Famous deaths
2018 – Chas Hodges (b. 1943), English musician and singer. He was the lead vocalist, pianist and guitarist of the musical duo Chas & Dave.
On This Day 2025
Hello, … Welcome to day 335 of the year.

Monday, December 1st Daily Prep.

Today is World Aids Day, Eat a Red Apple Day and Walt Disney Day. Your star sign is Sagittarius and your birthstone is Blue Topaz.
2010 – Large parts of the UK were brought to a standstill by the early freeze. Temperatures plunged again overnight to -16C (3F) in the Scottish Highland after one of the coldest starts to December in more than 20 years.
Large parts of the UK were brought to a standstill by the early freeze. Temperatures plunged again overnight to -16C (3F) in the Scottish Highland after one of the coldest starts to December in more than 20 years.
Today’s birthdays
1945 – Bette Midler (80), American singer (“Wind Beneath My Wings”), actress (Hocus Pocus), comedian and author, born in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States.
1946 – Gilbert O’Sullivan (79), Irish singer-songwriter (“Alone Again”, “Clair” and “Get Down”), born in Waterford, Ireland.
1948 – Neil Warnock (77), English football manager and former player who is the current football advisor at Torquay United, born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
1957 – Deep Roy (68), Kenyan-British actor (Return to Oz) who played all the Oompa-Loompas in the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake, born in Nairobi, Kenya.
1988 – Zoë Kravitz (37), American actress (X-Men: First Class, Mad Max: Fury Road), singer and daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, born in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Famous deaths
2024 – Terry Griffiths (b. 1947), Welsh professional snooker player, coach and pundit. Griffiths turned professional in June 1978 at the age of 30.
The day today
1942 – The Beveridge Report, written by Sir William Beveridge, proposed a welfare state for Britain, offering care to all from the cradle to the grave. It revolved around a compulsory National Insurance scheme to provide all adults with free medical treatment, unemployment benefit and old age pensions.
1955 – Rosa Parks was arrested when she refused to move to the back of the bus and give her seat to a white passenger sparking a 381-day bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

1966 – Britain issued its first special edition Christmas stamps. In 2006 the stamps were heavily criticised as they depicted no Christian images on any of the Christmas stamps.

1969 – A statue of former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was unveiled in the House of Commons.
1987 – The Department of Trade inspectors were ordered into the giant Guinness company to investigate allegations of misconduct which ended up with four arrests being made, including the chairman Ernest Saunders. Guinness shares plunged by £300m.
1988 – The first World AIDS Day was established to raise global awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, support those living with the virus, and honor those who have died from AIDS-related illnesses. It was the first-ever global health day, initiated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to address the public health crisis.
1990 – Britain and France were joined for the first time in thousands of years as the last wall of rock separating two halves of the Channel Tunnel was removed. Engineers from both sides met deep under the English Channel, shaking hands and exchanging flags.
1997 – 8 planets in our Solar System lined up from West to East beginning with Pluto, followed by Mercury, Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn, along with a crescent moon, in a rare alignment visible from Earth that lasted until December 8. Note: The International Astronomical Union (IAU) reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet on August 24, 2006.
2003 – The final film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King, directed by Peter Jackson, had its world premiere in Wellington, New Zealand. The premiere included a large parade down the city’s streets, with an estimated 100,000 people in attendance.
2010 – Large parts of the UK were brought to a standstill by the early freeze. Temperatures plunged again overnight to -16C (3F) in the Scottish Highland after one of the coldest starts to December in more than 20 years. Some 4,000 schools were closed, the Forth Road Bridge was closed for the first time since it opened in 1964 and Edinburgh and Gatwick airports were shut. The Met Office issued heavy snow warnings for Scotland and north-east, eastern and south-east England.
2019 – British Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton wins the season-ending Abu Dhabi GP to claim his 6th F1 World Drivers C’ship by 87 points over teammate Valtteri Bottas and making it Mercedes’ 6th straight Constructors title.
Today in music
1966 – Tom Jones was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with his version of ‘Green Green Grass Of Home.’ It stayed at No.1 for seven weeks giving Decca records its first million selling single by a British artist. Also a No.11 hit in the US.
1971 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono release the single “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” in the US, becoming a Christmas classic despite its initial modest commercial success.
1976 – The Sex Pistols appeared on ITV’s live early evening ‘Today’ show (in place of Queen who had pulled out following a trip to the dentists by Freddie Mercury). Taunted by interviewer Bill Grundy who asked the band to say something outrageous, guitarist Steve Jones says: ‘You dirty bastard…you dirty fucker…what a fucking rotter!’
1984 – Jim Diamond was at No.1 in the UK singles chart with ‘I Should Have Known Better.’ The song was displaced after one week by Band Aid’s charity single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’’. Diamond publicly requested that people not buy his single, but instead buy Do They Know It’s Christmas.
1990 – Vanilla Ice started a four-week run at No.1 in the UK with the single ‘Ice Ice Baby’. The track sampled the bass intro to the Queen and David Bowie No.1 ‘Under Pressure’. ‘Ice Ice Baby’ was initially released as the B-side to the rapper’s cover of ‘Play That Funky Music’, and became the A-side after US DJ’s started playing it.
2008 – Wham’s Last Christmas was the most played festive track of the last five years. The Performing Right Society put the 1984 hit at the top of their chart of seasonal songs, just ahead of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? The Pogues came third with Fairytale of New York, recorded with the late Kirsty MacColl and first released in 1987. Other featured artists include Slade, Mariah Carey and Bruce Springsteen.
2006 – An Oasis fan enjoyed “the best day of his life” when Noel Gallagher popped round to his house in Poynton, Cheshire to play an intimate gig. Ben Hayes had won a BBC Radio 1 competition to have the star play in his front room as part of a week of gigs compered by DJ Jo Whiley. 15 people packed into his lounge for the tiny gig – with his mother on hand making cups of tea for the crew.
2016 – Drake was named Spotify’s most-streamed artist of 2016, with his single ‘One Dance’ the site’s biggest song of the year. The Canadian had 4.7 billion streams in that year, more than half of which were for his album Views. ‘One Dance’ alone was streamed 960 million times. Played consecutively, that would take more than 5,200 years.
Today in history
1135 – England’s King Henry I died. He had fallen ill seven days earlier after eating too many lampreys (jawless fish resembling eels). He was 66, and had ruled for 35 years.
1581 – Edmund Campion (later St. Edmund) and three other Jesuits were martyred. He was tried on a charge of treason for promoting Catholicism and was hanged in London.
1642 – The 1st English Civil War : A victory for Parliamentarian Forces when Colonel Sir William Waller stormed Farnham Castle in Surrey. It became his base for the remainder of the war.
1761 – Birth of Madame Marie Tussaud (Grosholz), Swiss-born French waxworks modeller. During the French Revolution she made death masks from the severed heads of the famous. In 1800, separated from her husband, she toured Britain with her waxworks, eventually setting up a permanent exhibition in London.
1783 – William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest ever British Prime Minister at age 24.
1887 – Beeton’s Christmas Annual went on sale, with ‘A Study in Scarlet’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which first introduced the detective, Sherlock Holmes.