On This Day 2026
Hello, … and welcome to day 60 of the year.

Sunday, March 1st

Today is National Day of Wales and the Feast Day of St. David. Your star sign is Pisces and your birthstone is Aquamarine.
1998 – James Cameron’s Titanic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, became the first film to gross more than $1 billion worldwide. It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Avatar (2009) surpassed it.
James Cameron’s Titanic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, became the first film to gross more than $1 billion worldwide. It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Avatar (2009) surpassed it.
Today’s birthdays
1944 – Roger Daltrey (82), English singer, musician and actor (The Who – “Who Are You”, “Behind Blue Eyes”, “My Generation”), born in London.
1945 – Dirk Benedict (81), American actor (The A-Team, Battlestar Galactica) and author (Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy), born inHelena, Montana, United States.
1944 – Mike d’Abo (82), English songwriter and lead singer with Manfred Mann (“Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, “Mighty Quinn”), born in Betchworth, Surrey.
1954 – Ron Howard (72), American director (The Da Vinci Code, A Beautiful Mind), producer and actor (Richie Cunningham in Happy Days), born in Oklahoma, United States.
1966 – Paul Hollywood (60), English celebrity chef and television personality widely known as a judge on The Great British Bake Off since 2010, born in Wallasey, Merseyside.
1973 – Jack Davenport (53), English actor (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Kingsman: The Secret Service), born in Wimbledon, London.
1987 – Kesha (39), American singer (“Tik Tok”, “We R Who We R”, “Right Round”), born in Los Angeles, California, United States.
1994 – Justin Bieber (32), Canadian singer (“Beauty And A Beat”, “What Do You Mean”), born in St. Joseph’s Hospital, London, Canada.
Famous deaths
2006 – Jack Wild (b. 1952), English actor best known for his role as the Artful Dodger in the film Oliver! (1968).
The day today
1941 – Captain America issue #1 comic was published by Timely Comics (which later became Marvel). The writers and pencilers were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

1946 – The British Government took control of the Bank of England, after 252 years. Originally, The Bank of England was founded as a private bank in 1694 to act as banker to the Government.

