Wednesday, May 28th "2025" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 148, known as Amnesty International Day, International Burger Day, World Hunger Day. Your star sign is Gemini and your birthstone is Emerald.
1951 – Crazy People, the first programme of what became The Goon Show, aired. The stars – Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine – were billed in the Radio Times as “Radio’s own Crazy Gang ‘The Goons'”.
Todays birthdays
1944 – Gladys Knight (81), American singer and ten-time Grammy Award-winner (Gladys Knight & the Pips – “Midnight Train to Georgia”), born in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
1949 – Sue Holderness (76), English actress best known for her role as Marlene Boyce in Only Fools and Horses (1985–2003), born in Hampstead, London.
1948 – Ray Laidlaw (77), English musician and founding member of Lindisfarne from 1968 to 2003 (“Fog on the Tyne”), born in North Shields, Tyne and Wear.
1960 – Mary Portas (65), English retail consultant and broadcaster (Mary Portas: Secret Shopper, Mary Queen of Shops), born in Watford, London.
1961 – Roland Gift (64), English singer, songwriter and former member of Fine Young Cannibals (“She Drives Me Crazy”), born in Sparkhill, Birmingham.
1968 – Kylie Minogue (57), Australian singer (“The Loco-Motion”, “I Should Be So Lucky”, “Spinning Around”) and actress (Neighbours, Street Fighter), born in Melbourne, Australia.
1980 – Mark Feehily (45), Irish singer, best known as a member of the pop group Westlife (“You Raise Me Up”), born in Sligo, Ireland.
Famous deaths
1984 – Eric Morecambe (b. 1926), English comedian who together with Ernie Wise formed the double act Morecambe and Wise.
The day today
1907 – The first Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) motor cycle races were held. The winner was Charlie Collier on his pedal assisted Matchless, at an average speed of 38.22 mph. It was argued that rival Jack Marshall, riding a Triumph, would have won if he’d fitted pedals, and the following year pedals were banned.
1920 – The death of Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, a Church of England clergyman, poet, hymn writer and conservationist. He worked for the protection of the countryside and was also one of the founders of the National Trust.
1936 – Alan Turing (English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist) submitted his paper “On Computable Numbers” for publication, in which he set out the hypothetical basis for modern computers.
1945 – World War II: the English broadcaster of Nazi propaganda, William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was captured near Hamburg. He was later tried for treason, found guilty, and hanged.
1951 – BBC radio broadcast the first edition of The Goon Show, starring Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe.
1967 – Sir Francis Chichester arrived in Plymouth on his yacht, Gipsy Moth IV, after completing his solo voyage around the world.
1990 – ‘The Maiden’ arrived in Southampton, completing the Whitbread around-the-world yacht race. The first ever all-woman crew was skippered by Tracy Edwards.
2014 – The death, in Florida, of Malcolm Glazer (85), the American billionaire who led a controversial takeover of Manchester United. The Glazer family purchased United for £790m in May 2005 amid protests from many of the Premier League club’s fans.
Today in music
1964 – The BBC received over 8,000 postal applications for tickets for The Rolling Stones forthcoming appearance on the British TV show, Juke Box Jury.
1966 – Percy Sledge started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’. A No.4 hit on the UK chart and No.2 when re-issued in 1987.
1973 – Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon was on both the UK and US album charts. 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).
1977 – Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers played together for the first time when they performed as part of Mike Howlett’s band, Strontium 90 in Paris France. Emerging in the British new wave scene Sting, Copeland and Summers formed The Police and became globally popular from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.
1983 – Actress and singer Irene Cara started a six week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Flashdance…What A Feeling’. Taken from the film ‘Flashdance’, a No.2 hit in the UK.
2000 – Britney Spears was at No.1 on the US album chart with ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’. The singer’s second album also reached No.1 in thirteen other countries and has now sold over 20m copies.
2008 – UK High street chain Woolworths announced it would stop selling CD singles in its stores saying that the format was in “terminal decline” and would be removed from the shelves from August. Sales of CD singles had fallen sharply as the popularity of downloading music from the internet had increased.
Today in history
1503 – James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor were married by Pope Alexander VI. A ‘Treaty of Everlasting Peace’ between Scotland and England was signed on that occasion. The everlasting peace lasted just ten years.
1533 – The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared that the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn was valid. Shortly afterwards, the Pope decreed sentences of excommunication against both Henry and Cranmer. Subsequently the first break between the Church of England and Rome took place and the Church of England was brought under the King’s control.
1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, set sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel.
1660 – King George I was born. He succeeded Queen Anne in 1714 but spent most of his reign in Hanover, never having mastered the English language.
1759 – William Pitt the Younger, British politician, was born. He became the youngest ever British prime minister at the age of 24.
1849 – The death, at the age of 29, of Anne Brontë, English novelist, poet and author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. She is buried in St. Mary’s churchyard, Scarborough beneath the castle walls, and overlooking the bay.