NEW DATA!!

Giovanni Belzoni, standing 6 feet 7 inches, came to England in 1803 and earned his living as a circus strong man. In 1815 he went to Eygpt and took to robbing tombs of their antiquities, most notably a huge bust of Rameses II which he later sent to the British Museum in London. Among his many accomplishments were the exploration of the Temple of Edfu, opening the Pyramid of Khefren at Giza and discovering the ruins of Berenice near Benghazi. He returned to England in 1819 and published his discoveries as Narratives of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Eygpt and Nubia (1820). In 1823, Belzoni died of dysentry in Beni, Africa, while searching for the source of the River Niger.

GIOVANNI BATTISTA BELZONI: 5th November 1778; Padua, Italy (45N25 11E53); "at the 11th hour of the preceding night". Valerie Matthews quotes a biography which refers to the baptismal entry in the records of the Episcopal Court of Padua. She concludes that since the nights were divided into twelve equal parts, he must have been born one hour before sunrise. She has calculated that the date of sunrise on Belzoni's date of birth was 05:44 am LMT (05:56:28 GMT).

David Blunkett resigned as Home Secretary on 15th December 2004. Blind from birth, he involved himself in the politics of Sheffield at an early age and was a Sheffield City Councillor from 1870 to 1988. He was elected MP for Sheffield Brightside in 1987 and was Labour Party Chairman 1993-4. He was aapointed Secretary for Education and Employment in 1997 and had been Home Secretary since June 2001. Apparently the combination of his private life and accusations of fast-tracking visas proved too much for him in the end. Charles Clarke has now taken over at the Home Office and Ruth Kelly has replaced Clarke as Education Secretary. At the age of 36, she is already being tipped as a future Prime Minister - but then, so was William Hague!

DAVID BLUNKETT: 6th June 1947; Sheffield (53N23 001W30); 07:00 am BDST (05:00 am GMT). Caroline Gerard, from him, "as far as I am aware, I was born at 7 am".

CHARLES CLARKE: 21st September 1950

RUTH KELLY: 9th May 1968

The last two dates were taken from The Times Guide to the House of Commons June 2001 (Times Books, 2001). Both MPs were elected to the House in 1997.