1840: Queen Victoria married Albert. For her, he was an "angel" and "perfection." For the populace, he was a fortune-hunting foreigner after England's "fat" Queen and "fatter purse." Victoria's wedding dress was referred to as "a tasteless muddle."

1855: The Devil's footprints appeared overnight in South Devon and were seen in 100 miles of tracks. The inexplicable prints of a cloven hoof wove their way over fields, walls, rooftops and even haystacks. Locals believed the path was walked by Satan himself.

1864: George Custer, the Cavalry chief who lost his life at the Battle of Little Big Horn, married his beautiful sweetheart Elizabeth, a linguist and reader of the classics. She called him "Auntie" and he called her either "Libby" or "Old Lady." Vain in the extreme, the General occasionally designed to cut his long yellow hair to give his admirers a lock.

1894: "Super Mac," alias long-serving Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was born. He was a publisher as well as politician. He bought the rights to "Gone With the Wind" and played a key role in laying the foundations of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.