Latest article from the current series: Henry Norris at the Arsenal
Sir Henry Norris prepares to leave Arsenal, his job complete. May/June 1927
Special features
Highbury: from start to end with previously unseen pictures of the end of the stadium.
Meeting a player you have admired can be such a very strange experience.: Brian Talbot comes to the Arsenal Independent Supporters AGM.
Below are the Arsenal (and for historical context, occasionally one or two non-Arsenal) anniversaries for today taken from the complete files of over 6000 Arsenal anniversaries which appear on the Arsenal History Society website. An index to the monthly Anniversary files can be found in the right column of this site under “Pages” on the right of the screen.
The index to the current historical series on this site can be found at Henry Norris at the Arsenal. An index of all our main series can be found on the home page.
The anniversary files: our headline today comes from 1973
29 October 1892: Royal Arsenal almost emulated their FA cup record victory with a 10-1 defeat of City Ramblers. Booth, Elliott and Henderson all got hat tricks, with the other goal coming from George Alexander Davie.
29 October 1908: Alex Wilson born in Lancashire, and played for Overton Athletic and Greenock Morton winning promotion to the first division witm then in 1929. He was signed by Chapman in May 1933.
29 October 1911: Bernard Joy born. He played university football and then went on to play for the amateur side Casuals and won the prestigious FA Amateur Cup in 1936 plus ten caps for England amateurs as well as playing for Arsenal.
28 October 1917: Henry Norris became the Director of the South-East Recruiting Region as well as being the military Deputy Director of recruiting in the region. This was a unification of a military and civilian role as conscription was under the control of the Secretary of State for National Service in Parliament.
29 October 1921: Arsenal lost 1-3 at home to Huddersfield Town, making it four defeats in a row.
29 October 1923: Following allegations that Sir Henry Norris had allowed illegal payments to be made to Harry White, much of the press ran anti-Norris stories. But Athletic News was more measured, and ex-ref Arthur Bourke who reported on Arsenal for the Islington Gazette described Sir Henry as a “gallant gentleman and sportsman.” He did however point out that Sir Henry had brought much of this on himself by saying, “unkind things of the Press”.
29 October 1924: A general election was held, dominated by the fake Zinoviev Letter published by the Daily Mail, which suggested the left were about to overthrow the state. Islington East which included Highbury moved from being a Liberal seat to that for the Conservatives.
29 October 1925: The long running court case between Arsenal’s Jock Rutherford and Turf Publishers ended with the court ruling that Turf had used Rutherford’s name and there was no evidence that they had got permission. But despite this ruling the FA would not release Rutherford to play again until they had held their own enquiry.
29 October 1932: Arsenal 8 Leicester 2, continuing a run of won 9, drawn 2 and lost 1 in the league. Hulme 3, Bastin 2, Coleman 2, Jack got the goals in front of 36714 and for the first time in the season hit the top of the league.
29 October 1965: Jimmy Magill transferred to Brighton after playing 116 games for Arsenal. He also played 26 times for N Ireland. In 1969 he moved to Denmark and had a successful career as a manager before stepping down for the last time in 1996.
29 October 1969: Sporting Lisbon 0 Arsenal 0 with a crowd of 32000 in the Fairs Cup.
29 October 1973: Robert Pirès birthday. Robert had a Portuguese father and Spanish mother and found learning both French and English difficult. After he had left Arsenal to play for Villareal he did an interview in fluent Spanish and the UK journalists, not realising Spanish was his native tongue berated him for not having bothered to learn English properly. He scored a hat trick in the first game of the “49”.
29 October 1977: Trevor Ross played his last game for Arsenal. His transfer to Everton took several weeks to complete, and during that period he had a major falling out with Terry Neill.
29 October 1983: Tony Woodcock scored five against Villa by the 48th minute. Final score 6-2. In all he scored eight in three consecutive matches.
29 October 1994: Everton 1 Arsenal 1. This was the start of an 18 match sequence in which Arsenal scored 16 goals, winning just four games. The problem with scoring was reflected in the end of season stats: Wright got 18, Hartson 7 and no one else more than four.
29 October 2008: Arsenal 4 Tottenham 4. Bentley scored against his old club – perhaps the highpoint of his career. Silvestre, Gallas, Adebayor, van Persie scored the goals for Arsenal.
29 October 2011. Chelsea 3 Arsenal 5. Van Persie scored three, to make it three wins in a row for Arsenal in a run that continues for eight games until 10 December