1950 – Klaus Fuchs, one of Britain’s top atomic scientists, was sentenced to 14 years for spying in the Soviet Union.
1953 – Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin was found semi-conscious after suffering from a stroke. The Georgian-born leader of the Soviet Union was moved to a couch and hand-fed for three days before dying. Many reports claimed that Stalin was poisoned, with some claiming that some of his closest allies were responsible.
1966 – James Callaghan, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confirmed that Britain would change over to decimal currency in 1971.
1968 – Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” first performed as a 15-minute pop cantata at Colet Court School in London.
1971 – Hundreds of thousands of workers across Britain took part in an unofficial day of protest against the government’s new Industrial Relations Bill.
1974 – Physicist Stephen Hawking publishes his landmark paper “Black hole explosions” introducing the idea of ‘Hawking radiation’, the idea that black holes are not truly black because they omit heat.
1976 – Bank of America’s credit card, originally launched as BankAmericard in 1958, was officially rebranded as VISA. Dee Hock, the founder of the network, conceived the name “Visa” because it was instantly recognizable in many languages and denoted universal acceptance.
1978 – Sometime in the middle of the night, two men had stolen the corpse of the revered film actor Sir Charles Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva. News outlets started reporting one of history’s most famous cases of body-snatching the next day.
1994 – Fred West was charged with two further murders following more human remains found at his home. He had previously admitted murdering his 16 old daughter Heather.
1998 – James Cameron’s Titanic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, became the first film to gross more than $1 billion worldwide. It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Avatar (2009) surpassed it.
2002 – The Spanish Peseta lost its legal tender after fully adopting the Euro. The euro was introduced as “book money” on 1 January 1999, with the exchange rate fixed at €1 = 166.386 pesetas. Euro notes and coins entered into circulation on 1 January 2002.
2002 – Operation Anaconda begins in eastern Afghanistan as US special operations forces infiltrate the Shahi-Kot Valley in Eastern Afghanistan.
2016 – The death of Tony Warren (aged 79), creator of Coronation Street, the world’s longest-running TV ‘soap opera’ in production.
2018 – Parisian designer Riccardo Tisci is named the new designer of British brand Burberry after the exit of Christopher Bailey.
2020 – The meteorological office announced that February had been the wettest in over 150 years. On a fourth consecutive weekend of terrible weather, Storm Jorge prompted weather warnings stretching from Cornwall to the north of Scotland and across to Northern Ireland.
2021 – Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy is sentenced to three years for trying to bribe a judge.
2022 – A cargo ship carrying 4,000 luxury Volkswagen cars sinks off the Portuguese Azores archipelago, two weeks after it caught fire.
2023 – Social media site TikTok announces a 60-minute daily screen time limit for users under 18, though with an opt-out clause, in response to concerns about its addictive and harmful algorithms.
Today in music
1958 – Buddy Holly played the first of 25 dates on his only UK tour at the Trocadero, Elephant & Castle, London. Also on the bill was Gary Miller, The Tanner Sisters, Des O’Connor, The Montanas, Ronnie Keene & His Orchestra.
1961 – Elvis Presley signed a five-year movie deal with producer Hal Wallis. During his career, Elvis made 31 feature films and two documentary feature films.
1967 – Working at Abbey Road studios, London, The Beatles started recording a new John Lennon song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. The song was inspired by a drawing his 3 year-old son Julian returned home from school with one day.
1968 – Elton John’s first single ‘I’ve Been Loving You’ was released on the Phillips label, with lyrics credited to Bernie Taupin (although John later admitted that he wrote the song by himself, giving Taupin credit as an effort to earn Taupin his first publishing royalties). The song didn’t chart.
1969 – Jim Morrison of The Doors was charged with lewd and lascivious behaviour after showing his penis to the audience during a show in Miami. He was found guilty and sentenced to eight months hard labour. Morrison died in Paris while the sentence was on appeal.
1973 – Pink Floyd released their eighth studio album The Dark Side Of The Moon in the US. It remained in the US charts for 741 discontinuous weeks from 1973 to 1988, longer than any other album in history. After moving to the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Chart, the album notched up a further 759 weeks, and had reached a total of over 1,500 weeks on the combined charts by May 2006. With an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is Pink Floyd’s most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums worldwide.
1980 – Blondie were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Atomic’ the group’s third UK No.1 single from their album ‘Eat To The Beat’.
1994 – Nirvana played their final ever concert when they appeared at The Terminal Einz in Munich, Germany. The 3,000 capacity venue was a small Airport Hanger. The power went off during the show so they played an impromptu acoustic set including a version of The Cars ‘My Best Friend’s Girl.’
1995 – Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ won three Grammys for Song of the Year, Best Male Vocal Performance and Best Rock Song. The track was featured in the film Philadelphia (1993), an early mainstream film dealing with HIV/AIDS which stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.
1997 – ‘Bowie Bonds’ were issued on the US Stock Exchange. Linked to David Bowie’s back catalogue albums with money earned on the bonds via interest from royalties, investors could expect to make an 8% profit in about 10 years.
2001 – Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs became the star witness of his own defence in a New York court claiming he didn’t have a gun during a shooting in a New York club. The singer claimed he thought he was being shot at.
2004 – Michael Jackson unveiled a new website, www.mjjsource.com. The site featured a celebration of his music career plus news on his current criminal trial, including short biographies of his attorneys and a calendar listing upcoming court dates.
2009 – Kelly Clarkson went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘My Life Would Suck Without You’. US singer Clarkson won American Idol in 2000 and became the only American Idol contestant to have topped the UK charts.
2019 – English blues and rock singer and musician Paul Williams died age 78. He joined Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band on bass and vocals, alongside the guitarist Andy Summers. He then replaced John McVie in John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. He later worked with the progressive rock group Tempest.
2025 – English composer and rock guitarist Joey Molland died from complications of diabetes at a hospital in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, age 77. With Badfinger, he scored the hits ‘Come and Get It’ (written and produced by Paul McCartney), ‘No Matter What’, ‘Day After Day’ (produced by George Harrison) and ‘Baby Blue’. He made guest appearances on two George Harrison albums, All Things Must Pass and The Concert for Bangladesh, and the 1971 John Lennon album, Imagine, including the single ‘Jealous Guy’.
Today in history
1457 – The Unitas Fratrum is established in the village of Kunvald, on the Bohemian-Moravian borderland. It is to date the second oldest Protestant denomination.
1579 – British admiral and explorer Francis Drake surprises and captures the Spanish treasure ship ‘Nuestra Señora de la Concepción’ off the coast of Peru, Drake’s richest plunder.

1628 – Writs issued in February by Charles I of England mandate that every county in England (not just seaport towns) pay ship tax by this date.

1692 – Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, beginning what would become known as the Salem witch trials.
1711 – The first edition of London’s – ‘The Spectator’, founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele.
1812 – The birth of the architect Augustus Pugin. He is best remembered for the Palace of Westminster and his churches such as St Giles’ Catholic Church in Cheadle, Staffordshire. It is known as Pugin’s Gem and is considered to be the finest of all his churches.
1872 – The Yellowstone National Park (2.2 million acres) Protection Act went into law, making it the first National Park in the world.
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