Sunday June 15th "2025" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 166, known as Fathers Day (UK), Magna Carta Day, Nature Photography Day. Your star sign is Gemini and your birthstone is Pearl (Alexandrite and Moonstone is also recognised).
1996 – An IRA bomb, the biggest ever to go off on the British mainland, devastated the centre of Manchester. Miraculously no-one was killed but 200 people were taken to hospital. The explosion caused £100 million worth of damage.
Todays birthdays
1946 – Noddy Holder (79), English musician, songwriter and a member of Slade (“Cum on Feel the Noize”, “Merry Xmas Everybody”), born in Walsall, West Midlands.
1964 – Courteney Cox (61), American actress (as Gale Weathers – Scream Franchise), who rose to fame for her roll as Monica Geller in Friends, born in Alabama, United States.
1969 – Ice Cube (56), born O’Shea Jackson, American rapper (“Straight Outta Compton”, “No Vaseline”) and actor (Boyz n the Hood), born in Los Angeles, California, United States.
1976 – Gary Lightbody (49), Northern Irish musician and lead singer with Snow Patrol (“Chasing Cars”, “The Last Time”), born in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland.
1985 – Nadine Coyle (40), Irish singer with Girls Aloud (“Sound Of The Underground”, “Love Machine”, “Can’t Speak French”), born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
1992 – Mohamed Salah (33), Egyptian professional footballer (Roma, Liverpool, Egypt national team), born in Nagrig, Egypt.
Famous deaths
1928 – Emmeline Pankhurst (b. 1857), English activist and academic best known for organizing the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.
1946 – John Logie Baird (b. 1888), Scottish-English physicist and engineer (inventor of the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electronic colour television picture tube).
The day today
1911 – The birth of the Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, English Anglican cleric, railway enthusiast, and children’s author. He was the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine, the central figure in his acclaimed railway stories.
1929 – British made Bentleys occupied the first four places at the finish of the Le Mans 24 hour race in France.
1971 – Opposition grew to Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher’s plans to end free school milk for children over the age of seven and some Labour controlled councils threatened to put up the rates in order to continue supplying free milk.
1993 – James Hunt, English racing driver and 1976 Formula One world champion died from a heart attack, aged 45. His charisma and charm both on and off the track brought a whole new fanbase to the sport of Formula One.
1996 – An IRA bomb, the biggest ever to go off on the British mainland, devastated the centre of Manchester. Miraculously no-one was killed but 200 people were taken to hospital. The explosion caused £100 million worth of damage.
1998 – The bi-metallic £2 coin, designed by Bruce Rushin, first minted in 1997 was introduced into general circulation. The new bi-metallic coin design replaced a series of commemorative, uni-metallic coins which were issued between 1986 and 1996 to celebrate special occasions.
2013 – Twenty-seven people were treated in hospital after an amphibious tourist craft sank in Liverpool’s Albert Dock (Note: – the dock was given Royal status on 6th June 2018). It was the second sinking involving one of the vessels. Six days later the firm (Yellow Duckmarine) went into administration. In 2012 the Queen and Prince Philip had been given a tour of the dock on one of the vehicles during her Diamond Jubilee tour.
Today in music
1973 – Motown Records released ‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye. The track became Gaye’s most successful single for Motown and one of his most well-known songs, with the help of the song’s sexually explicit content.
1974 – ABBA’s second album (but first UK release), ‘Waterloo’ entered the UK chart peaking at No.28. The album’s title track won ABBA the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest.
1981 – Duran Duran released their debut studio album (titled Duran Duran), which reached No.3 on the UK Albums Chart and remained in the UK top 100 for 118 weeks. In the US the album reached No.10 on the Billboard 200, and spent 87 weeks on that chart. Singles from the album included the UK top 10 hits ‘Planet Earth’ and ‘Girls on Film’.
1985 – Dire Straits started a nine-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with, Brothers In Arms. The album is the seventh best-selling album in UK chart history and won two Grammy Awards at the 28th Grammy Awards, and also won Best British Album at the 1987 Brit Awards.
2003 – Radiohead scored their fourth UK No.1 with their sixth studio album ‘Hail To The Thief’. The title Hail to the Thief – a phrase used by anti-George W. Bush activists during the controversy surrounding the 2000 US presidential election was a play on ‘Hail to the Chief’, a march played to announce the arrival of the President of the United States.
2005 – Coldplay went straight to No.1 on US album chart with their third album ‘X&Y’, having already entered at number one in the UK. The last time a British artist had a simultaneous US and UK number one was in November 2000 with ‘1’, a compilation of hits by The Beatles. The last studio album to reach number one on both sides of the Atlantic was Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ in October 2000. ‘X&Y’ went on to top over 30 global charts.
2008 – Liverpool was voted England’s most musical city in a national campaign set up by the Arts Council. The home of The Beatles Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and The Zutons took 49% of the vote in an online poll set up by the funding body. Sheffield – which brought the world the Arctic Monkeys and Pulp – came second, while Manchester with Oasis, Stone Roses and The Smiths came third.
Today in history
1215 – King John agreed to put his royal seal on the Magna Carta, or Great Charter of English liberties, at Runnymede, near Windsor. The document was the first to be forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects. It was essentially a peace treaty between John and his barons, guaranteed the nobles their feudal privileges and promised to maintain the nation’s laws. The Baron of Pontefract, John De Lacy, was one of twenty-five barons who forced King John into agreeing the document.
1330 – The birth, in Woodstock Palace, Oxfordshire of Edward the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III. He married his cousin Joan, ‘The Fair Maid of Kent’, who gave him two sons, one of whom was the future Richard II.
1381 – Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, was killed at Smithfield in London. Richard II had agreed to meet the leaders of the revolt, and listen to their demands. What was said between Tyler and the king is largely conjecture but by all accounts the unarmed Tyler was suddenly attacked without warning and killed by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir William Walworth, and John Cavendish, a member of the king’s group.
1667 – The first direct blood transfusion to a human was performed by the French physician Jean-Baptiste Denis, when he gave a feverish young man approximately 12 ounces of blood taken from a lamb. The young man recovered quickly.
1844 – Charles Goodyear, an American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer patents the vulcanization of rubber.
1860 – British nurse Florence Nightingale, famous for tending British wounded during the Crimean War, opened a school for nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.