December 30th "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 365 of the “leap” year! Known as National Bacon Day and Resolution Planning Day. Your star sign is Capricorn and your birthstone is Blue Topaz.
1999 – George Harrison is stabbed in the chest when an intruder breaks into his home in Henley-on-Thames. Wife Olivia fights the attacker off by hitting him over the head with a lamp.
Todays birthdays
1969 – Jay Kay (55), British singer/songwriter and co-founder of the acid jazz and funk band Jamiroquai (“Virtual Insanity”, “Cosmic Girl”), born in Stretford, Greater Manchester.
1970 – Sister Bliss [Ayalah Bentovim] (54), British electronica and trip-hop keyboardist and DJ (Faithless – “Insomnia”, “God Is a DJ”), born in London.
1975 – Tiger Woods (49), American professional golfer (won 82 official PGA Tour events), regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time, born in Cypress, California, United States.
1986 – Ellie Goulding (38), English singer and songwriter (“Love Me Like You Do”, “Burn”), born in Herefordshire.
1988 – Leon Jackson (36), Scottish singer (“When You Believe”) and winner of The X Factor in 2007, born in Whitburn, West Lothian, Scotland.
Famous deaths
2023 – Tom Wilkinson (b. 1948), English actor (The Full Monty, Valkyrie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel).
The day today
1946 – Football league players threatened to strike over the proposed maximum wage of £11 a week.
1954 – British athlete Chris Chataway became the first winner of the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award.
1986 – According to new plans by the government, more than 200 canaries would be ‘phased out’ of Britain’s mining pits. New electronic devices would replace canaries as detectors of harmful gasses, because they were said to be cheaper in the long run and more effective.
2014 – Tommie Rose, a 15year old schoolboy, who made £14,000 from his school tuck-shop to pay future university fees for a business studies degree was threatened with suspension, as his shop breached the school’s healthy-eating guidelines.
2020 – The Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine was approved by the UK medicines regulator, opening up the possibility of rapidly scaling up vaccination against Covid-19. The UK ordered 100 million doses – enough to vaccinate 50 million people, with the first doses given on Monday 4th January 2021, amid rapidly rising coronavirus cases.
Today in music
1967 – The Beatles scored their 15th US No.1 with ‘Hello Goodbye’, Gladys Knight and the Pips were at No.2 with ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ and The Monkees at No.3 with ‘Daydream Believer’
1969 – Peter Tork quit The Monkees buying himself out of his contract which left him broke. He went on to form a group called Release and played banjo on George Harrison’s soundtrack to the film Wonderwall.
1999 – In the Queen’s Millennium Honours list, former Slade singer Noddy Holder was awarded an MBE and guitarist Mark Knopfler was awarded an OBE.
2002 – Diana Ross was arrested for drunk driving by the Arizona highway patrol after a motorist called to report a swerving vehicle in the western state of Arizona. When asked to walk in a straight line she fell over, could not count to 30 or balance on one foot. Police said the singer was twice over the drink drive limit with a blood-alcohol of 0.20, the legal limit is 0.08.
2014 – The woman who inspired Pulp’s hit song ‘Disco 2000’ died shortly after being appointed an MBE. Deborah Bone, from Hertfordshire was a childhood friend of lead singer Jarvis Cocker in Sheffield. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. The 1995 Britpop hit contains the lyric: “Your name is Deborah. Deborah. It never suited ya”.
Today in history
1460 – The Wars of the Roses: The defeat and death of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and claimant to the English throne, at the Battle of Wakefield.
1813 – All but three buildings in Buffalo were torched by British troops, in retaliation for American troops burning what is now picturesque Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Throughout Ontario you’ll find important sites from this conflict, including Old Fort Erie, Chippawa Battlefield and Fort George.
1850 – The birth of John Milne, British geologist and mining engineer. He invented the horizontal seismograph that enabled him to detect different types of earthquake waves, and estimate their velocities. Along with two other British scientists he founded the Seismological Society of Japan.
1865 – Author Rudyard Kipling was born, in India, but was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. His best known fictional works are Jungle Book and Just So Stories. He celebrated British imperialism with tales and poems of British soldiers in India and in 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1887 – A petition, signed by more than 1 million women in Britain, was sent to Queen Victoria calling for public houses to be closed on Sundays.