June 13th "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 165, known as National Sewing Machine Day, National Weed Your Garden Day. If you were born on this day, you were likely conceived the week of September 20th in the previous year. Your star sign is Gemini and your birthstone is Pearl.
1842 – Queen Victoria travelled by train for the first time, from Slough (near Windsor Castle) to Paddington, accompanied by Prince Albert.
Todays birthdays
1943 – Malcolm McDowell (81), English actor (A Clockwork Orange, Tank Girl, O Lucky Man!), born in Horsforth, Leeds, West Yorkshire.
1955 – Alan Hansen (69), Scottish former footballer (Liverpool, Scotland) and BBC television football pundit, born in Sauchie, Scotland.
1964 – Kathy Burke (60), English actress and comedian (Kevin and Perry, Gimme Gimme Gimme, Harry Enfield and Chums), born in Islington, London.
1968 – David Gray (56), British singer-songwriter (“Babylon”, “The One I Love”), born in Sale, Greater Manchester.
1976 – Kym Marsh (48), 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.
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.
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.
Today in history
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.