ON THIS DAY
FROM THE ARCHIVE JANUARY 26, 1981
YELLING ‘Long live the revolution’, Mao’s widow Chiang Ching was dragged from a court yesterday after receiving a suspended death sentence. Her final outburst came at the climax of China’s trial of the century, staged by Marxist leaders to bring down the curtain on the Mao Tse Tung era.
JANUARY 26, 2010
BRIAN Cowen and Gordon Brown got together last night to try to broker a breakthrough over the future of the Northern Executive. A crisis message to Downing Street after talks broke down in Belfast between DUP leader Peter Robinson and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness saw the Taoiseach and British prime minister decamp to the North to remind local parties what is at stake. They stayed overnight at Hillsborough Castle as a ‘family summit’ was held to stave off the prospect of the Executive collapsing over the failure to transfer police and justice powers to local administration.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ANDREW RIDGELEY, 61. The singer-songwriter, right, was, with George Michael, one half of Wham! One article said sesame seeds were ‘the Andrew Ridgeley of garnishes – a hamburger would look wrong without them, but nobody knows what they do’. Michael credited Ridgeley with his success, saying: ‘Andrew changed my life in the way someone needed to if I was gonna be a pop star.’ DAVID STRATHAIRN, 75. The Oscar-nominated US actor played the lead role in George Clooney’s Good Night, And Good Luck. His son Tay married Meryl Streep’s daughter Grace in 2019, but they separated 42 days later. Strathairn was first attracted to the theatre because ‘there were power tools to fool around with. And girls.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
ALICE BABS (1924-2014). The soprano, born Hildur Nilsson, was Sweden’s first Eurovision entry in 1958. She also found success performing with Duke Ellington’s orchestra in the ’60s. The New York Times said she ‘took her place among the top rank of Ellingtonians’. ROGER VADIM (1928-2000). The French film director debuted with And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot, whom he married when she was 18. He later cast his third wife Jane Fonda in Barbarella. ‘You wouldn’t ask Rodin to make an ugly sculpture,’ he said, ‘or me to make a film with an ugly woman.’
ON JANUARY 26…
IN 1907, audience riots break out as John Millington Synge’s Playboy Of The Western World is performed for the first time at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. IN 2020, former Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant, 41, right, dies in a helicopter crash with his daughter, aged 13.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION Formication (coined 1707)
A) The sensation of bugs crawling over one’s body. B) Persistent winking. C) A fit of depression. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED Devil’s advocate:
A person who expresses a contentious opinion to provoke debate, deriving from the Catholic church: someone is appointed to give reasons why a proposed canonisation should not take place, before a decision is made.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom – for himself.
Elbert Hubbard, US writer (1856-1915)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I LOVE jokes about multi-storey car parks... They work on many levels.
Guess The Definition answer: A.