On This Day 2026
Hello, … and welcome to day 70 of the year.

Wednesday, March 11th

Today is National No Smoking Day (UK), World Plumbing Day and Debunking Day. Your star sign is Pisces and your birthstone is Aquamarine.
1988 – The Bank of England pound note, first introduced on 12th March 1797, ceased to be legal tender in Britain at midnight. When the deadline for returning old notes was reached, it was estimated that some 70 million were still outstanding.
The Bank of England pound note, first introduced on 12th March 1797, ceased to be legal tender in Britain at midnight.
Today’s birthdays
1950 – Bobby McFerrin (76), American singer and songwriter (“Don’t Worry Be Happy”), born in Manhattan, New York, United States.

1958 – Lisa Loeb (68), American singer-songwriter and musician (“Stay (I Missed You)”, “Waiting for Wednesday”), born in Bethesda, Maryland, United States.

1963 – Alex Kingston (63), English actress (Doctor Who, A Discovery of Witches) best known for her role as Dr. Elizabeth Corday in ER, born in Epsom, Surrey.
1964 – Shane Richie (62), English actor (Alfie Moon in Eastenders) and television presenter (Win, Lose or Draw, Don’t Forget the Lyrics!), born in Harlesden, London.
1965 – Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen (61), English interior designer and television personality best known for appearing on the BBC programme Changing Rooms, born in Kensington, London.
1967 – John Barrowman (59), Scottish actor (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Arrow) and presenter, born in Glasgow, Scotland.
1971 – Johnny Knoxville (55), American stunt performer and actor (MTV reality stunt show Jackass), born in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States.
1978 – Didier Drogba (48), Ivorian former professional footballer (Galatasaray, Chelsea FC), born in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
1993 – Jodie Comer (33), English actress (Killing Eve, Doctor Foster, My Mad Fat Diary), born in Liverpool.
Famous deaths
1955 – Alexander Fleming (b. 1881), Scottish biologist, pharmacologist (discoverer of Penicillin) and Nobel Prize laureate.
2018 – Ken Dodd (b. 1927), English comedian and singer described as “the last great music hall entertainer”.
The day today
1916 – The birth, in Huddersfield, of Harold Wilson, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, British Labour Prime Minister from 1964-70, and again from 1974-1976 until he resigned, aged 60.

1918 – The Spanish flu received its first case in the US. The flu infected about a third of the world’s population at the time.

1945 – The huge Krupps munitions factory in Germany was destroyed when 1,000 Allied bombers took part in the biggest ever daylight raid.

1964 – Gene Roddenberry created a 16-page pitch document for Star Trek, titled “Star Trek is…”, which described it as a “Wagon Train to the Stars”. The proposal outlined the core concept, character, and setting for the series, featuring Captain Robert April on the starship Yorktown and a half-Martian Spock.
1974 – Two self-proclaimed British Government, anti IRA spies, escaped from a top-security prison in Ireland where they were serving sentences for armed robbery.
1983 – Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean of Great Britain won the Ice Dance Gold Medal at the 1983 World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki, Finland. Performing to “Barnum,” they secured their third consecutive World Title, earning an impressive nine 6.0s for presentation despite Torvill having a shoulder injury earlier that year.
1988 – The Bank of England pound note, first introduced on 12th March 1797, ceased to be legal tender in Britain at midnight. When the deadline for returning old notes was reached, it was estimated that some 70 million were still outstanding.
1990 – The Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania issued the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, declaring its independence from the Soviet Union. As the first Soviet republic to break away, this act marked a critical step in the collapse of the USSR.
1997 – Ann Widdecombe became the first Prisons’ Minister to visit all the 129 jails in Britain.
2003 – Nicholas Winton (93), former British stockbroker who helped 669 young Jews flee Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Nazi invasion in 1939, receives knighthood from Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.
2004 – Terrorists explode simultaneous bombs on Madrid’s rail network ripping through a commuter train and rocking three stations, killing 190.
2011 – 15,899 lives were lost after a severe 9.0 magnitude earthquake occurred in Japan. The earthquake shook the island, causing a tsunami and the second-worst nuclear accident in history at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Total damage was equivalent to around £210 billion.
2013 – Former cabinet minister Chris Huhne and his former wife Vicky Pryce were both jailed for eight months for perverting the course of justice. The pair, sentenced at Southwark Crown Court, were convicted after she took driving licence points for him after he was caught speeding in 2003.
2013 – The European Union (EU) has a comprehensive ban on the sale of cosmetic products and ingredients that have been tested on animals. Following a phased approach, the testing ban on finished products was implemented in 2004, followed by ingredient testing in 2009, with the final, full marketing ban on all animal-tested cosmetics, including complex toxicity tests, taking effect in March 2013
2014 – Dozens of firefighters were called out to deal with a blaze at a fire station. The retained fire crew at Downham Market in Norfolk could do nothing because their own fire engine was caught up in the blaze that started in their own building.
2018 – Marvel’s movie “Black Panther” became the 5th movie of all time to make more than $1 billion at the Box Office.
2018 – The death (aged 90) of the comedian Ken Dodd, just days after leaving hosital following a long term chest infection. He passed away in his home at Knotty Ash, Liverpool, the home that he was born in and had lived in for his entire life. Two days earlier he had married his long term partner of 40 years, Anne Jones. Ken Dodd made his professional debut on 27th September, 1954. His lengthy stage shows were legendary (one lasted for five and a quarter hours). In 1974 Ken Dodd earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the world’s longest ever joke-telling session, when he told more than 1,500 jokes in three hours and six minutes on stage at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre.
2020 – The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that the spread of Covid-19 was now at a Pandemic stage.
2021 – Prince William made a public statement saying that the British Royal Family was not a racist family. The comment followed the allegations by his younger brother, Prince Harry, and his wife, Meghan, that she faced racism from members of the family.
2025 – Astronomers announce the discovery of 128 new moons orbiting the planet Saturn, bring the planet’s total to 274 moons.
2025 – NASA’s space telescope, the Spherex observatory, is launched by SpaceX from California to study how galaxies are formed by observing their cosmic glow.
Today in music
1956 – The Dream Weavers were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Its Almost Tomorrow’. The Miami based studio band’s only chart hit in the UK, thus condemning The Dream Weavers to the One Hit Wonder tag.

