Thursday, July 17th "2025" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 198, known as National Tattoo Day, World Day for International Justice, World Emoji Day. Your star sign is Cancer and your birthstone is Ruby.
1964 – British speed pioneer Sir Donald Campbell set a new land speed world record of 403.10 mph in his car, Bluebird on Lake Eyre in Australia. This record was for wheel-driven vehicles and stood until 2001.
Todays birthdays
1947 – Queen Camilla (78), born Camilla Rosemary Shand, later Parker Bowles. Queen of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms as the wife of King Charles III, born in King’s College Hospital, London.
1952 – David Hasselhoff (72), American actor (Knight Rider, Baywatch) and television personality, born in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
1965 – Alex Winter (60), English actor (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and Bill & Ted Face the Music, The Lost Boys), born in London.
1976 – Gino D’Acampo (49), Italian celebrity chef (This Morning) and Television Presenter (Family Fortunes), born in Torre del Greco, Italy.
1982 – Natasha Hamilton (43), English singer, best known as a member of the girl pop group Atomic Kitten (“Whole Again”), born in Liverpool.
1985 – Tom Fletcher (40), English singer, guitarist and founding member of McFly (“5 Colours In Her Hair”, “All About You”) and former member of Busted, born in Harrow, London.
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
1917 – World War I: The British Royal Family, in a proclamation issued by George V, adopted the name of the House of Windsor in place of their German family name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha due to the anti-German sentiment at the time.
1918 – The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, was sunk off the southern coast of Ireland by the German SM U-55, with the loss of 5 lives. It was part of a convoy traveling from Liverpool to Boston.
1964 – British speed pioneer Sir Donald Campbell set a new land speed world record of 403.10 mph in his car, Bluebird. Designed by Ken and Lew Norris, Bluebird CN7 was powered by a Bristol-Siddeley Proteus gas turbine engine, as used in airliners, driving all four wheels. It was a massive and expensive project, costing an estimated £1,000,000 to build.
1974 – An explosion in the Tower of London left one person dead and 41 injured. The incident happened without the coded warning typical of the IRA.
1981 – The Humber Estuary Bridge was officially opened by the Queen. For 16 years after its construction it was the world’s longest single-span structure.
2001 – Concorde is brought back into service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash. It’s last commercial flight was 24 October 2003.
2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is shot down over Eastern Ukraine by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.
2014 – Retired Det. Sgt. Jack Tasker, a former detective with Lancashire Police said that three investigations into Cyril Smith sex abuse allegations were stopped, claiming that senior officers ordered him to hand over notes and warned he would be “in serious trouble” if he continued the investigation. Smith was MP for Rochdale from October 1972 – April 1992. After his death in 2010 numerous allegations of child sexual abuse emerged (including many made during his lifetime), leading the police to believe that Smith was a serial sex offender.
Today in music
1965 – King Records released ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ by James Brown, which went on to sell over 2 million copies and receive the Grammy Award for best for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording. ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ is considered seminal in the emergence of funk music as a distinct style.
1968 – The animated film Yellow Submarine, premiered at The London Pavilion. The Beatles made a cameo appearance in the film but didn’t supply their own voices for the characters.
1971 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared on the BBC late night talk show, Parkinson, where John chastised the British media for calling Yoko “ugly” and for saying that she broke up The Beatles.
1982 – Irene Cara was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Fame’, which was based on the hit TV series about a New York drama school. Cara (who played the role of Coco Hernandez in the original movie) won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for the same.
1993 – Take That had their first UK No.1 single with ‘Pray’. Written by band member Gary Barlow it was the second single from the band’s second studio album, Everything Changes. It was the first of twelve singles by the band to reach No.1 on the UK Singles Chart, staying at No.1 for four weeks.
1995 – Robbie Williams left Take That. As a solo artist Williams went on to score seven UK No. 1 singles, and all but one of his 14 studio albums reached No. 1 in the UK.
2019 – Snow Patrol’s ballad ‘Chasing Cars’ was named the most-played song of the 21st Century on UK radio. Originally released in 2006, the lovestruck ballad never reached No.1 in the UK, but remained on the charts for more than three years. Second place went to Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Gotta Feeling’, while Pharrell’s ‘Happy’ came third.
Today in history
924 AD – The death of Edward the Elder, King of the Anglo-Saxons. He was largely ignored by modern historians until the 1990s, when historian Nick Higham described him as ‘perhaps the most neglected of English kings’. Edward’s reputation rose in the late twentieth century, and he is now seen as destroying the power of the Vikings in southern England, and laying the foundations for a south-centred united English kingdom.
1453 – In the last battle of the Hundred Years’ War (the Battle of Castillon) the French, under Jean Bureau, defeated the English, under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was killed in the battle.
1585 – The English secret service discovered the Babington Plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I. Anthony Babington was one of the plot’s chief conspirators in killing Queen Elizabeth I and replacing her with her cousin Mary Queen of Scots. The plot’s motive was to restore England to its previous religion, as Queen Elizabeth I was a protestant and Mary Queen of Scots was a Roman Catholic.
1717 – King George I sailed down the River Thames for a concert, in a barge with 50 musicians. It was the premiere of Frideric Handel’s Water Music which George I was said to have enjoyed so much that he made the exhausted musicians play the three suites three times over the course of the outing.
1761 – The official opening of the Bridgewater canal, built to transport the Duke of Bridgewater’s coal from his mine at Worsley, near Manchester.