On This Day 2026
Hello, … and welcome to day 104 of the year.

Tuesday, April 14th

Today is National Dolphin Day, Children with Alopecia Day, Donate a Book Day and Puffin Day. Your star sign is Aries and your birthstone is Diamond.
Did you know: All Fools’ Day, also known as April Fools’ Day is a day for practical jokes and hoaxes, but only until 12 noon. The earliest recorded association between 1st April and foolishness can be found in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1392).
Today’s birthdays
1929 – 2012 – Gerry Anderson, English television and film producer (Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet), known for his 1960s productions filmed with “Supermarionation”.
1932 – 2003 – Bob Grant, English comedy actor best known for playing bus conductor Jack Harper in the television sitcom On the Buses, and its film spin-offs.

1940 – Julie Christie (86), British actress and icon of the Swinging Sixties (Doctor Zhivago, Far from the Madding Crowd), born in Chabua, Assam, India.

1942 – Tony Burrows (84), English singer with Edison Lighthouse (“Love Grows”), and Brotherhood of Man from 1969-1971, born in Exeter, Devon.
1944 – John Sergeant (82), English TV presenter (Argumental, Barging Round Britain), radio journalist and former Chief Political Correspondent from 1992 to 2000, born in Oxford.
1945 – Ritchie Blackmore (81), English guitarist, songwriter and a founding member of Deep Purple (“Smoke on Water”), born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
1951 – Julian Lloyd Webber (75), English cellist conductor, broadcaster and the founder of the In Harmony music education programme.
1958 – Peter Capaldi (68), Scottish actor and director (Doctor Who, The Thick of It, The Suicide Squad, Paddington), born in Glasgow, Scotland.
1961 – Robert Carlyle (65), Scottish actor (The Full Monty, Trainspotting, The 51st State, The World Is Not Enough), born in Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland.
1964 – Gina McKee (62), English actress (The Forsyte Saga, Notting Hill, Bodyguard), born in Peterlee, County Durham.
1973 – Adrien Brody (53), American actor (Predators, Peaky Blinders, The Pianist, The Thin Red Line), born in Woodhaven, New York, United States.
1977 – Sarah Michelle Gellar (49), American actress (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Grudge ), born in New York, New York, United States.
Famous deaths

2011 – Trevor Bannister (b. 1934), English actor best known for having played the womanising and wisecracking junior salesman Mr Lucas in the sitcom Are You Being Served?

2015 – Percy Sledge (b. 1925), American R&B, soul and gospel singer (“When a Man Loves a Woman”).
2023 – Mark Sheehan (b. 1976), Irish musician, co-founder and lead guitarist for pop rock band the Script (“The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”, “Hall of Fame”).
The day today
1912 – The RMS Titanic, a British-built luxury passenger liner, struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage at 11:40 p.m. ship’s time. Titanic sank approximately two hours and 40 minutes after the collision, at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912. More than 1,500 people out of the approximately 2,200 passengers and crew on board perished in the disaster. The RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene about an hour and a half after the Titanic sank, rescuing 705 survivors.

1929 – The inaugural Monaco Grand Prix takes place in the Principality of Monaco. British driver, William Grover-Williams wins driving a Bugatti Type 35.

1931 – The Ministry of Transport issued the first Highway Code, a set of guidelines and rules for drivers as a 1 penny, 18–21 page booklet. Introduced under the Road Traffic Act 1930.
1948 – A flash of light was observed in the crater Plato on the Moon. Plato has a long history of reported anomalies, including a reddish light streak observed in 1725, three red glowing spots seen by Sir William Herschel in 1787, and various streaks or changes in brightness reported throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
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.
1958 – Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up after 162 days in orbit and roughly 2,570 revolutions. Laika died within 5–7 hours of launch due to extreme heat and panic when a component failed to separate. Despite the tragic outcome, the mission provided early data on spaceflight’s biological effects, leading to later successful, recoverable missions (e.g., Vostok).
1980 – At the 52nd Academy Awards, Dustin Hoffman wins Best Actor for Kramer vs Kramer, Meryl Streep wins Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs Kramer and Sally Field won Best Actress for Norma Rae. Alec Guinnes won a lifetime achievement award for his exceptional contributions to film.

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.

