April 14th "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 105, known as National Dolphin Day, National Gardening Day, Donate a Book Day. If you were born on this day, you were likely conceived the week of July 22nd in the previous year. Your star sign is Aries and your birthstone is Diamond.
2010 – Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland sent ash plumes into the skies that spread and disrupted air traffic across northern and central Europe. Over 95,000 flights had been cancelled all across Europe during the six-day airspace ban.
Todays birthdays
1940 – Julie Christie (84), British actress and icon of the Swinging Sixties (Doctor Zhivago, Far from the Madding Crowd), born in Assam, India.
1944 – John Sergeant (80), English TV presenter (Argumental), radio journalist, broadcaster and former Chief Political Correspondent from 1992 to 2000, born in Oxford.
1958 – Peter Capaldi (66), Scottish actor and director (Doctor Who, The Thick of It, The Suicide Squad, Paddington), born in Glasgow.
1961 – Robert Carlyle (63), Scottish actor (The Full Monty, Trainspotting, The 51st State, The World Is Not Enough), born in Maryhill, Glasgow.
1977 – Sarah Michelle Gellar (47), American actress (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Grudge ), born in Long Island, New York, United States.
Famous deaths
2004 – Caron Keating (b. 1962), Northern Irish television host (Blue Peter, This Morning) and daughter of Gloria Hunniford.
The day today
1929 – The inaugural Monaco Grand Prix takes place in the Principality of Monaco. British driver, William Grover-Williams wins driving a Bugatti Type 35.
1950 – Comic strip hero Dan Dare, the pilot of a space ship, made his first appearance in the first edition of the comic, the Eagle. The comic merged with Lion comic in 1969. All 900,000 copies of the first issue were sold. Its founders were Mancunian Frank Hampson and an Oxford-educated vicar Marcus Morris.
1983 – The first cordless telephone, capable of operating up to 600 feet from base, was introduced. It was made by Fidelity and British Telecom and sold for £170.
1989 – Police in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, revealed that violent prisoners were being put into a bright pink cell which seemed to have a calming effect. The colour was named Baker-Miller Pink after the police chief and psychologist who thought up the idea.
2013 – The Wizard of Oz song, ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ which was at the centre of an online campaign by opponents of Baroness Thatcher, reached number two in the ‘charts’ after selling 52,605 copies. Rival campaign song ‘I’m In Love With Margaret Thatcher’ entered at number 35.
Today in music
1953 – Lita Roza was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘(How Much) Is That Doggie In Window.’ The 27 year old singer was the NME readers’ Top Female artist of 1953 and with this single became the first British female singer to top the UK singles Chart, (and the first Liverpudlian to do so).
1966 – The Spencer Davis Group were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Somebody Help Me’, the group’s second UK No.1.
1973 – Led Zeppelin started a two-week run at No.1 on the UK album chart with Houses Of The Holy also a No.1 in the US. The young girl featured on the cover of the album climbing naked up Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland is Samantha Gates who was 6 years old at the time of the photo shoot.
1978 – Art Garfunkel started a six week run at No.1 in the UK with the theme from the film ‘Watership Down’, ‘Bright Eyes’ which went on to become the biggest selling single of the year. The song was written by the man behind The Wombles, Mike Batt.
2017 – Harry Styles’s debut single ‘Sign of the Times’ broke Ed Sheeran’s 13-week run at the top of the UK charts. The One Direction star achieved his first No.1 as a solo artist with this release – the first from his self-titled debut album.
Today in history
1471 – The Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Barnet. Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, ‘the Kingmaker’, was slain in the battle. He had put Henry VI on the throne, but Edward IV returned from exile in Holland to reclaim the crown.
1536 – Henry VIII dissolved the ‘Reformation Parliament’. The Reformation Parliament, which sat from 1529 to 1536, fundamentally changed the nature of Parliament and of English government. The King summoned it in order to settle what was called his ‘great matter’, his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which the Papacy in Rome was blocking.
1816 – Bussa, a slave in British-ruled Barbados, leads a slave rebellion, for which he is remembered as the country’s first national hero.
1865 – President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Lincoln was enjoying a play called “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C. The well-known actor John Wilkes Booth shot the president in the head, and he died the following day.
1912 – The British built luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic shortly before midnight, and sank in the early hours of the next morning. Over 1500 passengers and crew were killed.