November 22nd "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 327 of the “leap” year! Known as Love Your Freckles Day and Go For a (Bicycle) Ride Day. Your star sign is Sagittarius and your birthstone is Topaz.
1963 – President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife, Nelly Connally.
Todays birthdays
1958 – Jamie Lee Curtis (66), American actress (Halloween, Trading Places, True Lies, A Fish Called Wanda) born in Santa Monica, California, United States.
1967 – Boris Becker (57), German former world No. 1 tennis player. Becker is the youngest-ever winner of the gentlemen’s singles Wimbledon Championships title, a feat he accomplished aged 17 in 1985, born in Leimen, Germany.
1984 – Scarlett Johansson (40), American actress (Lucy, Black Widow, Ghost in the Shell), born in Manhattan, New York, United States.
1988 – Jamie Campbell Bower (36), British actor, singer and model (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Twilight trilogy), born in London.
1996 – Hailey Bieber (28), American model, media personality, daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin and wife of Justin Bieber since 2018, born in Tucson, Arizona, United States.
Famous deaths
2015 – Warren Mitchell (b. 1926), English actor and screenwriter best known for playing bigoted cockney Alf Garnett (Till Death Us Do Part, In Sickness and in Health).
2020 – Des O’Connor (b. 1932), English comedian, singer and television presenter (Today with Des and Mel, Take Your Pick!, Countdown).
The day today
1943 – World War II: Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek met in Cairo, to discuss ways to defeat Japan.
1946 – The first Biro ballpoint pen went on sale, invented by Hungarian Laszlo Biro and manufactured by a British company.
1977 – The world’s first supersonic airliner, Concorde, was given permission to fly into New York’s Kennedy Airport following an agreement over noise levels.
1995 – Britain’s most prolific female serial killer, Rosemary West, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 10 young women and girls.
2018 – After 20 years of work, the Leaning Tower of Pisa had its lean corrected by 17.7 inches (45 cm).
Today in music
1975 – Scottish comedian Billy Connolly was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with a parody of the Tammy Wynette song D.I.V.O.R.C.E. Connolly’s early career as a singer led to him forming a folk-pop duo called The Humblebums in the late 60s, with future rock star Gerry Rafferty.
1980 – ABBA scored their sixth UK No.1 album when Super Trouper started a nine week run at the top of the charts. The album which features the No.1 singles ‘The Winner Takes It All’ and ‘Super Trouper’, became the biggest-selling of 1980 in the UK.
1998 – Alanis Morissette was at No.1 on the US album chart (No.3 in the UK) with her fourth album ‘Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.’ The first single from album ‘Thank You’ received a Grammy Award nomination for “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance”.
2004 – Ozzy Osbourne struggled with a burglar who escaped with jewellery worth about £2m from his Buckinghamshire mansion. Osbourne told reporters that he had the masked raider in a headlock as he tried to stop him. The burglar broke free and jumped 30 ft from a first floor window. A large amount of jewellery was stolen in the raid in which two burglars were involved.
2005 – A gig by former Stone Roses front man Ian Brown was abandoned after 20 minutes because the floor at the venue began to sag. 2,000 people were told to leave Newcastle’s Carling Academy, which had only been open for a month. Organisers said it was simply a safety precaution after joists under the main dance floor came out of their springs.
Today in history
1594 – The death of Sir Martin Frobisher, the English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to look for the Northwest Passage. His knighthood was awarded for service in repelling the Spanish Armada in 1588.
1718 – Edward Teach, the English pirate who sailed under the name of Blackbeard, was killed in battle off the coast of North Carolina, with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
1774 – Robert Clive, English soldier often referred to as ‘Clive of India’, died, possibly from an overdose of opium. It may have been suicide, but suicide was regarded as a sin, and if this had been admitted by his family he would not have been allowed a church burial. As it is, his grave was unmarked and remains so.
1819 – The birth, in Nuneaton, of Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot. She was an English novelist (Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss), poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.
1869 – The clipper Cutty Sark was launched In Dumbarton, Scotland. She was one of the last clippers ever built, and is the only one still surviving today. She is preserved as a museum ship, located near the centre of Greenwich, in south-east London.