Saturday, July 12th "2025" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 193, known as Etch A Sketch Day, National Simplicity Day, International Skinny Dipping Day. Your star sign is Cancer and your birthstone is Ruby.
2013 – A military funeral was held for 25-year-old Fusilier Lee Rigby at Bury Parish Church in Greater Manchester. He was killed on the 22nd May 2013 outside Woolwich Barracks by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.
Todays birthdays
1952 – Liz Mitchell (73), British singer, best known as one of the original singers of Boney M (“Ma Baker”, “Daddy Cool”), born in Clarendon, Jamaica.
1966 – Annabel Croft (59), English former tennis player and broadcaster (Eurosport, Sky Sport, BBC), born in Farnborough, Orpington, Greater London.
1969 – Alan Mullally (56), English former first-class cricketer (19 Tests, 58 wickets; 50 ODIs, 63 wickets), born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
1972 – Jake Wood (53), English actor best known for his role as Max Branning in EastEnders, born in Westminster, London.
1976 – Anna Friel (49), English actress (Pushing Daisies, Marcella) best known for her role as Beth Jordache in Brookside from 1993–1995, born in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
1978 – Michelle Rodriguez (47), American actress (Fast and Furious franchise, S.W.A.T, Avatar, Battle Los Angeles), born in San Antonio, Texas, United States.
1984 – Gareth Gates (41), English singer (“Anyone of Us”, “Spirit in the Sky”) and runner up in the first series of Pop Idol in 2002, born in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
Famous deaths
2013 – Alan Whicker (b. 1921), Journalist and broadcaster who’s TV career stretched nearly six decades. He was best known for his documentary series, Whicker’s World.
The day today
1910 – Charles Rolls, aged 32, pioneering pilot and co-founder of Rolls-Royce, was killed when he crashed his biplane in a flying competition in the Southbourne distric of Bournemouth. He was the first Briton to be killed in a flying accident.Rolls is commemorated in Monmouth and his grave is in the Monmouthshire church of Llangattock-Vibon-Avel, where many of the Rolls family lie buried in various family tombs.
1932 – Yorkshire cricketer Hedley Verity took 10 wickets for 10 runs in a county championship match against Nottinghamshire at Headingley, Leeds.
1963 – Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s first victim was Pauline Reade, 16, who disappeared on her way to a dance. Pauline, a schoolmate of Hindley’s sister Maureen, was abducted after Hindley offered to give her a lift on Foxmer Street in Gorton.
1986 – Dozens were injured in the second consecutive night of violent riots in Portadown, County Armagh. Violence flared when Orangemen converged on the town after their annual marches to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne (1690).
1989 – Judy Leden became the first woman to cross the English Channel by hang glider. She was launched from a hot air balloon 13,500 ft above Dover and completed the flight in less than 30 minutes.
1993 – The musical “Sunset Boulevard” by Andrew Lloyd Webber opened at the Adelphi Theater in London.
The show was incredibly popular and ran for 1,529 performances but had to be stopped due to losing money for being an expensive production.
2013 – A military funeral was held for 25-year-old Fusilier Lee Rigby at Bury Parish Church in Greater Manchester. He was killed on the 22nd May 2013 outside Woolwich Barracks by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.
2013 – Journalist and broadcaster Alan Whicker died at the age of 87 after suffering from bronchial pneumonia. His TV career stretched nearly six decades and he was best known for his documentary series, Whicker’s World, which ran from 1959 to 1988 on both the BBC and ITV. He was made a CBE for services to broadcasting in 2005.
2017 – Iceberg A-68 broke from the Larsen C Ice Shelf, along the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. At the time, it was the largest iceberg in the world and the sixth-largest berg in three decades of records.
Today in music
1962 – The Rolling Stones made their live debut at the Marquee Jazz Club, London, with Dick Taylor on bass (later of The Pretty Things) and Mick Avory on drums, (later of The Kinks). Billed as The Rollin’ Stones, they were paid £20 for the gig.
1965 – The Beach Boys released ‘California Girls’ which Brian Wilson had conceived during his first acid trip. Written by Wilson and Mike Love the song reached No.3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was a top 10 hit in several other countries, becoming one of the band’s most successful songs globally.
1968 – Mickey Dolenz from The Monkees married Samantha Juste who he met when working in the UK on the BBC TV show Top Of The Pops.
1980 – Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra had the UK No.1 single with ‘Xanadu’, which was taken from the film of the same name. It gave Olivia Newton-John her third UK No.1 single.
1986 – Simply Red scored their first US No.1 single with ‘Holding Back The Years’. Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall wrote the song when he was seventeen, while living at his father’s house. The chorus did not come to him until many years later.
1991 – Take That released their debut single ‘Do What U Like’ which was a commercial failure, peaking at No. 82 on the UK Singles Chart. The low-budget video for the track featured the band getting naked, showing their bare buttocks and smearing jelly over themselves, resulting in the video being banned from daytime television.
Today in history
927 AD – King Athelstan, (also spelled Aethelstan or Ethelstan), became the first West Saxon king to have effective rule over the whole of England. when various local kings accepted his overlordship at Eamont, in Cumbria.
1290 – Jews were expelled from England by order of King Edward I, following almost two centuries of Christians and Jews living alongside each other.
1543 – Henry VIII married Catherine Parr, his sixth and last wife, at Hampton Court Palace. Catherine was the fourth commoner Henry had taken as his consort, and she outlived him. She was also the most-married English queen, having a total of four husbands.
1690 – William of Orange defeated the deposed Catholic, King James II, at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.
1794 – British admiral Horatio Nelson lost clear vision in his right eye at the siege of Calvi, in Corsica. This was caused by the spray of stones and sand from a nearby sandbag hit by a cannonball.