On This Day 2026
Hello, … and welcome to day 62 of the year.

Tuesday, March 3rd

Today is Simplify Your Life Day, International Irish Whiskey Day, World Wildlife Day and March Full Moon. Your star sign is Pisces and your birthstone is Aquamarine.
2017 – The Emoji Movie was named the worst film of 2017 at the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards (Razzies), making it the first animated film to win the top prize in the ceremony’s history.
The Emoji Movie was named the worst film of 2017 at the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards (Razzies), making it the first animated film to win the top prize in the ceremony's history.
Today’s birthdays
1941 – Mike Pender (85), English musician and founding member of the Searchers (“Needles and Pins”, “Sweets for My Sweet”), born in Bootle, Merseyside.
1958 – Miranda Richardson (68), English actress (Alice in Wonderland, Sleepy Hollow, Blackadder, The Crying Game), born in Southport, Merseyside.
1961 – Fatima Whitbread (65), English retired javelin thrower (first British athlete to set a world record in a throwing event), born in London.
1968 – Brian Cox (58), English physicist and musician (Keyboardist with D:Ream “Things Can Only Get Better”, “U R the Best Thing”), born in Oldham, Greater Manchester.
1972 – Matthew Marsden (55), English actor (Black Hawk Down, Helen of Troy, Resident Evil: Extinction, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), born in West Bromwich, West Midlands.
1977 – Ronan Keating (49), Irish singer-songwriter (“When You Say Nothing At All”, “Life Is A Rollercoaster”) and former Boyzone member, born in Dublin, Ireland.

1982 – Jessica Biel (44), American actress (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003, Total Recall 2012, The A-Team 2010, Blade: Trinity), born in Ely, Minnesota, United States.

1997 – Camilla Cabello (29), American singer and songwriter (“Havana”, “Señorita”, “My Oh My”), born in Cojímar, Cuba.
Famous deaths
2018 – Roger Bannister (b. 1929), English middle-distance athlete and the first man to run a four-minute mile, a feat he achieved at the Iffley Road Sports Ground, Oxford on 6th May 1954, in a time of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
2023 – Tom Sizemore (b. 1961), American actor (Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor).
The day today
1934 – The largest ever English football crowd outside Wembley watched the match between Manchester City and Stoke City, in the FA Cup 6th round. Spectators numbered 84,569.
1967 – The BBC announced that it would begin broadcasting television programmes in colour in 1967.
1968 – Bombs exploded at the Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish embassies in The Hague, as part of a series of synchronized attacks on diplomatic missions in Europe. These acts of protest caused considerable damage, particularly to the Greek and Spanish locations, though no embassy staff were killed.
1968 – The pirate radio station Radio Caroline was forced off the air when its ships, the Mi Amigo and Caroline (formerly Fredericia), were boarded and seized. The vessels were towed to Amsterdam as security for non-payment of bills by the tender company. This action effectively halted operations before that day’s scheduled broadcasting could begin.
1974 – A Turkish airliner en route to London crashed near Paris, killing all 345 people on board. Among the victims were 200 passengers, many of them British, who had been transferred from British Airways flights cancelled because of a strike by engineers at London airport.
1980 – The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, was decommissioned in California. In its 25 years of operation, the USS Nautilus broke nearly every single world record related to submarines and was even the first to reach the geographic North Pole. After decommissioning and being stricken from the US Navy register, this historic submarine was towed to Connecticut, which now functions as a museum.
1985 – NUM members (National Union of Mineworkers) returned to work after their costly year long strike, without a peace deal being won by their leader Arthur Scargill.
1991 – Los Angeles police officers severely beat motorist Rodney King, the beating is famously captured on amateur video and later leads to riots when the police officers are acquitted.
1995 – A bill which would ban hunting with hounds in England and Wales became the first such proposal to get a second reading in parliament.The Hunting Act 2004 came into force on February 18, 2005.

1997 – The Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two and a half years of construction, becoming the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere.

