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 2026
Hello, … Welcome to day 6 of the New Year

Tuesday, January 6th Daily Prep.

Today is National Bird Day, National Screenwriters Day and Epiphany Day, marking the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Your star sign is Capricorn and your birthstone is Garnet.

1977 – The music publisher EMI ended its contract with the notorious punk rock group, Sex Pistols, after reports the band had vomited and spat their way on to a flight from London’s Heathrow Airport bound for the Netherlands.
The music publisher EMI ended its contract with the notorious punk rock group, Sex Pistols, after reports the band had vomited and spat their way on to a flight from London's Heathrow Airport bound for the Netherlands.
Today’s birthdays
1955 – Rowan Atkinson (71), English actor (Johnny English, Mr Bean, Blackadder), comedian and writer, born in Consett, County Durham.
1960 – Nigella Lawson (66), English food writer and television cook (Nigella Bites), born in Wandsworth, London.
1975 – Jason King (51), English radio DJ (Heart FM) best known for hosting the official UK chart on BBC Radio 1 between 2005 and 2007 with Joel Ross (JK and Joel), born in Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire.
1982 – Eddie Redmayne (44), English actor (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Les Misérables, The Day of the Jackal), born in Westminster, London.
1986 – Alex Turner (40), English singer-songwriter, musician and frontman of the rock band Arctic Monkeys (“I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”), born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Famous deaths
2012 – Bob Holness (b. 1928), British radio and television presenter (Blockbusters).
2022 – Sidney Poitier (b. 1927), Bahamian-American actor, film director and diplomat. In 1964, he was the first black actor and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.
The day today
1916 – During World War I, The British Government introduced conscription, to replace the many thousands killed in the trenches in France.
1928 – Four people were drowned, and many paintings in the basement of the Tate Gallery were severely damaged, when the Thames flooded. The water was deep enough to fill the moat of the Tower of London.
1929 – Mother Teresa arrived in India to help some of the country’s poorest. Mother Teresa was just 18 years old when she arrived in Calcutta to fulfill her dreams to serve the public.
1942 – Pan American Airlines completed its first round the world commercial trip. The plane, known as the “Pacific Clipper,” departed Treasure Island, San Francisco, on December 2, 1941, and completed its trip in New York on this day in 1942.
1960 – Nigella Lawson, TV chef, writer and daughter of Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, was born. Renowned for her flirtatious manner of presenting, Lawson has been called the ‘queen of food porn’. Chef, Gary Rhodes, spoke out by suggesting that her viewers were attracted to her smile rather than the cooking itself!
1983 – The Royal Navy arrested a Danish trawler captain (Kent Kirk) for illegally entering British waters in the first confrontation of the ‘fish war’. The move followed Denmark’s refusal to agree to proposals for a new EEC fishing regime.
1987 – The first episode of TV’s Inspector Morse was broadcast introducing John Thaw as the brooding Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as his sergeant.
1995 – A chemical fire in a Manila apartment complex on the evening of January 6 led Philippine National Police to accidentally discover the detailed plans for Project Bojinka (also known as Oplan Bojinka), a massive, multi-phase terrorist attack. The plot was a forerunner to the September 11 attacks.
1999 – Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones announced their engagement after Edward proposed in December 1998, with the official announcement made by the Queen from Buckingham Palace, leading to their wedding in June of that year.
2000 – The last naturally living Pyrenean ibex, a female named Celia, was found dead after being killed by a falling tree branch. This dramatic, accidental end to the subspecies is a well-known detail of its extinction story. While the immediate cause of death was the branch, the species’ overall decline was due to factors such as human hunting, disease transmitted from livestock, and an inability to compete for food resources, which left the population genetically weakened and highly vulnerable.
2013 – Jessops, the High Street camera retailer founded in Leicester in 1935 by Frank Jessop, went into administration. On 11th January it was announced that Jessops was to shut all of its stores at the end of the day’s trading, resulting in the loss of 1,370 jobs.
2014 – 54 year old Stephen Gough, the so-called ‘Naked Rambler’ was jailed for 16 months after a jury took just two minutes to find him guilty of breaching an antisocial behaviour order designed to prevent him from appearing nude in public. Gough has been convicted for dozens of offences, mainly in Scotland, where he was repeatedly arrested during attempts to walk from Land’s End to John o’Groats without clothes.
2014 – The Thaicom 6 satellite was launched into Earth’s orbit atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The satellite, owned and operated by Thaicom Public Company Limited, is a geostationary communications satellite with an expected mission duration of fifteen years.
Today in music
1962 – Elvis Presley had his third UK No.1 album with ‘Blue Hawaii’; it spent a total of 18 weeks at the top of the charts.

1964 – The first night of a 14 date UK tour ‘Group Scene 1964’, featuring The Rolling Stones, The Ronettes, Marty Wilde, The Swinging Blue Jeans and Dave Berry and The Cruisers, played at the Granada Theatre, Harrow on The Hill, Middlesex.

1973 – Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’, (with Mick Jagger on backing vocals), started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart. In 2015, after keeping quiet for more than 40 years, Carly Simon admitted that ‘You’re So Vain’ was about Warren Beatty, but only one verse of it. Simon said the other verses were about two other men.
1977 – The music publisher EMI ended its contract with the notorious punk rock group, Sex Pistols, after reports the band had vomited and spat their way on to a flight from London’s Heathrow Airport bound for the Netherlands.
1979 – The Village People scored their only UK No.1 single with ‘Y.M.C.A.’ At its peak the single was selling over 150,000 copies a day. In the gay culture from which the group sprang, the song was understood as celebrating the YMCA’s reputation as a popular cruising and hookup spot.
1993 – It was reported that David Bowie had lost over £2.5 million in unpaid royalties to an Italian Mafia-linked bootleg fraud.
2001 – Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour won the right to his dot com name. Dave took legal action in his battle to reclaim davidgilmour.com from Andrew Herman who had registered the URL and was selling Pink Floyd merchandise through the site.
2017 – Norway announced that it would become the first country in the world to gradually stop using the FM radio network. The move, which aimed to ditch the analogue platform in favour of a digital one called Digital Audio Broadcasting, would bring a clearer sound to the nation’s five million people.
2024 – It was reported that Female artists had a record year in 2023 on the UK singles chart, spending the most weeks at No.1 since records began in 1952. For 31 out of 52 weeks, female acts topped the chart either as solo artists or in collaboration with other musicians. Miley Cyrus had the biggest song of the year, with the break-up anthem ‘Flowers’ attracting 198 million streams.
Today in history
1066 – The coronation of Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, succeeding Edward the Confessor. He reigned for ten months before he died at the Battle of Hastings, fighting the Norman invaders led by William the Conqueror. Harold was the first of only three Kings of England to have died in battle; the other two being Richard I and Richard III.
1367 – Birth in Bordeaux of King Richard II, the last of the Plantagenet kings of England. He was the son of Edward the Black Prince.
1412 – The birth of St Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans. She was a great heroine of French history and believed that she had a divine mission to drive the British from France. She died at the stake after being captured by the Burgundians and sold to the British.
1540 – King Henry VIII married ‘the Flanders Mare’, Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife. The King found her so different from her picture that he swore they had brought him a Flanders mare. She was Queen of England from 6th January 1540 to 9th July 1540. The marriage was never consummated, and, following the annulment of their marriage, Anne was given a generous settlement by the King and was referred to thereafter as the King’s Beloved Sister. She lived to see the coronation of Henry’s daughter, (Mary I) and outlasted all of Henry’s wives.
1839 – The most damaging storm in 300 years swept across Ireland, damaging or destroying more than 20% of the houses in Dublin.