March 21st "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 81, known as Big Bang Day, International Colour Day and National Fragrance Day. If you were born on this day, you were likely conceived the week of June 28th in the previous year. Your star sign is Aries and your birthstone is Aquamarine.
1990 – A demonstration in London against the poll tax became a riot. More than 400 people were arrested.
Todays birthdays
1946 – Timothy Dalton (78), British actor (Licence to Kill, The Living Daylights, Hot Fuzz). born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales.
1958 – Gary Oldman (66), English actor (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Fifth Element, Oppenheimer), born in New Cross, London.
1962 – Matthew Broderick (62), American actor (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Godzilla, WarGames, Inspector Gadget), born in Manhattan, New York, United States.
1967 – Adrian Chiles (57), British writer and television and radio presenter (ITV Sport, The One Show, Match of the Day 2), born in Quinton, Birmingham.
1989 – Rochelle Humes (35), English singer (S Club Juniors and The Saturdays) and television presenter (Ninja Warrior UK), born in Barking, East London.
Famous deaths
2013 – James Herbert (b. 1943), English English horror writer (The Secret of Crickley Hall, The Rats, Shrine, The Fog.)
2020 – Kenny Rogers (b. 1938), American singer (“Islands in the Stream”) and Country Music Hall of Famer.
The day today
1945 – British warplanes destroyed Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, killing over 70 Nazis. The raid also killed civilians, including 86 schoolchildren, in Denmark’s worst civilian disaster of the war.
1946 – Labour politician Aneurin Bevan announced the Government’s proposals for a free National Health Service, paid for by the taxpayer. Doctors immediately announced the setting-up of a fighting fund to oppose the legislation, fearing a loss of earnings.
1990 – A demonstration in London against the poll tax became a riot. More than 400 people were arrested.
1997 – The death of Wilbert Vere Awdry, Anglican cleric, railway enthusiast, and children’s author. Better known as the Reverend W. Awdry, he was the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine, the central figure in his Railway Series. Awdry was born at Ampfield vicarage in Hampshire and his father was vicar of Ampfield Church.
2020 – Day one of the closure of all the UK’s cafes, pubs and restaurants (except for take-away food) in an effort to combat coronavirus. All nightclubs, betting shops, casinos, theatres, cinemas, gyms and leisure centres were also told to close as soon as they reasonably could. The government said the situation would be reviewed each month and that it would pay 80% of wages (up to £2,500 a month) for employees who were not able to work.
Today in music
1987 – U2 scored their third UK No.1 album with The Joshua Tree featuring the singles ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, & ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’. The album became the fastest selling in UK history and the first album to sell over a million CDs, spending a total of 156 weeks on the UK chart. Also a US No.1.
1993 – Three South African women whose father, Solomon Linda, wrote ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ in 1939, won a six-year court battle that gave them 25 per cent of all past and future royalties from the song. Linda who was a cleaner at a Johannesburg record company when he wrote the song, received virtually nothing for his work and died in 1962 with $25 in his bank account. The song had been recorded by Pete Seeger (as ‘Wimoweh’), The Kingston Trio, The Tokens, Karl Denver and R.E.M. and was featured in the Disney film The Lion King. It was estimated that the song had earned $15 million for its use in The Lion King alone.
1998 – Run-DMC VS Jason Nevins started a six week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘It’s Like That.’ The Run-DMC track was from 1983 and was remixed by Jason Nevins, a US DJ and producer.
1999 – Blur went to No.1 on the UK album chart with ’13’, the bands fourth consecutive No.1 and making them only the third act to have four No.1’s in the 90s, Simply Red and REM being the other two.
2004 – Ozzy Osbourne was named the nation’s favourite ambassador to welcome aliens to planet earth. The 55-year-old singer came top of a poll as the face people want to represent them to alien life. The poll of internet users was carried out following the discovery of signs of water on Mars. Ozzy won 26 per cent of the vote. A spokesman for Yahoo! News said: ‘As the world waits desperately for signs of alien life, we decided to ask our users who they thought was best suited for this most auspicious of roles. Ozzy is a great choice but I’m not sure what the Martians would make of his individual approach to the English language.’
Today in history
1413 – Henry V became King of England. He died, aged 35, at the Château de Vincennes near Paris, apparently from dysentery.
1556 – England’s first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer was burnt at the stake as a heretic, under the Catholic Queen Mary I, also know as “Bloody Mary”. Imprisoned for over two years and under pressure from Church authorities, he apparently reconciled himself with the Roman Catholic Church. However, on the day of his execution, he dramatically recanted these beliefs, to die a heretic to Roman Catholics and a martyr to others. His legacy lives on within the Church of England through the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles, an Anglican statement of faith derived from his work.
1646 – The Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold (English Civil War), the last major battle of the First Civil War.
1829 – The Duke of Wellington, aged 60, fought a bloodless duel with the Earl of Winchelsea. The reason for the duel was the Duke’s support of Catholic emancipation. Wellington was both Prime Minister and leader of the Tory Party at the time.
1918 – Germany’s last major offensive of World War One began on The Somme.