The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a theatre in the Covent Garden district of London, facing Catherine Street and backing onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663. For its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre" and thus one of the most important theatres in the English-speaking world. Through most of that time, it was one of a small handful of patent theatres that were granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London. The first theatre on the location was built on behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early years of the English Restoration. The building that stands today opened in 1812. It has been home to actors as diverse as Shakespearean Edmund Kean, comedian Dan Leno, and musical composer and performer Ivor Novello. Today, the theatre is owned by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and generally stages popular musical theatre. It is a Grade I listed building.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_Royal%2C_Drury_Lane

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1229: Sixth Crusade: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II declared himself King of Jerusalem. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_II%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor)

1438: Albert II of Habsburg became King of the Romans in the Holy Roman Empire. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_II_of_Germany)

1921: The Polish-Soviet War, which determined the borders between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia, formally concluded with the signing of the Peace of Riga. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Riga)

1922: Mahatma Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi)

1965: Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov donned a spacesuit and ventured outside the Voskhod 2 spacecraft (mission insignia shown), becoming the first person to walk in space. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_2)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory. -- Grover Cleveland (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland)