137 years ago today, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, and Reverends Benjamin Waugh and Edward Rudolph founded the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. After five years of campaigning by the London SPCC, Parliament passed the first-ever UK law to protect children from abuse and neglect in 1889. The designation of London would expand to ‘National’ just 5 years later, with Queen Victoria as its patron, and 1st Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts as co-founder. READ about its activities… (1884)

NSPCC head office in Greater London – CC 2.0. Howard Lake

The NSPCC runs local service centers across the UK where it helps children, young people, and families, staffed by 1,900 volunteers. By 1930, it reportedly helped its four-millionth child.

Since 2009, the NSPCC has run a Child Protection Consultancy service aiming to make organizations safer for children. This offers training and consultancy to organizations that have contact with children, ranging from schools to sporting bodies.

Many of the charity’s resources are put towards research and data collection into finding what works best for preventing various kinds of child abuse and neglect. It remains the only UK charity with granted statutory powers under the Children Act 1989, that allow it to apply for care and supervision orders for children at risk.

MORE Good News on this Day:

  • The Liberty Bell was rung to summon citizens of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to hear the new Declaration of Independence written by the Continental Congress (1776)
  • The Wall Street Journal was first sold on four pages costing two cents, printed by Mr. Dow and Mr. Jones, and Charles Bergstresser (1889)
  • Florenz Ziegfeld staged his first “Follies” on the roof of a New York City theater (1907)
  • The United States Air Force accepted its first female recruits into a program called WAF, Women in the Air Force (1948)
  • The first Gold Record album was presented by the Recording Industry Association of America to the soundtrack LP, ‘Oklahoma’ after the LP reached one million dollars in sales (1958)
  • U.S. troops began withdrawing from Vietnam as 800 men from the 9th Infantry Division were sent home (1969)
  • NATO invited the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to join the alliance in 1999 (1997)
  • The fourth installment of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series (Goblet of Fire) was released, breaking all publishing records with an initial print run of 5.3 million copies (2000)
  • Washington became the second U.S. state to allow the sale of legalized recreational marijuana (2014)

Happy 79th birthday to Jeffery Tambor, famous for staring in 4 seasons as the Bluth Family patriarch on Fox/Netflix’s Arrested Developmentwhich earned him 3 Emmy and 2 Screen Actor’s Guild award nominations, and Amazon’s Transparentwhich won him two. Older readers might remember him as “Hey Now” Hank Kingsley in the comedy series The Larry Sanders Showwhere he plays the often troubled co-host of a fictional late-night talk show.

Jeffrey Tambor in 2015 – CC 2.0. Mingle Media TV

In a television career that started fifty years ago, Tambor made numerous guest appearances on different shows, including Taxi, Kojak, M*A*S*H, The Golden Girls, and Three’s Company. The film career was there too, but never to the level of excellence as Tambor could bring to the ensemble of a television comedy. WATCH the best of Hank Kingsley… (1944)

 

Happy 72nd Birthday to actress and director Anjelica Huston. The third generation of her family to win an Academy Award, she earned it for her supporting role in Prizzi’s Honor, which was directed by her father, John Huston. He previously won the award along with her actor grandfather, Walter Huston.

(left) 2014 by Mingle Media TV, CC license; (right) The Royal Tenenbaums film

She also received Oscar nominations for Enemies, a Love Story and The Grifters. Huston also received British Academy Award nominations for her work in the Woody Allen films Crimes and Misdemeanors and Manhattan Murder Mystery. Among her other roles, she starred as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family, and has frequently collaborated with director Wes Anderson (such as The Royal Tenenbaums – pictured).

These days, she calls herself a sculptor and potter. “I’ve always had a fascination with clay,” she says, so now makes bowls and clay figurines of women stretching in yoga class. Two years ago she decided to sell her wares, which “exhilarates” her.

Recently, Huston has implored Ireland’s officials to preserve a building that was the setting of James Joyce’s short story The Dead.

Once owned by Joyce’s great aunts, the Georgian house at 15 Usher Island, Dublin City, is set to be turned into a 54-bed tourist hostel.

Huston’s father directed the film adaptation of ‘The Dead’ in 1987, which was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay—and she also starred in it. Huston said that as a UNESCO city of literature, tourists come to Dublin every year to see where great literary works were based.

She is also the author of two memoirs; A Story Lately Told and Watch Me. (1951)

 

Happy Birthday to actor and musician Kevin Bacon who turns 65 today. He and his famous wife Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) have been married nearly 30 years. Bacon’s diverse acting career includes Footloose, Diner, JFK, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Mystic River, Taking Chance, The Woodsman, and the TV drama The Following. He is one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination, though he did win a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Emmy nod. A musical group with his brother Michael, called The Bacon Brothers, was formed in 1997 and they often tour with new music.

Kevin posted this on Instagram: “Got an early birthday gift from my mother-in-law…”

The Philadelphia-born Bacon became the focus of a viral game, ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’, that connected him to any actor’s work in Hollywood (living or dead) within six steps. In 2007, he parlayed the game’s popularity into a charity, SixDegrees.org. Born out of a desire to create a lasting positive impact, it enables people to become celebrities for their own causes, and has raised more than $5 million for grassroots charities of all kinds. (1958)

Happy 74th Birthday to Chef Wolfgang Puck, the Austrian restaurateur and businessman who learned cooking from his pastry-chef mother.

2005 photo by Palazzo Las Vegas, CC license

Puck moved to the U.S. at 24 and, following the publication of his first cookbook, Modern French Cooking for the American Kitchen, he opened his first restaurant, Spago, on L.A.’s Sunset Strip in 1982. It became one of the Top 40 Restaurants in the US, and was awarded two Michelin stars.

His success enabled him to launch the Wolfgang Puck Companies, which includes 20 fine restaurants, catering services served at the Academy Awards Governors Ball for 25 years, more than 80 Wolfgang Puck Express locations, and merchandise including cookbooks, canned foods, and coffee products. Chef Puck is also active in charity work, and co-founded a foundation that supports Meals on Wheels; raising more than $15 million since its inception. (1949)

And, Happy Birthday to the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Beck who turns 53 today.

2018 – By Raph_PH, CC license

The four-time platinum artist rose to fame in the early 1990s in Los Angeles with his experimental lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide-ranging genres. Known for hit songs like Loser, Devil’s Haircut, Dreams, and Where It’s At, he’s released 14 studio albums (three on indie labels).

His 2014’s folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the Grammys, and his 2017 album, Colors, won Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered LP. The idiosyncratically creative Odelay and Sea Change, were two LPs celebrated on Rolling Stone’s list of 500 greatest albums of all time. (1970)

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