On This Day 2026
Hello, … Welcome to day 26 of the year.

Monday, January 26th

Today is National Bubble Wrap Day, National Green Juice Day, National Spouses Day and Dundee Day. Your star sign is Aquarius and your birthstone is Garnet.
1926 – John Logie Baird gave a special public demonstration of television to members of the Royal Institution in London. Baird’s invention used mechanical rotating disks to scan moving images into electronic impulses.
John Logie Baird gave a special public demonstration of television to members of the Royal Institution in London. Baird’s invention used mechanical rotating disks to scan moving images into electronic impulses.
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
1958 – Ellen DeGeneres (68), American retired comedian (Ellen), television host (The Ellen DeGeneres Show), born in Metairie, Louisiana, United States.
1963 – Andrew Ridgley (63), English singer-songwriter, and one half of Wham! with George Michael (“Wake me up before you go-go”), born in Windlesham, Surrey.
1963 – Jazzie B, (63), English DJ and founding member of Soul II Soul (“Back to Life”, “Keep On Movin’”), born in Hornsey, London.
1963 – José Mourinho (63), Portuguese football manager (Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Manchester Utd, Real Madrid, Tottenham, Roma), born in Lisbon, Portugal.
1990 – Sergio Pérez (36), Mexican Formula One racing driver with Cadillac (runner-up in the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship in 2023), born in Guadalajara, Mexico.
1996 – Tyger Drew-Honey (30), English actor (Outnumbered, Horrid Henry: The Movie, Cuckoo) and television presenter, born in Epsom, Surrey.
Famous deaths
2020 – Kobe Bryant (b. 1978), American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA.
The day today
1907 – A riot broke out in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on the first night of J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, when the audience took offence at the ‘foul language’. The riots continued for a week, but the show went on, heavily guarded by police.

1908 – The 1st Glasgow Boy Scout group, the first Scout group ever, was registered. Today, there are nearly 32 million members in 218 countries and territories and the movement is still growing. In the UK, the total membership is over 500,000.

1922 – The birth of Michael Bentine, British comedian, comic actor and founding member of the Goon Show radio show with Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe.
1926 – John Logie Baird gave a special public demonstration of television to members of the Royal Institution in London. Baird’s invention used mechanical rotating disks to scan moving images into electronic impulses.
1962 – The Ranger 3 robotic spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Ranger 3 could have made history as the first US spacecraft to land on the Moon, but a number of malfunctions caused the spacecraft to miss the Moon by 22,000 miles (35,000 km). While part of the mission’s goal was to crash onto the Moon, it was also meant to transmit photographs of the Moon’s surface back to Earth in its final 10 minutes before impact.
1966 – The Beaumont children, Jane, Arnna, and Grant, vanished from a beach in Adelaide, Australia, and were never found. The children were last seen playing at the beach with an unknown man. The kids or the mysterious man were never seen again.
1968 – The National Provincial Bank and the Westminster Bank merged to form the National Westminster (NatWest).
1972 – Flight attendant Vesna Vulović survived the world’s highest fall without a parachute after falling 33,330 feet. Amazingly she went on to fully recover. She even wanted to return to work on planes, but her manager moved her to the airline offices.
1982 – Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979 on the slogan ‘Labour isn’t working’, yet the number of people out of work in Britain rose above three million for the first time since the 1930s.
1993 – Everton scores a 3-1 away win over Wimbledon at Selhurst Park in London with a lowest ever attendance at an EPL fixture of 3,039.
1994 – A protester fired two blank shots from a starting pistol at Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, as he prepared to speak at an Australia Day rally in Sydney.
1998 – President Bill Clinton’s famous denial, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” was uttered at a White House press conference amidst the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
2004 – A 60-ton decomposing whale exploded onto the busy streets of Taipei, Taiwan. The dead 56-foot-long sperm whale was sitting on the back of a lorry on its way to be researched. She exploded because of the gasses building up inside her during decay. The flying debris literally washed the surrounding street and nearby cars.
2010 – After 6 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, the UK economy officially finally comes out of recession with a GDP growth of 0.1%.
2014 – Police stopped a learner driver for speeding on the M62 in West Yorkshire. She was accompanied only by her pet parrot. ‘Since parrots are not allowed to supervise learner drivers, her vehicle has been seized,’ police tweeted.
2015 – The Rt. Rev. Libby Lane became the first female Church of England bishop, when she was consecrated Bishop of Stockport in a ceremony at York Minster.
2020 – A helicopter carrying nine people, including Kobe Bryant and his daughter, crashed in California with no survivors. The debris from the crash was scattered on steep terrain over a field estimated to extend 500 to 600 feet (150 to 180 m). Firefighters hiked to the site and paramedics rappelled from a helicopter to the scene.
Today in music
1956 – Buddy Holly recorded what would become his first release, ‘Love Me’ and ‘Blue Days, Black Nights’. Both tracks were later featured on That’ll Be The Day the third album from Holly.
1961 – Elvis Presley was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’. The singers sixth UK No.1. The song which was written by Roy Turk and Lou Handman in 1926 first became a hit in 1950 when the Blue Barron Orchestra version reached the top twenty on Billboard’s Pop chart. Elvis recorded the song at the suggestion of his manager Colonel Tom Parker as it was Parker’s wife, Marie Mott’s, favourite song.

