January 21st "2024" daily prep
Welcome to day 21, known as Squirrel Appreciation Day, International Playdate Day and National Hugging Day. If you were born on this day, you were likely conceived the week of April 30th. Your star sign is “Capricorn” and your birthstone is Garnet.
1990 – John McEnroe becomes the first player ever to be expelled from the Australian Open tennis event.
Todays birthdays
1950 – Billy Ocean (74), British singer and songwriter (“Caribbean Queen”, “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car”), born in Fyzabad, Trinidad and Tobago.
1976 – Emma Bunton (48), English singer who rose to fame in the 1990s as a member of the pop girl group the Spice Girls (“Say You’ll Be There”, “Wannabe”), born in Finchley, London.
1977 – Phil Neville (47), English football manager and former player (Manchester United), born in Bury, Lancashire.
1979 – Brian O’Driscoll (45), Irish former professional rugby union player (Leinster and Ireland), born in Dublin, Ireland.
1985 – Adrian Lewis (39), English professional darts player (two-time PDC World Darts Champion, winning in 2011 and 2012), born in Stoke-on-Trent.
The day today
1950 – The British writer George Orwell died after a three year battle against tuberculosis. His books included 1984 and Animal Farm. They were controversial and 1984, like Animal Farm, was widely viewed as an attack on the Communist system.
1966 – The Monte Carlo rally ended in uproar over the disqualification of the British cars expected to fill the first four places. They were all ruled out of the prizes, along with six other British cars, for alleged infringements of regulations about the way their headlights dipped.
1970 – Five RNLI volunteers died in the Fraserburgh lifeboat disaster. It left five women widowed and 15 children mourning the loss of a father. The 1970 disaster marked the third time that a lifeboat from Fraserburgh had been lost. The north east town had previously faced tragedy in 1953 (6 crew died) and 1919 (the death of 2 crew members).
1971 – The current Emley Moor transmitting station, situated in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, began transmitting UHF broadcasts for Yorkshire Television. At 330.4 metres (1,084 ft) tall, it is the tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom and is a Grade II listed building.
1976 – The first Concorde jets carrying commercial passengers simultaneously took off, at 11:40 a.m. from Heathrow Airport and Orly Airport outside Paris. The London flight was to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and the Paris flight was to Rio de Janeiro. Nearly 3 hours was knocked off the normal flying time to Bahrain by the British Concorde but the Air France Concorde arrived 38 minutes late.
Today in music
1966 – George Harrison married Patti Boyd at Leatherhead Register Office in Surrey with Paul McCartney as Best man. George had first met Patti on the set of The Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night. She left Harrison in the mid-’70s and started an affair with Harrison’s friend Eric Clapton, who wrote the song ‘Layla’ about her. The two married in May 1979 but split in 1988. Harrison and Clapton remained close friends with Harrison, taking to calling Clapton his “husband-in-law”.
1972 – Pink Floyd appeared at The Guildhall, Portsmouth, England. This was the first time that they were able to perform the whole of what became the The Dark Side Of The Moon album in its entirety, the previous night’s performance in Brighton having been halted for technical reasons.
1978 – The soundtrack album Saturday Night Fever started a 24-week run at No.1 on the US album charts and stayed on the chart for 120 weeks until March 1980. It went on to sell over 40 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling soundtrack albums of all time. Three singles from the album contributed by the Bee Gees ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘Night Fever’. The Bee Gees’ involvement in the film did not begin until post-production. John Travolta stated, “The Bee Gees weren’t even involved in the movie in the beginning. I was dancing to Stevie Wonder and Boz Scaggs.
2007 – Mika scored his debut UK No.1 hit single with ‘Grace Kelly’, which went on to become the third biggest-selling single in the UK in 2007 and spent five weeks at the top of the chart. The song is titled after Academy Award-winning American film actress and Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly. The bit of dialogue used in the song is from the film The Country Girl, which stars Kelly.
2022 – Adele postponed her entire Las Vegas residency, just 24 hours before the opening night due to half of her team having Covid. The shows would have been her first live concerts in five years and Adele was forecast to make more than £500,000 per performance.
Today in history
1549 – Parliament passed the first of four Acts of Uniformity, the first requiring the exclusive use of the Book of Common Prayer in all public services of theAnglican Church.
1799 – Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccination was introduced. His work on vaccination prevented him from continuing with his ordinary medical practice. Supported by his colleagues and the King he petitioned Parliament and was granted £10,000 for his work on vaccination. In 1806 he was granted another £20,000 for his ongoing work in microbiology.
1807 – Streets in London were first illuminated by gaslight when Pall Mall was lit up.
1846 – The publication of the first edition of the Daily News, edited by Charles Dickens. It merged with the Daily Chronicle to form the News Chronicle in 1930, and was ultimately absorbed by the Daily Mail in 1960.
1919 – The birth, in Leith, of Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown, former Royal Navy officer and test pilot who flew more types of aircraft than anyone else in history. He is also the Fleet Air Arm’s most decorated pilot and holds the world record for aircraft carrier landings – around 1,500 deck landings on 22 different aircraft carriers.
Fact of the day
A woman once found her lost wedding ring growing on a carrot in her garden. In 1995, a Swedish woman lost her wedding ring while preparing a Christmas eve dinner. 12 years later, the ring re-emergers in her garden wrapped around a carrot.