On This Day 2026
Hello, … Welcome to day 23 of the year.

Friday, January 23rd

Today is Measure Your Feet Day, National Handwriting Day and Sticky Toffee Pudding Day. Your star sign is Aquarius and your birthstone is Garnet.

2025 – Storm Éowyn hits Ireland and the UK with record-high winds of 114 mph (184 km/h), leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity in Northern Ireland and one person dead.

Storm Éowyn hits Ireland and the UK with record-high winds of 114 mph (184 km/h), leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity in Northern Ireland and one person dead.
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.
Today’s birthdays
1957 – Earl Falconer (69), English bass player and singer with reggae band UB40 (“Kingston Town”) since it was formed in 1978, born in Warwickshire.

1964 – Mariska Hargitay (62), American actress best known for her role as Olivia Benson in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, born in Santa Monica, California, United States.

1969 – Andrei Kanchelskis (57), Russian former footballer (Manchester United, Rangers) and current manager of Dynamo Bryansk, born in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine.
1972 – Ewen Bremner (54), Scottish actor (Trainspotting -“Spud”, Snatch, Black Hawk Down, Snowpiercer, Skin), born in Portobello, Edinburgh, Scotland.
1984 – Arjen Robben (42), Dutch former professional footballer (Chelsea, Bayern Munich), born in Bedum, Netherlands.
Famous deaths
1944 – Edvard Munch (b. 1863), Norwegian painter. His 1893 work The Scream has become one of the most iconic and acclaimed images in all of Western art.

2017 – Gorden Kaye (b. 1941), English actor best known for his role as René Artois in the British comedy television series, ‘Allo ‘Allo!

The day today
1901 – Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian physicist and radio pioneer carried out his first radio transmission experiments, receiving a Morse code signal across the water from St. Catherine’s on the Isle of Wight to the Lizard in Cornwall.
1943 – The British Eighth Army, commanded by General Bernard Montgomery, captured Tripoli after a 1,400-mile pursuit of General Erwin Rommel’s retreating German and Italian forces across Libya following the Second Battle of El Alamein. The Eighth Army then crossed into Tunisia, continuing the pursuit.
1963 – Kim Philby, a high-ranking British intelligence officer and Soviet double agent, abandoned his wife Eleanor in Beirut to defect to the USSR, revealing himself as the infamous “most damaging double agent in British history” and ending his career with MI6 as his treachery was finally exposed.
1978 – Sweden was the first country to ban aerosol sprays containing CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), acting on early scientific evidence that these chemicals depleted the ozone layer.
1983 – The American action-adventure series The A-Team first aired in the United States, with its feature-length pilot episode, “Mexican Slayride”. Starring George Peppard, Dirk Benedict, Dwight Schultz and Mr. T, the series ran until March 1987.
1985 – PC George Hammond was viciously stabbed while on the beat in London, and it took more than 120 pints of blood to save his life. He had continual nightmares and never recovered from the injuries suffered in the attack. His right kidney was removed and his left kidney never functioned properly again. This had led to chronic heart problems, culminating in a heart attack and kidney failure shortly before his death in Kings College Hospital on 13th December 1995.
1989 – Legislation came into force which permitted garages to display fuel prices by litre only, not by the gallon.
2009 – The UK officially entered a recession, when the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed that the economy had shrunk for two consecutive quarters. The recession was a result of the global financial crisis and was the first in the UK since 1991.
2015 – The owner of the mobile network ‘Three’ confirmed that it was in exclusive negotiations to acquire O2 UK from Spanish telco Telefonica for £10.25bn. It would have made the combined Three and O2 operator the biggest in the UK, with a 41% share of the market but the deal was blocked in May 2016 by the European Commission.
2018 – 12 camels were disqualified from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival for receiving Botox injections and other cosmetic enhancements to make their lips, noses, and heads appear larger and more desirable for the beauty contest. In December 2021, more than 40 camels are disqualified from the same festival for cosmetic enhancements.
2020 – China locks down the city of Wuhan and its 9 million people in a belated but ultimately successful effort to control the city’s COVID-19 outbreak.
2025 – Thailand becomes the 38th country and the first Southeast Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage, granting full equal rights for LGBTQ+ couples and making it the third Asian country after Taiwan and Nepal to do so.
2025 – Storm Éowyn hits Ireland and the UK with record-high winds of 114 mph (184 km/h), leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity in Northern Ireland and one person dead.