1973 – Sweet were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Blockbuster’. The glam rockers only UK No.1 of 15 Top 40 hits.

1975 – The BBC ‘Omnibus’ documentary ‘Cracked Actor’ a film about David Bowie was shown on UK TV. Filmed in 1974 when Bowie was was a cocaine addict, the documentary has become notorious for showing Bowie’s fragile mental state during this period.
1977 – Former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green was committed to a mental hospital following an incident when he threatened his accountant Clifford Adams with an air rifle when he was trying to deliver a £30,000 royalty cheque to him.
1991 – Queen had their second UK No.1 with ‘Innuendo’. At 6 minutes 30 seconds, it exceeded their epic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by 35 seconds and became the third longest UK No.1 song of all time, behind The Beatles ‘Hey Jude’ and Simple Minds ‘Belfast Child’ (subsequently the 9 minutes 38 seconds ‘All Around The World’ by Oasis took over the top slot and demoted Innuendo to fourth place). For ‘Innuendo’s’ flamenco guitar solo, Brian May was joined by Yes guitarist Steve Howe.
2004 – John Lydon was one of ten contestants to take part in the latest I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here UK TV show set in the Australian outback. The former Sex Pistols singer was seen by 11 million viewers on the first night covered in bird seed being pecked by giant ostriches. Lydon who was paid £25,000 to appear in the show, but walked off the jungle set after four days.
2008 – Alicia Keys was at No.1 on the US album chart with her third album ‘As I Am’. The album sold over 742,000 copies in its first week the largest ever first week sales for any female R&B artist.
2020 – Billie Eilish swept the board at the 2020 Grammys, winning five awards, including best new artist and song of the year becoming the first person to achieve the feat since Christopher Cross in 1981. The 18-year-old also won album of the year for her debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go. She replaced Taylor Swift as the youngest person ever to win the award. Her elder brother, Finneas O’Connell, also picked up producer of the year for his work on Eilish’s album.
2022 – Spotify removes Neil Young’s music from its streaming platform after the singer-songwriter’s ultimatum in objection to COVID-19 misinformation in Joe Rogan’s podcasts.
Today in history
1788 – The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sailed into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent. 26th January is now commemorated as Australia Day.
1823 – The death of Edward Jenner, the pioneer of smallpox vaccine. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Immunology’; it’s been said that his work ‘saved more lives than the work of any other man’.
1834 – The death of Jean Armour, wife of the poet Robert Burns. They had nine children, three of whom survived into adulthood. She was buried beside her famous husband in the mausoleum in Saint Michael’s Cemetery, Dumfries.
1841 – Hong Kong was proclaimed British sovereign territory until 1997, except for a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II between 1941 and 1945.
1885 – The British commander of Khartoum, General Charles Gordon, was killed during the attack on Khartoum by troops of the Mahdi following a 10 month siege.