December 17th "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 352 of the “leap” year! Known as Wright Brothers Day and Maple Syrup Day. Your star sign is Sagittarius and your birthstone is Blue Topaz.
2004 – The opening of ‘The Sage in Gateshead’, a concert venue and centre for musical education, located on the south bank of the River Tyne.
Todays birthdays
1946 – Simon Bates (78), English disc jockey and radio presenter (1976 – 1993 with BBC Radio 1, then later with Classical FM), born in Birmingham, West Midlands.
1949 – Paul Rodgers (75), English singer, musician and lead vocalist with rock band Free (“All Right Now”), born in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire.
1961 – Sara Dallin (63), English singer/songwriter and a founding member of the pop group Bananarama (“Venus”, “Cruel Summer”, “Love in the First Degree”), born in Bristol.
1971 – Claire Forlani (53), British actress (Mallrats, Meet Joe Black, Hawaii Five-0, The Rock, Green Street), born in Twickenham, London.
1973 – Paula Radcliffe (51), British long-distance runner. She is a three-time winner of the London Marathon, three-time New York Marathon champion, born in Davenham, Cheshire.
Famous deaths
2017 – Keith Chegwin (b. 1957), British TV presenter also known by the nickname Cheggers (Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, It’s a Knockout, Cheggers Plays Pop).
The day today
1967 – Alec Rose, aboard Lively Lady, completed his solo 14,500 mile sail from Britain to Australia, having been at sea for 155 days. He returned successfully to Portsmouth on 4th July 1968 and was knighted the next day by the Queen.
1968 – An 11-year-old girl (Mary Bell) was sentenced to life in detention after being found guilty at Newcastle Assizes of the manslaughter of two small boys. It was said that she strangled the boys, aged four and three, ‘solely for the pleasure and excitement of killing’.
1989 – The first full-length episode of The Simpsons aired on FOX in the US. The episode “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” was nominated for two Emmy Awards in 1990 and received positive reviews from television critics. Approximately 13.4 million people watched it during its original airing. The Simpsons is both the longest-running and the highest ranking animated series.
2003 – Former school caretaker Ian Huntley was convicted of the murders of 10 year olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The judge said that the killings did not meet the criteria for a ‘whole-life tariff’, but that the 40-year term offered ‘little or no hope’ of his release.
2014 – The Rev Libby Lane, a parish priest from Crewe, was chosen to be the Church of England’s first female bishop. Her appointment brought to an end 22 years of resistance to the promotion of female priests. Also on this day… Dominique Harrison-Bentzen (22) slept rough on the streets of Preston, Lancashire, to raise money for homeless man Robbie after he had offered her his last £3 for a taxi home when she lost her bank card. Dominique raised more than £21,000 to help him after she put posts on Facebook and Twitter, asking people to help raise money to give Robbie a home.
Today in music
1971 – David Bowie released his fourth album Hunky Dory, which was the first to feature all the members of the band that would become known the following year as Ziggy Stardust’s Spiders From Mars.
1973 – Slade were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ their sixth chart topper. It has been released during every decade since 1973, and has been covered by numerous artists. In a 2007 poll, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was voted the UK’s most popular Christmas song.
2005 – U2 had the top-grossing tour of 2005, according to Billboard. More than three million people watched the band’s sell-out 90-date Vertigo tour which grossed more than £146.6m.
2012 – Adele was named Billboard’s top artist of 2012, while her hit record 21 was named top album of the year in the music magazine’s annual review. The 24-year-old became the first to receive both accolades two years in a row. The year’s top three songs were ‘Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know’, Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ and Fun’s ‘We Are Young’. respectively.
2015 – A London judge said he was concerned at how much Liam Gallagher and his ex-wife Nicole Appleton were spending in a legal dispute over how their assets should be split after it was revealed that the pair had spent over £800,000 on legal fees. Judge O’Dwyer decided their money and property should be divided equally, with each receiving £5.4m.
Today in history
497 BC – The festival of Saturnalia was first celebrated after a temple to the Roman god Saturn was built in Rome. It started as a one-day event to honour Saturn, the Roman god of farming and the harvest. It included a sacrifice of young pigs at a temple dedicated to Saturn, which were then eaten at a public feast the next day.
1778 – The birth, in Penzance, of Sir Humphrey Davy, English inventor of the safety lamp for miners which allowed miners to work safely in the presence of flammable gases. Davy refused to patent the lamp, and its invention led to him being awarded the Rumford medal in 1816. The medal has been awarded every alternate year since 1800 by the Royal Society for outstandingly important discoveries by a scientist working in Europe.
1843 – Charles Dickens began inscribing copies, for friends, of his new novel A Christmas Carol. There were 10 pre-publication presentations made ‘on this day’ and the novel went into general publication on 19th December. It was an immediate success with the public and the initial print run of 6,000 copies was sold out by Christmas Eve.
1849 – Thomas and William Bowler, felt hat makers, sold their first ‘bowler’ to William Coke, which he purchased at James Lock & Co. in London.
1917 – Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, first English woman physician, died and was buried in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. She was the founder of the first hospital staffed by women and the first woman mayor in the United Kingdom.