2025 – 18 year old Axel Rudakubana was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in jail, after pleading guilty to the murder of 3 young girls (aged 6, 7 and 9) and the attempted murder of 10 other people at a dance class in Southport on 29th July 2024. It was the longest prison sentence ever handed out to a teenager. Within minutes of Rudakubana being jailed, the case was referred under the “unduly lenient sentence scheme” to consider whether the 52 year minimum term was too short.

Today in music
1965 – ‘Downtown’ made Petula Clark the first UK female singer to have a No.1 on the US singles chart since Vera Lynn in 1952. The song was also a No.2 hit in the UK. Recorded in three takes (with the second take ultimately chosen as the completed track), session players in the studio recording included Jimmy Page.
1971 – George Harrison became the first solo Beatle to have a No.1 when ‘ ‘My Sweet Lord’ went to the top of the UK single charts. The song from his ‘All Things Must Pass’ album stayed at No.1 for five weeks. The track returned to the top of the UK charts in 2002, following his death.
1971 – Dawn started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Knock Three Times’, the group’s first No.1, which was also an UK No.1.
1976 – David Bowie released his tenth studio album Station to Station, which was the vehicle for his last great character, the Thin White Duke. The album was recorded after he completed shooting Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the cover artwork featured a still from the movie. The album made the top five in both the UK and US charts.
1988 – Michael Jackson went to No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’. It was the third single from Jackson’s seventh studio album Bad for which Jackson had written over sixty songs for the album, with plans of releasing a three disc album, but producer Quincy Jones convinced Jackson to make Bad a one disc LP.
1990 – Allen Collins guitarist from Lynyrd Skynyrd died of pneumonia after being ill for several months. Collins who was one of the founding members also co-wrote most of the band’s songs (including Free Bird), with late front man Ronnie Van Zant.
2003 – R Kelly was arrested on new child pornography charges. The singer was detained in Miami after police said digital sex pictures were discovered at his home in Florida the previous June. The singer was already facing 21 charges relating to producing child pornography and appearing in a video having sex with an underage girl. He was charged with a further 12 counts of possession of child pornography.
2005 – Former Happy Mondays dancer Bez, won the £50,000 Celebrity Big Brother prize, after gaining 54% of the final viewer vote. The “Madchester” pop legend danced his way to becoming the sixth member of the indie-dance band in the late-1980s after playing maracas with them.
2006 – Arctic Monkeys released their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. The album received widespread critical acclaim from critics and was named the best album of 2006 by Time magazine, the Brit Award for Best British Album, winning the 2007 Mercury Prize, and receiving a Grammy Award nomination for Best Alternative Music Album.
2024 – Max Martin broke Beatles producer George Martin’s record for the most No.1 hits as a producer when ‘Yes, And?’ by Ariana Grande, became his 24th chart-topping production. His first was ‘…Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears in 1999.
Today in history
1570 – James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, and regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, was fatally shot by James Hamilton, a supporter of Mary Queen of Scots. It was the first recorded assassination by a firearm.
1571 – Queen Elizabeth I opened the Royal Exchange, London, as a bankers’ meeting house. It was founded by the financier Sir Thomas Gresham.
1643 – Sir Thomas Fairfax took Leeds for the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War.
1713 – The signing of the Treaty of Utrecht redrew the map of Europe. The treaty signalled the end of the long and bloody War of Spanish Succession. As part of the agreement Gibraltar and Minorca become British.
1806 – Death of William Pitt ‘The Younger’ at the age of 46. He was Britain’s youngest Prime Minister (aged 24) and served twice, from 19th December 1783 to 14th March 1801 and again from 10th May 1804 until his death ‘on this day’.
1849 – English-born Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), who was constantly ostracised and harassed by the male students, graduated from a New York medical school and became the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States (1849) and the first woman on the Medical Register in Britain (1859).