January 15th "2025" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 15, known as National Bagel Day, National Fresh Squeezed Juice Day and National Hat Day, Museum Selfie Day. Your star sign is Capricorn and your birthstone is Garnet.
2009 – Pilot Chesley Sullenberger lands US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River shortly after take-off from LaGuardia Airport in New York. All passengers and crew members survive.
Todays birthdays
1947 – Pete Waterman (78), English record producer and songwriter (“I Should Be So Lucky”, “Never Gonna Give You Up”) born in Stoke Heath, Coventry.
1961 – Damian O’Neill (64) Northern Irish musician and lead guitarist with punk band, the Undertones (“Teenage Kicks”), born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
1965 – James Nesbitt (59), Northern Irish actor (Cold Feet, Murphy’s Law, Bloodlands), born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
1972 – Claudia Winkleman (53), English television presenter (Strictly Come Dancing, The Piano, The Great British Sewing Bee), born in London.
1974 – Edith Bowman (51), Scottish radio DJ and television presenter (RI:SE), born in Anstruther, Fife, Scotland.
Famous deaths
2014 – Roger Lloyd-Pack (b. 1944), English actor (Vicar of Dibley) best known for his role as Trigger in Only Fools and Horses.
2018 – Dolores O’Riordan (b. 1971), Irish pop singer with the Cranberries (“Zombie”).
The day today
1927 – BBC radio broadcast the first live commentary of a rugby match. Captain Teddy Wakelam narrated the match at Twickenham, between Wales and England. The following Saturday Wakelam provided the first football commentary from Highbury, where Arsenal was playing Sheffield United.
1962 – The centigrade, or Celsius, scale was used in the British Meteorological Office weather forecasts for the first time, more than 200 years after the death of the Swedish scientist who invented it.
1997 – Diana, Princess of Wales, calls for an international ban on landmines, angering ministers in the UK.
2001 – Wikipedia was launched. The website’s name comes from the Hawaiian word “wiki,” which means “quick.”
2009 – US Airways Flight 1549 landed on the Hudson River, NYC. After colliding with a pack of Canada geese, the aircraft lost all engine power. Pilots Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles decided to make an emergency crash landing in the Hudson River. Everyone on board survived.
Today in music
1971 – David Bowie released ‘Holy Holy’ as a single in the UK which failed to chart. A more frantic version of the song was recorded in 1971 for The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars but was dropped from the album, and subsequently appeared as the B-side to ‘Diamond Dogs’ in 1974.
1972 – Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ started a four week run at No.1 in the US singles chart. The song is a recounting of “The Day the Music Died” (a term taken from the song) the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper (Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr.), and the aftermath. The song was listed as the No.5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century.
1983 – Phil Collins had his first UK No.1 single with his version of ‘You Can’t Hurry Love,’ a hit for The Supremes in 1966. Collins’ version was the first track on the very first Now That’s What I Call Music CD.
2002 – 1980s British pop legend Adam Ant was arrested and charged with throwing a car alternator through a window at the Prince of Wales pub in Camden, London and then threatening patrons with a starting pistol. He was later fined £500 and placed under a 12-month Community Rehabilitation Order for psychiatric care, with a suspended sentence.
2018 – Irish musician and singer-songwriter Dolores O’Riordan from The Cranberries died unexpectedly while she was in London, England, for a recording session. An inquest at Westminster Coroner’s Court later ruled that she died as a result of accidental drowning in a bath following sedation by alcohol intoxication. The Cranberries had the 1994 hit singles ‘Linger’, ‘Dreams’ and ‘Zombie’ and the band’s 1993 album Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t spent a total of 86 weeks on the UK chart. They rank as one of the best-selling alternative acts of the 1990s, having sold nearly 50 million albums worldwide.
Today in history
1535 – Henry VIII assumed the title ‘Supreme Head of the Church’.
1559 – Elizabeth I was crowned Queen of England at the age of 26. She was the daughter of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn and the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty.
1759 – The opening of the British Museum, at Montague House, London. Access often depended on who you were and who you knew. Permission had to be given by the librarian and only 10 people an hour were allowed in. Its permanent collection numbers some eight million works and is amongst the finest, most comprehensive, and largest in existence. It illustrates and documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present day.
1790 – Fletcher Christian, eight fellow mutineers from the ship Bounty, six Tahitian men and 12 women, landed on the remote Pacific island of Pitcairn following the mutiny led by Christian.They stripped the Bounty of all that could be floated ashore before setting it on fire.
1797 – The first top hat was worn by John Hetherington, a London haberdasher. He was fined £50 the first time he wore his new creation, ‘for causing a disturbance’.