June 14th "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 166, known as National Bourbon Day, Falkland Islands Liberation Day. If you were born on this day, you were likely conceived the week of September 21st in the previous year. Your star sign is Gemini and your birthstone is Pearl.
2017 – A fire in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block at North Kensington, West London caused 72 deaths. The fire started accidentally in a fridge-freezer on the fourth floor and the building burned for about 60 hours.
Todays birthdays
1961 – Boy George (63), English singer, songwriter, actor, DJ and lead singer of the English pop band Culture Club (“Karma Chameleon”), born in Barnehurst, Bexleyheath, London.
1969 – Steffi Graf (55), German former professional tennis player (in 1998, she became the first and only tennis player to achieve the Golden Slam by winning all four major singles titles and the Olympic gold medal in the same calendar year), born in Mannheim, Germany.
1976 – Alan Carr (48), English comedian and television presenter (Chatty Man, Bullseye), born in Weymouth, Dorset.
1984 – Siobhan Donaghy (40), English singer and songwriter, best known as a founding member of the girl group Sugababes (“Overload”), born in Eastcote, Hillingdon, West London.
1991 – Jesy Nelson (33), English singer (Little Mix – “Shout out to My Ex”, “Black Magic”), born in Romford, East London.
Famous deaths
1928 – Emmeline Pankhurst (b. 1857), English activist and academic best known for organizing the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.
1946 – John Logie Baird (b. 1888), Scottish-English physicist and engineer (inventor of the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electronic colour television picture tube).
The day today
1940 – Auschwitz concentration camp started operation after 728 Polish prisoners became the first to arrive.
1944 – World War II: After several failed attempts, the British Army abandoned Operation Perch, its plan to capture the German-occupied town of Caen. Caen was a major Allied objective in the early stages of the invasion of northwest Europe but a combination of fierce German resistance and failures at the British command level foiled the operation before its objectives were achieved.
1970 – Manchester United footballer Bobby Charlton played his 106th and last international match for England against West Germany in the World Cup finals in Mexico. His first game had been in April 1958 against Scotland.
1982 – Argentine forces surrendered at Port Stanley, ending the Falklands War. 255 Britons and 652 Argentines died in the conflict.
2017 – A fire in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block at North Kensington, West London caused 72 deaths. The fire started accidentally in a fridge-freezer on the fourth floor and the building burned for about 60 hours. The rapid spread of the fire destroyed the building and was thought to have been accelerated by the building’s exterior cladding, which at the time was of a common type in widespread use. A full inquiry into the fire was opened on 21st May 2018.
Today in music
1963 – During a UK tour The Beatles played at New Brighton Tower in Wallasey supported by Gerry and the Pacemakers. Tickets cost 6 shillings in advance. Between 1961 -1963, The Beatles played at The Tower Ballroom on 27 occasions.
1974 – Ray Stevens was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘The Streak’ a song about the latest British craze of streaking, (running naked in a public place).
1997 – Puff Daddy and Faith Evans started a run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘I’ll Be Missing You’, a tribute to the late Notorious B.I.G. Also a No.1 in the US.
2002 – Mick Jagger became a Sir when he was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. It was claimed that the Queen avoided personally giving Jagger his knighthood because she thought he was an inappropriate candidate for the honour.
2012 – Ringo Starr’s birthplace in Liverpool was saved from the threat of demolition. The house, a run-down three-bedroom Victorian terrace, was one of 400 buildings marked for demolition in the Dingle area of Liverpool, but Beatles fans and city residents had successfully lobbied to save the house, along with 15 others in the area. The Liverpool City Council has agreed to give locals the opportunity to fix up the properties.
Today in history
1381 – Richard II met leaders of Wat Tyler’s Peasants’ Revolt on Blackheath. The Tower of London was stormed by rebels who entered without resistance. The revolt later came to be seen as a mark of the beginning of the end of serfdom in medieval England. Although the revolt itself was a failure it increased awareness in the upper classes of the need for the reform of feudalism in England and the appalling misery felt by the lower classes as a result of their enforced near-slavery.
1645 – The Battle of Naseby (Northamptonshire) was fought and it was the key battle of the first English Civil War. 12,000 Royalist forces of King Charles I were beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell.
1789 – English Captain William Bligh and 18 others, cast adrift from the H.M.S. Bounty, reached the island of Timor (Southeast Asia) after travelling nearly 4,000 miles in a small, open boat. The Bounty had been sailing from Tahiti when crew members mutinied. In 1806 Bligh was appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia, with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps regiment. This led to the Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was placed under arrest on 26th January 1808.
1822 – Englishman Charles Babbage proposed an automatic, mechanical calculator (he called it a difference engine). He is considered a ‘father of the computer’ and is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.
1919 – At 14.13 GMT, Captain John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Whitten-Brown took off from Newfoundland on the first non-stop transatlantic flight to Galway, Ireland, in a Vickers Vimy. They landed safely 16 hours later, on the 15th and claimed a £10,000 prize from the Daily Mail.