December 30th

National Days

• Today is National Bacon Day and Resolution Planning Day. 
• Your star sign is Capricorn and your birthstone is Blue Topaz.

Birthdays

• 1947 – Jeff Lynne, English musician, singer-songwriter, and record producer. He is the co-founder and only consistent member of the rock band Electric Light Orchestra
• 1969 – Jay Kay, English singer-songwriter and co-founder of the acid jazz and funk band Jamiroquai (“Virtual Insanity”, “Cosmic Girl”), born in Stretford, Greater Manchester.
• 1975 – Tiger Woods American professional golfer (82 official PGA Tour event wins), regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time, born in Cypress, California, United States.
• 1984 – LeBron James, American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA), born in Akron, Ohio, United States.
• 1986 – Ellie Goulding, English singer and songwriter (“Love Me Like You Do”, “Burn”), born in Herefordshire.
• 1988 – Leon Jackson, Scottish singer (“When You Believe”) and winner of The X Factor in 2007, born in Whitburn, West Lothian, Scotland.

On This Day

• 1922 – The USSR was formally proclaimed in Moscow and signed at the Bolshoi Theatre, at the First All-Union Congress of Soviets, where delegates from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Transcaucasian SFSR ratified the Treaty and Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, establishing the new communist federation and succeeding the Russian Empire.
• 1946 – Football league players threatened to strike over the proposed maximum wage of £11 a week.
• 1937 – Gordon Banks, English goal keeper, was born, in Sheffield. The International Federation of Football History & Statistics named Banks the second best goalkeeper of the 20th century, after the Russian Lev Yashin. On 22nd October 1972 Banks lost the sight in his right eye in a motoring accident and announced his retirement in August 1973. He was a member of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup. His consistent performances in goal led to the re-wording of a common English phrase to ‘As safe as the Banks of England.’
• 1954 – British athlete Chris Chataway became the first winner of the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award capping off a remarkable year where he set a world record in the 5000m and helped Roger Bannister run the first sub-four-minute mile.
• 1986 – According to new plans by the government, more than 200 canaries would be ‘phased out’ of Britain’s mining pits. New electronic devices would replace canaries as detectors of harmful gasses, because they were said to be cheaper in the long run and more effective.
• 1986 – Ballon d’Or: Dynamo Kyiv’s Ukrainian forward Igor Belanov is named best football player in Europe ahead of Barcelona striker Gary Lineker and Real Madrid forward Emilio Butragueño.
• 2006 – Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging by Iraqi authorities after being convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi High Tribunal for the Dujail massacre.
• 2013 – Forestry Commission figures showed that more than five million trees had been felled in Scotland since Alex Salmond came to power in 2007, to make way for wind farm developments, with fewer than 1.6 million planted to replace them. Findings showed that there were almost as many wind turbines north of the Border as in all the rest of the UK.
• 2014 – Tommie Rose, a 15 year old schoolboy, who made £14,000 from his school tuck-shop to pay future university fees for a business studies degree was threatened with suspension, as his shop breached the school’s healthy-eating guidelines.
• 2020 – The Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine was approved by the UK medicines regulator, opening up the possibility of rapidly scaling up vaccination against Covid-19. The UK ordered 100 million doses – enough to vaccinate 50 million people, with the first doses given on Monday 4th January 2021, amid rapidly rising coronavirus cases.
• 2020 – MPs overwhelmingly backed a post-Brexit deal with the European Union by 521 to 73 as the UK prepared for a split from Brussels at 11pm on 31st December 2020.
• 2022 – Cristiano Ronaldo joins Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr for the “biggest salary ever in football”.

Music

• 1967 – The Beatles scored their 15th US No.1 with ‘Hello Goodbye’, Gladys Knight and the Pips were at No.2 with ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ and The Monkees at No.3 with ‘Daydream Believer’
• 1969 – Peter Tork quit The Monkees buying himself out of his contract which left him broke. He went on to form a group called Release and played banjo on George Harrison’s soundtrack to the film Wonderwall.
• 1979 – Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP) officially broke up after releasing their final album, Love Beach, due to waning musical relevance against punk/disco, mounting creative differences, and declining chemistry, though the trio would briefly reunite in the 1990s before their final disbandment in the late 90s and a 40th-anniversary show in 2010, with both Emerson and Lake passing away in 2016, leaving Carl Palmer as the sole survivor.
• 1999 – In the Queen’s Millennium Honours list, former Slade singer Noddy Holder was awarded an MBE and guitarist Mark Knopfler was awarded an OBE.
• 1999 – George Harrison and his wife Olivia were attacked when an intruder broke into their home in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Olivia beat off the attacker with a poker and heavy lamp. Harrison who was stabbed in the chest was admitted to hospital and treated for a collapsed lung and various minor stab wounds. His wife, Olivia, was treated for cuts and bruises she had suffered in the struggle with the intruder. Police later arrested Michael Abram from Liverpool who had nursed an irrational obsession with The Beatles.
• 2002 – Diana Ross was arrested for drunk driving by the Arizona highway patrol after a motorist called to report a swerving vehicle in the western state of Arizona. When asked to walk in a straight line she fell over, could not count to 30 or balance on one foot. Police said the singer was twice over the drink drive limit with a blood-alcohol of 0.20, the legal limit is 0.08.
• 2014 – The woman who inspired Pulp’s hit song ‘Disco 2000’ died shortly after being appointed an MBE. Deborah Bone, from Hertfordshire was a childhood friend of lead singer Jarvis Cocker in Sheffield. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. The 1995 Britpop hit contains the lyric: “Your name is Deborah. Deborah. It never suited ya”.
• 2022 – Brian May, Queen’s guitarist, was knighted by King Charles III. May, an accomplished astrophysicist, was awarded the honour for his services to music and charity work. He was one of the first people to be knighted by the recently crowned king.
• 2024 – Five people were charged in connection with the death of One Direction singer Liam Payne in Argentina. The 31-year-old star died on 16 October after falling from the third-floor balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires. The hotel’s manager, Gilda Martin, and its receptionist, Esteban Grassi, as well as Payne’s friend Roger Nores were all charged with manslaughter and Ezequiel Pereyra, who also worked at the hotel and Braian Paiz, a waiter, were charged with supplying drugs.

History

• 1460 – The Wars of the Roses: The defeat and death of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and claimant to the English throne, at the Battle of Wakefield.
• 1641 – King James I famously tore a page from the House of Commons journal after Parliament asserted its right to debate foreign policy, specifically the proposed Spanish marriage for his son, Charles.
• 1813 – All but three buildings in Buffalo were torched by British troops, in retaliation for American troops burning what is now picturesque Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Throughout Ontario you’ll find important sites from this conflict, including Old Fort Erie, Chippawa Battlefield and Fort George.
• 1850 – The birth of John Milne, British geologist and mining engineer. He invented the horizontal seismograph that enabled him to detect different types of earthquake waves, and estimate their velocities. Along with two other British scientists he founded the Seismological Society of Japan.
• 1865 – Author Rudyard Kipling was born, in India, but was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. His best known fictional works are Jungle Book and Just So Stories. He celebrated British imperialism with tales and poems of British soldiers in India and in 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
• 1887 – A petition, signed by more than 1 million women in Britain, was sent to Queen Victoria calling for public houses to be closed on Sundays.