March 14th "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 74, known as Pi Day, Genius Day and International Day of Mathematics. If you were born on this day, you were likely conceived the week of June 21st in the previous year. Your star sign is Pisces and your birthstone is Aquamarine.
1945 – The 617 Dambuster Squadron of the RAF dropped the heaviest bomb of the war (the 22,000-pound “Grand Slam”) on the Bielefeld railway viaduct in Germany.
Todays birthdays
1933 – Michael Caine (91), English retired actor (Zulu, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Italian Job), born in St Olave’s Hospital, London.
1945 – Jasper Carrot (79), English comedian (Canned Carrott) and television presenter (Golden Balls), born in Acocks Green, Birmingham.
1956 – Tessa Sanderson (68), British former javelin thrower (Summer Olympics from 1976 to 1996 winning gold in 1984), born in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica.
1979 – Nicolas Anelka (45), French professional football manager and retired player (Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea), born in Le Chesnay, Le Chesnay-Rocquencourt, France.
1986 – Jamie Bell (38), English actor (Billy Elliot), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, born in Billingham, County Durham.
Famous deaths
1883 – Karl Marx (b. 1818), German philosopher, economist, political theorist and historian.
2018 – Jim Bowen (b. 1937), English stand-up comedian and host of the ITV game show Bullseye, which he presented from its beginning in 1981 to 1995.
2018 – Stephen Hawking (b. 1942), English physicist and author author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge.
The day today
1945 – The 617 Dambuster Squadron of the RAF dropped the heaviest bomb of the war (the 22,000-pound “Grand Slam”) on the Bielefeld railway viaduct in Germany. It was nicknamed ‘Ten Ton Tess’ and was designed by Barnes Wallis, who also designed the earlier ‘bouncing bomb’. Bielefeld is now twinned with many European towns including Enniskillen in Northern Ireland and Rochdale in Lancashire.
1960 – The Government announced plans for a Thames Barrier to protect London from flooding. Also on this day… Jodrell Bank’s radio telescope in Cheshire set a new record, making contact with the American Pioneer V satellite at a distance of 407,000 miles. The previous record was 290,000 miles.
1991 – The ‘Birmingham Six’ were freed from jail after 16 years when their convictions for the murder of 21 people in two pubs were quashed by the Court of Appeal.
2014 – Thieves who had built a 50ft (15m) tunnel to a cash machine on Liverpool Road, Eccles, got away with more than £80,000. The complex nature of its structure could have taken months to excavate and echoes a similar raid in Fallowfield Shopping Precinct in January 2012. Police said they were looking for ‘people acting suspiciously, possibly covered in soil.’
2015 – Britain’s biggest ever cruise ship, the 141,000-ton Britannia, (which was officially named by Her Majesty The Queen in Southampton) set off on its maiden voyage; a 14 night cruise around the Mediterranean.
Today in music
1963 – Gerry and the Pacemakers released their first British single, “How Do You Do It?” a song the Beatles had rejected. Their biggest hit was “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, from the musical Carousel, which has been the adopted anthem of Liverpool Football Club since the mid 1960s.
1978 – Blondie were at No.2 on the UK chart with their version of the Randy & the Rainbows song ‘Denis’, kept off the No.1 position by Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’.
1985 – Dead Or Alive were kicked off the UK music television show The Tube after admitting they were incapable of playing ‘live.’ The group scored the 1985 UK No.1 single ‘You Spin Me Round, Like A Record’.
1987 – Boy George scored his first UK No.1 single as a solo artist with the David Gates song ‘Everything I Own’. Originally recorded by Gates’s band Bread for their 1972 album Baby, I’m a Want You, the song was also a UK No.1 for Ken Boothe in 1974.
1999 – Stereophonics went to No.1 on the UK album chart with Performance And Cocktails’ becoming only the third Welsh band to score a No.1 album and the first No.1 album for Richard Branson’s V2 label.
Today in history
1757 – British admiral John Byng was court-martialled and executed by firing squad on board HMS Monarch at Plymouth, for “failing to do his utmost” to relieve Minorca from the French fleet following the Battle of Minorca. In practice, his ships badly needed repair and he was relieved of his command before he could see to his ships or secure the extra forces he required.
1864 – English explorer Samuel Baker was the first European to see the lake he named Lake Albert (located on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo) after the recently deceased Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria.
1885 – The Mikado, a light opera by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, had its first public performance in London.
1891 – HMTS Monarch laid a telephone cable along the English Channel bed to prepare for the first telephone links across the Channel. Monarch was launched in 1884, was the first cable ship designed specifically for the GPO and was fitted with three cable tanks, two forward and one aft.
1915 – World War I: Cornered off the coast of Chile by the Royal Navy after fleeing the Battle of the Falkland Islands, the German light cruiser SMS Dresden was abandoned and scuttled by her crew.