October 22nd "2024" Daily Prep
Welcome to day 296 of the “leap” year! Known as International Stuttering Awareness Day, International Caps Lock Day. Your star sign is Libra and your birthstone is Pink Tourmaline.
1983 – The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) held its biggest ever protest against nuclear missiles in London, with an estimated one million people taking part.
Todays birthdays
1938 – Christopher Lloyd (86), American actor best known for his role as Emmett “Doc” Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, born in Stamford, Connecticut, United States.
1949 – Arsène Wenger (75), French former football manager (Arsenal from 1996 to 2018) and current FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development, born in Strasbourg, France.
1952 – Jeff Goldblum (72), American actor (Independance Day, Jurassic Park, The Fly), born in West Homestead, Pennsylvania, United States.
1968 – Shaggy (56), Jamaican Grammy Award-winning reggae rapper and songwriter (“It Wasn’t Me”, “Boombastic”), born in Kingston, Jamaica.
1972 – Saffron Burrows (52), British-American actress (Deep Blue Sea, Gangster No. 1, Enigma, Troy, Reign Over Me and The Bank Job), born in Saint Pancras, London.
1983 – Plan B, born Benjamin Paul Ballance-Drew (41), English rapper, singer and songwriter (“The Recluse”, “Darkest PLace”), born in London.
Famous deaths
2023 – Bobby Charlton (b. 1937), English footballer and manager (member of the England team that won the 1966 FIFA World Cup).
The day today
1966 – A Russian KGB master spy, George Blake, escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in London where he was serving a 40 year sentence for spying against the British Government.
1972 – Gordon Banks, England’s star goalkeeper, damaged his eyes in a car crash. Fragments of glass had perforated his right eye and damaged the retina, requiring 100 micro stitches to the eye and a further 200 to his face.
1975 – The ‘Guildford Four’ were sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of planting IRA bombs in pubs in Guildford and Woolwich. Fifteen years later they had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal, following an extensive inquiry into the original police investigation.
1986 – The world’s youngest heart transplant patient, a two-and-a-half-month-old baby from north west London, was given the heart of a five-day-old Belgian boy by Professor Magdi Yacoub at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex.
2001 – Towns and villages in Cambridgeshire and Essex were on flood alert as forecasters predicted more torrential downpours following what experts said were the worst floods in 20 years.
Today in music
1964 – Sandie Shaw had her first UK No.1 single with the Burt Bacharach song “(There’s) Always Some Thing There To Remind Me”.
1988 – U2 scored their fourth UK No.1 album with the double set and film soundtrack ‘Rattle And Hum’, featuring their first UK No.1 single ‘Desire’.
2000 – George Michael paid £1.45m for the Steinway piano on which John Lennon wrote ‘Imagine’. George said, “I know that when my fingers touch the keys of that Steinway, I will feel truly blessed. And parting with my money has never been much of a problem, just ask my accountant.” George outbid Robbie Williams and The Oasis brothers.
2005 – Waterloo by ABBA was voted the best song in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest. Viewers in 31 countries across Europe voted during a special show in Copenhagen to celebrate the annual event’s 50th birthday.
2021 – Adele returned to the UK Singles Chart after a five-year absence when her single ‘Easy on Me’ entered the chart at No.1. Adele also set a new chart record with the single as ‘Easy On Me’ racked up 24 million streams in the UK in its first week of release, the most streams for a song in one week.
Today in history
1707 – Four British Royal Navy ships ran aground near the Isles of Scilly. Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and more than 1,400 sailors drowned in one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of Britain. It was later determined that the main cause of the disaster was the navigators’ inability to accurately calculate their positions.
1877 – An explosion at the Blantyre mine in Scotland killed 207 miners the youngest aged 11. It remains Scotland’s worst mining accident.
1878 – The first floodlit rugby match took place, between Broughton and Swinton at Broughton, Lancashire.
1879 – Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb (lasting 131.5 hours before burning out).
1884 – The International Meridian Conference designates the Royal Observatory, Greenwich as the world’s prime meridian.