1965 – Tom Jones was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘It’s Not Unusual.’ The Welsh singer’s first of 16 UK Top 40 hits during the 60s. Written by Les Reed and Gordon Mills, the song was first offered to Sandie Shaw. Jones recorded a demo for Shaw, and when she heard it she was so impressed with Jones’s delivery that she declined the song and recommended that Jones release it himself.

1966 – This week’s ITV music show ‘Ready Steady Go’, shown in the UK was entirely devoted to the music of ‘The Godfather Of Soul – James Brown.

1968 – The Otis Redding single ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay’ went gold in the US three months after the singer was killed in a plane crash. Recorded just days before his death, it became the first posthumous single to top the charts in the US.

1971 – Jim Morrison left the United States for Paris to escape his “rock star” persona, focus on poetry, and avoid a six-month jail sentence for his 1970 Miami conviction. He moved into an apartment in the Marais district with Pamela Courson, seeking a quieter life whilst struggling with declining health. Despite his efforts to change, his health continued to decline due to heavy drinking. He died on July 3, 1971, in a bathtub, officially reported as heart failure.
1972 – Harry Nilsson was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with his version of The Peter Ham and Tom Evans song ‘Without You’. First recorded by Badfinger in 1970, the song was also a No.1 for Mariah Carey in 1994.
1978 – The debut single from Kate Bush, ‘Wuthering Heights’ a song inspired by the Emily Bronte novel, started a four-week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart. Record company, EMI had originally chosen another track, ‘James and the Cold Gun’ as the lead single, but Bush was determined that ‘Wuthering Heights’ would be the first release from the album.
1978 – Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album began a 416-week run on the UK chart. The album went on to become one of the most influential and iconic albums of all time and its songs have remained classic rock staples.
1989 – Australian actor turned singer Jason Donovan scored his first UK No.1 single with ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’ which was written and produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman.
1996 – Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker walked free from Kensington police station after police failed to charge him with any criminal offence following his ‘stage invasion’, during Michael Jackson’s performance at the Brit Awards on 19th February 1996.
1997 – Paul McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his “services to music.” McCartney’s wife, Linda, who was fighting breast cancer, did not accompany him, but three of their four children were at the Palace.
2006 – English singer-songwriter James Blunt was at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘You’re Beautiful’. Blunt later explained that the song was “about seeing my ex-girlfriend on the Underground in London with her new man, who I didn’t know existed.” The song won an Ivor Novello Award for airplay and has sold over 625,000 copies in the UK and over three million in the United States.
2008 – Madonna was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at a star-studded ceremony in New York City, she received her honour at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel from singer Justin Timberlake. The 49-year-old thanked her detractors in an acceptance speech, including those who ‘said I couldn’t sing, that I was a One Hit Wonder’. Rock star John Mellencamp, Leonard Cohen, The Ventures and The Dave Clark Five were also among the inductees.
2013 – The Gig in the Sky, an acoustic show for 128 passengers on board a Boeing 767 aeroplane set a new world record for the highest ever gig. Tony Hadley, Kim Wilde, Bananarama and Go West all performed at 43,000ft (13,000m) beating the previous record of 42,080ft (12,825m) set by James Blunt in 2010. The event was held to raise money for Comic Relief.
Today in history
1682 – The Chelsea Hospital, a retirement home and nursing home for British soldiers (known as the Chelsea Pensioners) who were unfit for further duty due to injury or old age, was founded by Charles II.
1702 – The Daily Courant, the first successful English newspaper, was first published. It consisted of only 1 sheet but lasted until 1735 when it was merged with the Daily Gazetteer.
1708 – Queen Anne withheld Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, the last time a British monarch has vetoed legislation. The Bill’s long title was ‘An Act for settling the Militia of that Part of Great Britain called Scotland.’
1819 – The birth, at White Coppice in Lancashire, of Sir Henry Tate, English sugar producer & founder of London’s Tate Gallery.
1858 – The end of the Indian Mutiny that had lasted for 10 months. The Indian sepoys had mutinied after believing that their rifle cartridges had been lubricated in animal fat.
1864 – The Great Sheffield Flood: The largest man-made disaster ever to befall England destroyed 800 houses and killed 270 people in Sheffield when the Low Bradfield Reservoir bursts its banks while it was being filled for the first time. The claims for damages formed one of the largest insurance claims of the Victorian period.
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