was founded in the USA (as the Basketball Association of America).

60 years ago (3 Jun 1956)
British Rail renamed its Third Class service as Second Class. (Second Class had been abolished in 1875, leaving First Class and Third Class. Second Class was renamed Standard Class in May 1987.)

60 years ago (19 Jun 1956)
Death of Thomas J. Watson, American businessman. Chairman and CEO of IBM who built the company into the world’s largest manufacturer of data-processing equipment. Named ‘the world’s greatest salesman’.

60 years ago (23 Jun 1956)
Gamal Abdel Nasser became President of Egypt.

60 years ago (29 Jun 1956)
The Federal Aid Highway Act came into effect in the USA. It authorised the construction of the Interstate Highway System – the largest public works project in U.S. history at that time. (Construction was meant to take 10 – 12 years but it actually took 35 years. The system was finally declared complete in October 1992.)

50 years ago (2 Jun 1966)
NASA’s space probe Surveyor 1 landed on the Moon to collect data for the Apollo programme. It was the first U.S. craft to soft-land on another extraterrestrial body. (The Soviet Union’s Luna 9 had achieved the same feat 4 months earlier, on 3rd February.)

50 years ago (3 Jun 1966)
NASA launched its Gemini 9A manned spacecraft on a 3-day mission. (It landed safely on 6th June. The original crew of Gemini 9 were killed in a plane crash on 28th February.)

50 years ago (8 Jun 1966)
Topeka, the state capital of Kansas, USA was devastated by a F5-rated tornado. It caused more than $100 million in damage, making it one of the costliest tornadoes in U.S. history. 16 people were killed, 450 injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.

50 years ago (8 Jun 1966)
The National Football League and the American Football League announced their merger. They would maintain separate leagues for the 1966 – 1969 seasons and then merge before the 1970 season, when they would form a combined league with 2 conferences. The combined league was called the National Football League (NFL).

50 years ago (13 Jun 1966)
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Miranda vs. Arizona decision. It ruled that police had to inform suspects of their constitutional rights (commonly known as the Miranda rights) before questioning them.

40 years ago (16 Jun 1976)
Soweto uprising, South Africa. Up to 20,000 black high school students held a protest rally in the streets of Soweto following the Afrikaans Medium Decree which ruled that black schools must teach subjects in Afrikaans as well as English. (Afrikaans was closely associated with apartheid and its popularity was in decline.) Police opened fire on the protesters, killing between 176 and 700 of them (the official figure was 23). Over 1,000 were injured.

40 years ago (29 Jun 1976)
The Seychelles gained its independence from the UK.

30 years ago (22 Jun 1986)
The ‘Hand of God’ goal: Argentine football player Diego Maradona scored a goal against England using his hand in the quarter-final of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico City. (The referee mistakenly thought he had used his head, so allowed the goal. England were knocked out of the World Cup as a result and Argentina went on to win it.)

25 years ago (12 Jun 1991)
Russian presidential election. Boris Yeltsin became the first directly elected President of Russia. (Inaugurated 10th July.)

25 years ago (14 Jun 1991)
Death of Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Academy Award-winning British stage, film and television actress.

25 years ago (15 Jun 1991)
Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, erupted. The eruption was 10 times bigger than Mount St. Helens in 1980. 847 people were killed, mostly by roofs collapsing under the weight of wet ash. Hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land and forests were destroyed.

25 years ago (17 Jun 1991)
Apartheid: the South African Parliament voted to repeal the Population Registration Act (1950), which required that all inhabitants be classified according to their race. This eventually led to the abolition of apartheid.

25 years ago (25 Jun 1991)
Croatia and Slovenia gained their independence from Yugoslavia.

20 years ago (15 Jun 1996)
The centre of Manchester, England was devastated by an IRA bomb. 200 people were injured and the city centre had to be redeveloped because of the immense amount of damage.

20 years ago (20 Jun 1996)
Scientists announced that a vast freshwater lake (Lake Vostok) had been discovered 4 km (2.5 miles) beneath the ice in Antarctica.

15 years ago (1 Jun 2001)
8 members of the Nepalese royal family, including the King and Queen, were massacred by Crown Prince Dipendra, the heir to the throne. He then shot himself and died 3 days later. Gyanendra was crowned as the last King of Nepal on 4th June.

10 years ago (23 Jun 2006)
Death of Aaron Spelling, prolific American television and film producer (Charlie’s Angels, T. J. Hooker, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, Beverly Hills 90210, Charmed and many more).

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Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers
and get ALL our ebooks for just £49.95

(or the equivalent in your local currency)

Price if purchased individually: £214.56
Save: £164.61

Click here to find out more or email us to ask a question

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002