Saturday, August 23rd "2025" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 235, known as Sponge Cake Day, Cheap Flight Day, Slavery Remembrance Day. Your star sign is Virgo and your birthstone is Peridot.
2005 – Hilary Lister, from Kent, became the first quadriplegic sailor to cross the English Channel. She achieved this by using controls powered by her breath to navigate her boat and made the crossing in six hours thirteen minutes.
Todays birthdays
1949 – Shelley Long (76), American actress (The Brady Bunch Movie) best known for her role as Diane Chambers on the sitcom Cheers, born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States.
1953 – Bobby G (72), English singer and 1981 Eurovision Song Contest winner with the pop group Bucks Fizz (“Making Your Mind Up”), born in Epsom, Surrey.
1959 – Edwyn Collins (66), Scottish singer and musician (“A Girl Like You”), born in Edingburgh, Scotland.
1962 – Shaun Ryder (63), English singer, songwriter and lead singer of Happy Mondays (“Step On”) and Black Grape (“England’s Irie”), born in Salford, Greater Manchester.
1974 – Ray Park (51), Scottish actor and stuntman best known for physically portraying Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, born in Glasgow, Scotland.
1979 – Ritchie Neville (46), English singer, songwriter and member of the boy band FIVE (“If Ya Gettin’ Down”, “Everybody Get Up”), born in Solihull, West Midlands.
1980 – Joanne Froggatt (45), English actress (Downtown Abbey, North Shore, Angela Black, Bad Girls), born in Littlebeck, Whitby, North Yorkshire.
Famous deaths
1964 – Ian Fleming (b. 1908), British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels.
2015 – Stephen Lewis (b. 1926), English actor and screenwriter best known for his roles as Inspector Blake in On The Buses and as Smiler in Last of the Summer Wine.
2021 – Una Stubbs (b. 1937), English actress, TV personality, and dancer (Till Death Us Do Part, In Sickness and in Health).
The day today
1938 – England’s Test cricketer Len Hutton scored what was then a new world record test score of 364 against Australia at the Oval.
1939 – Birtish motorist John Cobb sets a new land speed record of 370.75 miles per hour in the Utah desert, beating the old record of 357 mph.
1953 – Italian Ferrari driver Alberto Ascari clinches his second Formula 1 World Drivers Championship by winning Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten.
1961 – Police launched a murder hunt after a man was found shot dead and his companion seriously wounded in a lay-by in Bedfordshire. Valerie Storie, who survived the shooting, identified James Hanratty as her attacker. Hanratty was convicted of the murder in 1962 and sentenced to death, becoming one of the last people to be hanged in Britain before capital punishment was abolished.
1966 – The first-ever photograph was taken of the Earth from the surface of the Moon. Lunar Orbiter 1 sent the photo back to earth on this day on its 16th orbit. The photograph was received by the NASA tracking station near Madrid, Spain.
1990 – East and West Germany announce they will reunite on October 3 (1990), marking the end of the division that had existed since the end of World War II. This day is celebrated annually as German Unity Day.
2005 – Hilary Lister, from Kent, became the first quadriplegic sailor to cross the English Channel. She achieved this by using controls powered by her breath to navigate her boat and made the crossing in six hours thirteen minutes.
2010 – Publisher Harper Collins and the BBC began a court battle over a book that revealed the identity of Top Gear’s The Stig to be the former Formula Three driver Ben Collins. Henceforth Collins was always referred to by the Top Gear presenters as ‘Sacked Stig’.
2013 – A Super Puma helicopter crashed off Shetland killed 4 of the 18 on board. In 2012 two helicopters had ditched in the North Sea only six months apart in incidents which were found to be caused by gearbox problems. Super Puma EC 225s were grounded in the wake of the two earlier accidents but were given approval to fly again and services had only resumed on 7th August 2013.
2023 – India became the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon. India followed in the footsteps of Russia, China, and the US with the touchdown of its Chandrayaan-3 Moon Lander. India’s Moon landing is quite different from all other landings, though, as it was the first to land on the Moon’s unexplored south pole.
Today in music
1966 – The Beatles were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with the double a sided ‘Yellow Submarine – Eleanor Rigby’. The group’s eleventh No.1. Paul McCartney said he came up with the name Eleanor from actress Eleanor Bron, who had starred with The Beatles in the film Help! Rigby came from the name of a store in Bristol, Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers.
1969 – Ibex, featuring vocalist Freddie Bulsara (later known as Freddie Mercury) played a gig at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, Lancashire, UK.
1971 – Diana Ross was at No.1 on the UK singles chart ‘I’m Still Waiting’, the singers first solo UK No.1. The song which spent four weeks at the top of the charts was released after BBC Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn featured it heavily on his morning programme.
1980 – David Bowie was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Ashes To Ashes’ his second UK No.1. Taken from the Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) album, the song continued the story of Major Tom from Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’.
2008 – Madonna kicked off her 86-date Sticky & Sweet Tour at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. It became the highest grossing tour by a solo artist, breaking the previous record Madonna achieved with her 2006 Confessions Tour.
2019 – Taylor Swift released her seventh studio album Lover. All of the album’s 18 tracks charted on the Hot 100, breaking the all-time female record for the most simultaneous entries.
Today in history
1305 – St. Columba reported seeing a monster in Loch Ness. It was the first reported sighting of the monster. The loch is Scotland’s second largest loch by surface area after Loch Lomond, but, due to its great depth, it is the largest by volume.
1617 – The first one-way streets in London were introduced in the early 17th century. In 1617, a decree was passed to regulate cart traffic near the Thames, designating certain alleys like Pudding Lane as one-way streets. Later, in 1800, Albemarle Street in Mayfair also became a one-way street due to the popularity of the Royal Institution’s lectures.
1650 – Colonel George Monck of the English Army formed Monck’s Regiment of Foot, which later became the Coldstream Guards.
1839 – Britain captured Hong Kong as a base as it prepared for war with China. The ensuing 3 year conflict was later to be known as the First Opium War.
1873 – The Albert Bridge opened in London. The bridge, designed by Rowland Mason Ordish, crosses the River Thames connecting Chelsea to Battersea.