2000 – Tens of thousands of football fans paid their last respects to Sir Stanley Matthews, regarded as one of the greatest players of the English game, who died on 23rd February.
2004 – Belgian brewer Interbrew and Brazilian rival AmBev agreed to merge in a $11.2 billion deal forming InBev, the world’s largest brewer.
2005 – American record-setting aviator, Steve Fossett completed the first solo, non-stop, unrefueled around-the-world airplane flight piloting the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer for 67 hours and 2 minutes. His journey covered 23,000 miles (approx. 37,000 km) starting and ending in Salina, Kansas, breaking multiple records for speed and endurance. Fossett died in September 2007 from multiple traumatic injuries sustained in a plane crash in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. His single-engine plane, a Bellanca 8KCAB-180, crashed after encountering powerful downdrafts exceeding the aircraft’s performance capabilities.
2010 – “Alice in Wonderland”, inspired by Lewis Carroll directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska is released.
2017 – Nintendo released Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the first fully open-world Zelda game. Playable on the Nintendo Switch, Breath of the Wild was an instant hit among critics and players alike, who lauded it as the largest and the best Zelda game ever made.
2017 – The Emoji Movie was named the worst film of 2017 at the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards (Razzies), making it the first animated film to win the top prize in the ceremony’s history. The 2017 film swept the board with four awards, including Worst Picture, Director (Tony Leondis), Screenplay, and Screen Combo.
2017 – An amateur historian uncovered evidence of a mass grave, potentially in a former sewage tank, believed to contain hundreds of babies in Tuam, County Galway, in the west of Ireland. The area was once where St Mary’s children’s home stood, a church-run institution that housed thousands of women and children between 1925 and 1961. According to death records, Patrick Derrane was the first baby to die at St Mary’s in 1925, aged five months. Mary Carty, the same age, was the last in 1960.
2018 – The death of Sir Roger Bannister (aged 88), the first man to run a mile in under 4 minutes, a feat he achieved at the Iffley Road Sports Ground, Oxford on 6th May 1954, in a time of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
2021 – 33-year-old Sarah Everard was kidnapped in South London, as she was walking home to the Brixton Hill area from a friend’s house near Clapham Common. She was stopped by off-duty Metropolitan Police constable Wayne Couzens, who identified himself as a police officer and handcuffed her. He drove Everard to Kent, where he raped and strangled her before burning her body and disposing of her remains in a pond in woodland.
Today in music
1966 – Neil Young, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay formed Buffalo Springfield in Los Angeles. Among the first wave of American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined rock, folk, and country music into a sound all its own. Its million-selling song ‘For What It’s Worth’ became a political anthem for the turbulent late 1960s.
1967 – The Jeff Beck Group, with an unknown vocalist named Rod Stewart, made their live performance debut in London at the Finsbury Park Astoria supporting the Small Faces and Roy Orbison. The night was a disaster for the Jeff Beck Group due to a power failure, which Rod Stewart swears to this day was instigated by Small Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan who was fearful the Jeff Beck group would steal the show.
1972 – Elton John released ‘Rocket Man’ as a single, (officially titled ‘Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time)’. The song was inspired by the short story “The Rocket Man” in The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, and echoes the theme of David Bowie’s 1969 song ‘Space Oddity’.
1973 – Slade’s ‘Com On Feel The Noize’, entered the UK at No.1, making Slade the first act to achieve this since The Beatles.
1979 – The Bee Gees scored their fourth UK No.1 single with ‘Tragedy.’ Also today The Bee Gees went to No.1 on the US album chat with ‘Spirits Having Flown’, the brother’s second US No.1 album.

1984 – Nena started a three week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ’99 Red Balloons.’ Originally sung in German, ’99 Luftballons’ was re-recorded in English as ’99 Red Balloons’. The song was a No.2 hit in the US and the only UK hit for Nena making her a One Hit Wonder.

1986 – Metallica released their third album, the highly influential album, Master of Puppets, considered by many in the metal community to be the best metal album of all time. This was the last Metallica album with bassist Cliff Burton who was killed when the group’s tour bus over-turned in southern Sweden while touring to promote the album.
1990 – Lindy Layton and Beats International were at No.1 in the UK with the single ‘Dub Be Good To Me.’ Formed by ex-Housemartins Norman Cook, the song was based on the SOS Band’s 1984 hit ‘Just Be Good To Me’ and The Clash song ‘Guns of Brixton’.
1994 – The Smashing Pumpkins were banned from appearing on BBC TV’s Top Of The Pops due to the content of the song’s lyrics specifically the phrase “cut that little child”. The bands single ‘Disarm’ was this week’s highest new entry. The song’s lyrics were perceived as too intense and controversial for television, with American Songwriter reporting that the BBC misunderstood the meaning as being pro-abortion.
2001 – Stereophonics were forced to change the title of their new album after car manufacturer Daimler Chrysler objected to their use of the copyrighted word ‘Jeep’. The UK title became ‘Just Enough Education To Perform.’
2002 – TV show ‘Pop Idol’ winner Will Young scored his first UK No.1 single with ‘Anything Is Possible / Evergreen.’ Young set a new sales record for a debut artist with over 1 million in the first week. It became the biggest selling single of 2002.
2004 – Elton John announced he was planning to marry his long-term partner David Furnish if new UK laws allowed it. A Civil Partnership bill was being passed through Parliament which would give gay couple’s greater rights.
Today in history
1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan (also known as the Statutes of Wales) was enacted ‘On This Day’. It introduced the English common law system to Wales, allowing the King to appoint royal officials such as sheriffs, coroners and bailiffs to collect taxes and administer justice.
1592 – Trinity College Dublin and its library is founded by royal charter by Elizabeth I on the former site of the Priory of All Hallows
1789 – The English whaleship Emilia, owned by Samuel Enderby & Sons, made history by harpooning the first sperm whale in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile. This landmark event followed the ship’s 1788 journey around Cape Horn, pioneering the Pacific sperm whale fishery.
1847 – The birth, in Edinburgh, of Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell. He was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone.
1857 – The Second Opium War: Britain and France declared war on China, using the killing of a missionary as the pretext.
1884 – Gladstone resigned as Prime Minister, aged 84, because his sight and hearing were failing, but he continued to sit as an MP until the General Election. Gladstone was born in Liverpool to Scottish parents. He first entered the House of Commons in 1832 and was both the oldest person to serve as Prime Minister and the only Prime Minister to have served four terms.
1891 – The penalty spot kick rule in football is conceived, but does not come into effect until the following season.
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