Today is National Fruitcake Day. Your star sign is Capricorn and your birthstone is Blue Topaz.
1977 – Thousands of people flocked to UK cinemas to watch the long-awaited blockbuster, Star Wars. Sadly, Carrie Fisher also died on this day in 2016 of a sudden cardiac arrest.
Today’s birthdays
1946 – Janet Street-Porter (79), English broadcaster (Loose Women, The F-Word), journalist (Daily Mail) and writer, born in Brentford, West London.
1948 – Gérard Depardieu (77), French actor (The Man in the Iron Mask, Green Card), born in Châteauroux, France.
1952 – David Knopfler (73), British musician and co-founder of rock band, Dire Straits (“Sultans of Swing”, “Money for Nothing”), born in Glasgow, Scotland.
1960 – Maryam D’Abo (65), British actress (Helen of Troy), best known as Bond girl Kara Milovy in the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights, born in Hammersmith, London.
1981 – Javine [Dionne Hylton] (44), English singer-songwriter who represented the UK at the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv with “Touch My Fire”, born in Kensington, London.
1987 – Lily Cole (38), English model (Chanel, Cacharel) and actress (St. Trinian’s, Snow White and the Huntsman), born in Torquay, Devon.
Famous deaths
1994 – Fanny Cradock (b. 1909), English restaurant critic, television cook and writer.
2016 – Carrie Fisher (b. 1956), American actress (Princess Leia in the original Star Wars films), screenwriter, author, producer and speaker.
The day today
1904 – The original stage production of Peter Pan took place in London, England. Originally, Peter Pan was a play, not a novel. The novel adaptation came out later, in 1911.
1945 – The World Bank and International Monetary Fund were created with the signing of an agreement by 29 nations.
1966 – Ballon d’Or: Manchester United midfielder Bobby Charlton wins award for best European football player; claims award by a single point ahead of Benfica striker Eusébio.
1975 – The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into force then) were landmark UK laws that became effective in Great Britain on December 29, 1975, making sex and marriage discrimination unlawful in employment and other areas, and establishing the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to enforce them. These Acts, spurred by campaigns like the 1968 Ford Dagenham strike, aimed to create equal pay for equal work and opportunities between men and women.
1978 – The Amundsen – Scott South Pole Station recorded a temperature of −13.6 °C (7.5 °F), making it the highest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole.
1978 – Spain became a democracy after Franco’s dictatorship when King Juan Carlos I ratified its first democratic constitution from authoritarian rule to a constitutional monarchy, establishing democratic rights and greater regional autonomy, following Franco’s death in 1975.
1983 – Ballon d’Or: Juventus’ French midfielder Michel Platini claims first of 3 trophies for Europe’s best football player ahead of Liverpool midfielder Kenny Dalgleish and Vejle BK striker Allan Simonsen.
1984 – Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was voted Woman of the Year, on Radio 4’s Today programme. According to a Gallup Poll she was the woman most admired by the American people; the third consecutive year that the ‘Iron Lady’ had received that honour.
1997 – Windsor Castle was reopened to the public following restoration work. 100 rooms of the palace were damaged in a fire in 1992.
1997 – A leading protestant paramilitary, Billy Wright, was shot dead at the maximum security Maze prison in Northern Ireland. Wright was the leader of a dissident paramilitary group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, one of several Protestant militias that wanted Northern Ireland to remain in British hands.
2004 – Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet.
2007 – Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, was killed as she was leaving a rally of the Pakistan People’s Party. She was killed as she was driving away from the rally as a result of both gunshot wounds and suicide bomber detonation next to her car.
Today in music
1963 – The music critics from the UK newspaper The Times, named John Lennon and Paul McCartney as The Outstanding Composers of 1963. Two days later, the Sunday Times’ music critic Richard Buckle proclaims the same two songwriters “the greatest composers since Beethoven.”
1975 – Queen started a two-week run at No.1 on the UK chart with A Night At The Opera, the group’s first No.1 album.
1975 – The Faces split became official. Rod Stewart had severed all connections with the group to work as a solo artist, Ronnie Wood was on permanent loan to the Stones, Ronnie Lane went on to form Slim Chance and drummer Kenny Jones joined The Who.
1986 – Jackie Wilson had the UK Christmas No.1 single with ‘Reet Petite’ two years after Wilson’s death, following its use in a commercial for Levi’s. Written in 1957 by Berry Gordy and Tyran Carlo, the success of the song helped Gordy fund the launch of Motown Records.
1997 – The Spice Girls went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Too Much’. The group set another new world record as their first six singles all made No.1.
2005 – It was announced that ‘Crazy Frog’ by Axel F was the best selling UK ringtone of 2005. ‘Tweet Tweet’ by Sweetie Chick was the second and ‘(Is This The Way To) Amarillo’ by Tony Christie and Peter Kay was the third biggest seller. The UK ringtone market was now worth more than double the value of the CD singles sales.
2008 – Taylor Swift started a seven-week run at No.1 on the US album charts with Fearless. The album was the best-selling album of 2009, making Swift, 18 at the time of the album’s release, the youngest artist to have the best-selling album of a calendar year. The album is certified diamond by RIAA and has sold over 7.18 million copies.
2021 – Adele was at No.1 on the album chart with her fourth studio album, 30. Its lead single, ‘Easy on Me’, topped the charts in over 20 countries and was the world’s best-selling album of 2021, selling a total of 5.5 million copies in less than two months of its release.
Today in history
1703 – The Methuen Treaty, signed between England and Portugal, established a favourable trade deal where Portuguese wines entered England at one-third less duty than French wines, in exchange for English woollen goods entering Portugal duty-free.
1773 – The birth of Sir George Cayley, English pioneer of the study of aerodynamics. In 1853 he built the first successful glider to be flown by a man, his reluctant coachman! One of his later inventions was the caterpillar tractor.
1831 – English naturalist Charles Darwin sailed from Plymouth on board his ship, HMS Beagle. His scientific voyage of discovery lasted five years and led to the publication (in 1859) of his highly controversial book The Origin of Species which fuelled the ‘creation versus evolution’ debate. In recognition of Darwin’s outstanding work, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, next to his friend and eminent scientist John Herschel and close to Isaac Newton.
1836 – The worst ever avalanche in England occurs at Lewes, Sussex, killing eight people. A huge build-up of snow on a chalk cliff overlooking the town collapsed into the settlement 100 metres (330 ft) below, destroying a row of cottages.
1845 – Anesthesia is used for the first time in childbirth. Dr. Crawford W. Long, an American physician, gave ether to his wife during the birth of their second child. The event revolutionalised the use of anesthesia in medicine and surgery.
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