Friday, June 13th "2025" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 164, known as National Sewing Machine Day, National Weed Your Garden Day. Your star sign is Gemini and your birthstone is Pearl (Alexandrite and Moonstone is also recognised).
2019 – Archaeologists announce Scottish crannogs (fortified settlements on artificial islands in lochs) are far older than first thought, radiocarbon dated to 3640-3360 BC, older than Stonehenge.
Todays birthdays
1943 – Malcolm McDowell (82), English actor (A Clockwork Orange, Tank Girl, Gangster No. 1), born in Horsforth, Leeds, West Yorkshire.
1955 – Alan Hansen (70), Scottish former footballer (Liverpool, Scotland) and BBC television football pundit, born in Sauchie, Clackmannanshire, Scotland.
1964 – Kathy Burke (61), English actress and comedian (Kevin and Perry, Gimme Gimme Gimme, Harry Enfield and Chums), born in Islington, London.
1968 – David Gray (57), English singer-songwriter (“Babylon”, “The One I Love”, “This Year’s Love”), born in Sale, Greater Manchester.
1976 – Kym Marsh (49), English actress (Coronation Street, Waterloo Road) and singer (Hear’Say – “Pure and Simple”, “The Way to Your Love”), born in Whiston, Merseyside.
Famous deaths
1998 – Reg Smythe (b. 1917), English cartoonist (creator of the popular, long-running Andy Capp comic strip).
The day today
1944 – World War II: the first German V1 flying bomb, or ‘doodlebug’ landed in Britain – killing three people in a house in the coastal city of Southampton. Only four of the eleven bombs hit their targets.
1951 – Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth) laid the foundation stone for what was to become the Royal National Theatre.
1981 – 17 year-old Marcus Sarjeant was arrested for shooting a replica gun at the Queen as she rode past crowds in London during the Trooping the Colour ceremony. Sarjeant was prosecuted under the Treason Act 1842 and was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
1989 – “Licence to Kill”, the 16th James Bond film, starring Timothy Dalton and Benicio del Toro premieres in London.
1996 – French and British researchers injected material from cows suffering from BSE into the brains of macaque monkeys and found the same disease patterns as in patients suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
2013 – A man was given a warning after he dialled 999 to complain about a prostitute’s looks. A police spokesperson said “The caller claimed that the woman had made out that she was better looking than she actually was and he wished to report her for breaching the Sale of Goods Act.” The Sale of Goods Act 1979 gives consumers legal rights, stipulating goods which are sold must be of satisfactory quality, be fit for purpose and must match the seller’s description.
Today in music
1966 – Frank Sinatra was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Strangers in the Night’. Composed by Bert Kaempfert with English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder, Sinatra’s recording won him the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
1970 – ‘The Long and Winding Road’ became the Beatles’ last Number 1 single in the United States. McCartney originally wrote the song at his farm in Scotland saying ‘I have always found inspiration in the calm beauty of Scotland and again it proved the place where I found inspiration.’
1987 – Whitney Houston started a six-week run at No.1 on the UK album chart with her second LP Whitney. With this album, Houston set various records on the US charts. Houston became female artist, to debut at No.1 with an album and its first four singles, ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)’, ‘Didn’t We Almost Have It All’, ‘So Emotional’ and ‘Where Do Broken Hearts Go’, all peaked at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making her the first female artist to achieve that feat.
1995 – Alanis Morissette released her studio album, Jagged Little Pill. The album went on to sell over 30 million copies world-wide, and made Morissette the first female Canadian to score a US No.1 album. ‘Jagged Little Pill’ featured the massive hits, ‘You Oughta Know’, ‘Hand in My Pocket’, ‘Ironic’, and ‘You Learn’.
2003 – The Arctic Monkeys made their live debut at The Grapes pub in Sheffield, England. They received £27 from ticket sales.
2005 – Michael Jackson was cleared of all charges of child abuse by a jury of eight women and four men at the end of a 16-week hearing in Santa Maria, California. Jackson was found not guilty of all 10 charges including abusing a 13-year-old boy, conspiracy to kidnap and supplying alcohol to a minor to assist with a felony.
2024 – Thousands of Taylor Swift fans made the earth move by cheering and dancing at her three Edinburgh concerts last weekend. Fans took the singer’s encouragement to ‘Shake It Off’ literally, with monitoring stations detecting seismic activity from 6km (3.73 miles) away. It was also reported how Swift’s three-night stint at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh in Scotland had an “unbelievable impact” on the city’s hospitality industry with thousands of Swifties swamping cafes, bars and tourist attractions across the centre of Edinburgh while Swift’s billion-dollar tour was in the town.
Today in history
1373 – The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of Perpetual Alliance (world’s oldest still in existence) was signed in London between King Edward III of England and King Ferdinand I of Portugal.
1625 – King Charles I of England marries Catholic princess Henrietta Maria of France and Navarre, at Canterbury.
1652 – George Fox preached from a wild and remote spot on Firbank Fell, Cumbria to a congregation of about 1,000 for 3 hours. The meeting proved of first importance in gathering the Society of Friends, known as Quakers.
1665 – The Great Plague began to take hold, as the official death toll reached 112. By the end of August 1665 the Plague reached the village of Eyam in Derbyshire.
1834 – Leonard Norcross was granted the first US patent for an underwater diving suit. Norcross invented the first closed helmet for diving made entirely from lead with an air pipe that went from the helmet to the water’s surface.
1842 – Queen Victoria travelled by train for the first time, from Slough (near Windsor Castle) to Paddington, accompanied by Prince Albert. A special coach had been built earlier, but the Queen had been reluctant to try this new form of travel. On her first journey, the engine driver was assisted by the great civil engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.