Thursday, June 12th "2025" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 163, known as National Red Rose Day, Superman Day. Your star sign is Gemini and your birthstone is Pearl (Alexandrite and Moonstone is also recognised).
1942 – Anne Frank, born on this day in 1922 received her famous diary. Her first entry was, “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”
Todays birthdays
1938 – Tom Oliver (87), British-born Australian retired actor best known for his role as Lou Carpenter in Neighbours, a role he played for 25 years, born in Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire.
1946 – Robert “Bobby” Gould (79), English former footballer (West Ham United, Wolverhampton Wanderers) and manager (Coventry City, Cardiff City, Weymouth), born in Coventry.
1958 – Meredith Brooks (67), American singer-songwriter and guitarist (“Bitch”), born in Corvallis, Oregon, United States.
1965 – Cathy Tyson (60), English actress (Band of Gold, Help, Boiling Point, Mona Lisa), born in Kingston upon Thames, London.
1979 – Robyn (46), Swedish singer-songwriter, musician and record producer (“Dancing On My Own”, “With Every Heartbeat”), born in Stockholm, Sweden.
Famous deaths
1980 – Billy Butlin (b. 1899), South African-English businessman, founded the Butlins Company (He opened the first Butlins camp in Skegness on 11th April 1936).
The day today
1922 – George Leigh Mallory and two British climbers reached a height of 25,800 feet on Mount Everest without the aid of oxygen; the highest point ever achieved. Two years later, this same month, Mallory made another attempt with Andrew Irvine. Less than 1,000 feet from the summit, they were trapped by bad weather and were never seen alive again. (His body was eventually found on 3rd May 1999)
1942 – Anne Frank received her famous diary. Her first entry was, “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.” The last entry is dated 5 December 1942. By then, she had been in hiding in the Secret Annex for five months. The diary was not completely filled, there still were several empty pages.
1964 – Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison in South Africa. Mandela was charged with having organized an illegal strike and with leaving the country without valid travel documents. On the trip in question, he had travelled to Addis Ababa to attend the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa conference in February 1962 to rally support for uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), an underground wing of the African National Congress.
1995 – Two business colleagues from Sussex shared a record (at the time) National Lottery jackpot of more than £22m.
1997 – Law lords ruled that the former Home Secretary Michael Howard acted illegally when he raised the minimum sentence imposed on Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the killers of two year old James Bulger in February 1993. James’s mutilated body was found on a railway line two-and-a-half miles away from where he had disappeared, two days previously.
1997 – Queen Elizabeth II reopened the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London. The reconstructed theatre, named Shakespeare’s globe, was created to be as faithful as possible to the original design, which burnt down in 1613.
Today in music
1965 – The Beatles were included in the Queen’s birthday honours list to each receive the MBE. Protests poured into Buckingham Palace, MP Hector Dupuis said ‘British Royalty has put me on the same level as a bunch of vulgar numbskulls’.
1999 – It was reported that Oasis had paid Gary Glitter £200,000 as an out-of-court settlement after being accused of using the Gary Glitter lyric, ‘Hello, hello, it’s good to be back’ in the song ‘Hello’.
2005 – Pink Floyd announced they would reunite with former bassist Roger Waters, who left the band in 1985, on July 2 for the Live 8 London concert. This would be the first time the band had played together as a quartet since The Wall tour in 1981.
2006 – Prince received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his “visionary” use of the Internet; Prince was the first major artist to release an entire album, 1997’s Crystal Ball, exclusively on the internet.
2008 – Amy Winehouse performed an exclusive gig at a Moscow art gallery for Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich and his girlfriend Dasha Zhukova. It was reported that the singer was paid £1m for the gig at the launch of The Garage gallery, which has been set up by Ms Zhukova.
2020 – Welsh singer Ricky Valance died at his home in Spain at the age of 84. He became the first Welshman to have a solo UK No.1 hit with the song ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’ in 1960. The song tells the tragic story of a boy called Tommy and his love for a girl called Laura. It was was considered controversial at the time and was reportedly banned from airplay by the BBC.
2024 – The British band formerly known as Easy Life were forced to change their name to Hard Life, after a threat of legal action by the brand owners of airline EasyJet. They found themselves locked in a battle with EasyGroup in 2023, after the company said the band had promoted their Life’s a Beach tour, in 2021 and 2022, with a poster showing a plane in the style of EasyJet’s orange livery but substituting the airline’s name for their own.
Today in history
1429 – In the Hundred Years’ War, Joan of Arc led the French army in their capture of the city of Jargeau (France) against the English commander, William de la Pole, the 1st Duke of Suffolk. The English suffered heavy losses.
1458 – Magdalen College, Oxford, was founded by William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor. He wanted a college on the grandest scale, and his foundation was the largest in Oxford, with 40 Fellows, 30 scholars (known at Magdalen as Demies), and a large choir for his Chapel.
1667 – The Dutch fleet, under Admiral de Ruyter burned Sheerness, sailed up the River Medway, raided Chatham dockyard, and then escaped with the royal barge, the Royal Charles.
1673 – The future King James II of England was forced to resign as Lord High Admiral because of his Catholic faith.
1889 – Seventy eight people were killed and 260 injured, almost a third of them children, in the Armagh rail disaster in Northern Ireland. A crowded Sunday school excursion train had to negotiate a steep incline but the steam locomotive was unable to complete the climb and the train stalled. The crew divided the train but the rear portion ran back down the gradient and collided with a following train. It was the worst rail disaster in the UK in the nineteenth century, and remains Ireland`s worst ever railway disaster.