December 3rd "2023" daily prep
Welcome to day 337 of the year! Known as Disability Day, Let’s Hug Day and Make A Gift Day. If you were born on this day, you were likely conceived the week of March 12th. Your star sign is “Sagittarius” and your birthstone is Blue Topaz.
1926 – Agatha Christie disappeared from her Surrey home and was discovered on the 14th December staying under an assumed name at the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate. She said she had no recollection of how she came to be in Yorkshire.
Todays birthdays
1948 – Ozzy Osbourne (75), English singer, songwriter and lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath (“Paranoid”, “War Pigs”), born in Marston Green, Solihull, West Midlands.
1959 – Eamonn Holmes (64), Northern Irish broadcaster and journalist (co-presenter of GMTV and This Morning), born in Belfast.
1960 – Daryl Hannah (63), American actress (Splash, Roxanne, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2), born in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
1979 – Daniel Bedingfield (44), New Zealand-British singer, songwriter (“Gotta Get Thru This”, “If You’re Not the One”) and eldest brother of fellow singer Natasha Bedingfield, born in Auckland, New Zealand.
1980 – Anna Clumsky (43), American actress best known for her role as Vada Sultenfuss in with 1991 film “My Girl” along side Macaulay Culkin, born in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
The day today
1965 – Britain ‘stood down’ the Home Guard – formed in 1939 to defend Britain from invasion by Germany. They were officially disbanded in December 1945.
1976 – A giant 40ft inflatable pig could be seen floating above London after breaking free from its moorings at Battersea Power Station during a photo shoot for the cover of the next Pink Floyd album Animals. On the same day, an attempt was made on Bob Marley’s life when seven gunmen burst into his Kingston home injuring Marley his wife Rita and manager Don Taylor, the attack was believed to be politically motivated.
1988 – Junior Health minister Edwina Currie provoked outrage by saying that most of Britain’s egg production was infected with the salmonella bacteria.
1992 – Two bombs exploded in the centre of Manchester injuring 65 people. Miraculously no-one was killed, but much of the city centre had to be rebuilt.
2007 – Gillian Gibbons, a 54 year old teacher from Liverpool was released after eight days in custody and handed over to British officials in Sudan after being jailed for letting her class name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Today in music
1965 – The Who released their debut studio album My Generation in the UK. In the United States, it was released by Decca Records as The Who Sings My Generation in April 1966, with a different cover and a slightly altered track listing. In 2003 it was named the second greatest guitar album of all time by Mojo magazine.
1977 – Wings started a nine-week run at No.1 in the UK with ‘Mull Of Kintyre’. The first single to sell over 2 million copies in the UK, (it was co-written by Denny Laine who sold his rights to the song when he became bankrupt).
1999 – U2 singer Bono had his missing laptop computer returned after losing it. A young man had bought it for £300 discovered he had the missing laptop, which contained tracks from the forthcoming U2 album.
2006 – The reformed Take That topped the UK singles and album charts simultaneously for the first time ever in their career. The single ‘Patience’ remained at number for the second week, and Beautiful World the group’s new album entered the chart at No.1.
2014 – Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran was named the most-streamed artist in the world by Spotify. The 23-year-old had racked up more than 860 million streams on the service, beating Eminem and Coldplay who came second and third respectively. Katy Perry was the year’s most streamed female artist, with Ariana Grande second and Lana Del Rey third.
Today in history
1697 – The rebuilt St Paul’s Cathedral, the work of Sir Christopher Wren, was opened. The previous cathedral had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
1755 – The second Eddystone Lighthouse (located off the coast of Devon) was destroyed by fire. Four lighthouses have been built on the site. The light was lit on the fourth, (Douglass’s lighthouse, designed by James Douglass) in 1882 and it is still in use.
1766 – Swedish parliament approves the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act and implements it as a ground law, thus being first in the world with freedom of speech.
1867 – Charles Dickens, the English novelist (The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist) gave his first public reading.
Taking place at a New York City theater, Charles Dickens gave his first reading of a six-month American book tour.
1899 – John Cobb, British racing driver was born. He made money as a director of fur brokers and could therefore afford to specialise in large capacity motor-racing. He was born and lived in Esher, Surrey, near the Brooklands race track. He broke the land speed record at Bonneville on August 23, 1939, achieving 367.91 mph. Without this being beaten he raised the record to 394.19 mph in 1947. He died in 1952, attempting to break the world water speed record on Loch Ness in the jet speedboat Crusader at a speed in excess of 200 mph.
Fact of the day
The Yule Log was originally an entire tree that was carefully chosen and brought into the house with great ceremony and burned over the 12 days of Christmas. A Chocolate Yule Log or ‘bûche de Noël’ is now a popular Christmas desert, made of a chocolate sponge roll layered with cream. The outside is covered with chocolate or chocolate icing and decorated to look like a bark-covered log.