1986 – Desmond Tutu was elected as the first Black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, becoming the leader of the church in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, and Lesotho. Installed on September 7, 1986, he used his position to lead nonviolent opposition against apartheid.
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.
1996 – British golfer Nick Faldo won the US Masters title for the third time, marking his 6th and final major championship victory. Faldo previously won the Masters in 1989 (in a playoff against Scott Hoch) and 1990 (in a playoff against Raymond Floyd), making him the first player to win back-to-back Masters titles since Jack Nicklaus in 1965–66.
1999 – NATO accidentally bombed a refugee convoy in Kosovo, killing seventy-three. NATO claimed that the bombing was a mistake, and they believed the convoy to be a military convoy.
2000 – Kenneth Noye, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2000 for the 1996 “road rage” murder of 21-year-old Stephen Cameron on an M25 slip road in Kent. After stabbing Cameron in front of his fiancée, Noye fled to the Costa del Sol in Spain. He was arrested in 1998, extradited to the UK, and subsequently released on licence in June 2019.
2002 – Tiger Woods won his third Masters title (and second consecutive), becoming only the third player to win back-to-back Masters, finishing 12-under-par, three strokes ahead of runner-up Retief Goosen of South Africa. By winning in 2001 and 2002, Woods joined Jack Nicklaus and Nick Faldo as the only golfers to retain the Masters crown.

2003 – The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium announced the successful completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), mapping over 92% of the human genome.

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.
2014 – Seventeen new Scout badges were introduced, across all age groups of the Scout movement. New tasks range from the ability to assess disability access at public buildings, to geocaching, sending emails and posting photographs on the Internet appropriately.
2015 – The children’s cooking show, Matilda and the Ramsay Bunch, premiered on CBBC in the UK. Gordon Ramsay’s daughter, Matilda, was just 14 years old when the first season aired.
2015 – Archaeologists announced the discovery of 3.3 million-year-old stone tools at the Lomekwi 3 site near Kenya’s Lake Turkana, the oldest ever discovered. These artifacts predate the earliest known Homo fossils by 500,000 years, suggesting tool-making began before the human genus emerged.
2018 – The United States, United Kingdom, and France conducted a coordinated series of airstrikes against targets in Syria in response to the suspected chemical weapons attack in Douma on April 7, 2018.
2022 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the first COVID-19 breathalyzer test, the InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyser. The device demonstrated 91.2% sensitivity (correctly identifying positive samples) and 99.3% specificity (correctly identifying negative samples) in a study of 2,409 individuals.
2022 – The Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, sank in the Black Sea following conflicting accounts regarding the cause of its destruction. Ukrainian officials announced on April 13 that their forces hit the Moskva with two R-360 Neptune anti-ship missiles, causing significant damage and fire. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that a fire on board caused ammunition to detonate, leading to serious damage, without mentioning an external strike. Later, they stated the vessel sank “in stormy seas” while being towed to port.
2023 – 50-year-old Spanish athlete Beatriz Flamini emerged from a 70-meter-deep cave in Granada, Spain, after 500 days of voluntary total isolation, setting a probable world record as part of social isolation experiment.
Today in music
1936 – 20-year-old French singer Édith Piaf was questioned by police following the murder of Louis Leplée, the nightclub owner who discovered her, in Paris. Leplée was murdered on April 6, 1936. Piaf, previously a street singer, was suspected due to her association with Leplée, who had links to the Parisian underworld.
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.
1967 – Polydor Records released The Bee Gees ‘New York mining Disaster 1941’ It was released with a promotional slogan announcing ‘The most significant talent since The Beatles. The record became a Top 20 hit in the UK and US.
1969 – The recording of ‘The Ballad Of John and Yoko’ took place, with just two Beatles, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Paul played bass, drums and piano with John on guitars and lead vocals. The song was banned from many radio stations as being blasphemous. On some stations, the word ‘Christ’ was edited in backwards to avoid the ban.
1970 – Creedence Clearwater Revival made their live UK debut when they played the first of two nights at The Royal Albert Hall, London.
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.
2009 – Former Beatle George Harrison was honoured with a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. Sir Paul McCartney attended the unveiling outside the landmark Capitol Records building, joining Harrison’s widow Olivia and son Dhani. Eric Idle, Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks and musician Tom Petty also attended the ceremony.
2013 – Justin Bieber caused outrage after writing a message in a guestbook at the Anne Frank Museum, which stated he hoped the Holocaust victim would have been a fan. The 19-year-old wrote: ‘Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.’ It provoked fierce online criticism of the Canadian singer, who was in Amsterdam as part of a tour.
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.
2018 – Beyoncé became the first Black woman to headline the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Beyoncé reunited with Destiny’s Child members Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams during the set.
Today in history
978 AD – Ethelred II is crowned King of England at 10 years old, after the murder of his half brother Edward the Martyr, at age 16.

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. when the well-known actor John Wilkes Booth shot the president in the head. The bullet entered the back of Lincoln’s head and lodged behind his eye. He was treated at the scene and then moved to the Petersen House, where he died at 7:22 a.m. the next morning.
1904 – John Gielgud, English actor was born. He was known for his beautiful speaking of verse and particularly for his warm and expressive voice. His colleague Sir Alec Guinness likened it to ‘a silver trumpet muffled in silk’. Gielgud is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
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