ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 270 …
THE average number of days mums-to-be are pregnant, from fertilisation to giving birth, is 270 (38 weeks and four days) but it can vary by as much as 37 days. ANDROMEDA Galaxy, the most distant object visible to the naked eye, is travelling towards our galaxy, the Milky Way, at
270,000 mph. It’s another two billion years before they hit each other. IT’S estimated there are 270 million guns owned by civilians in the U.S. — nearly 90 for every 100 people. The Yemen follows with 55 guns per 100 people, then Switzerland and Finland, each with 46 per 100.
THERE ARE 96 DAYS LEFT
ENGLISH has only one word for the noun ‘love’, but Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism, has 96 and ancient Persian had 80. Robert Chesebrough, the American chemist who invented petroleum jelly and marketed it as Vaseline, claimed he ate a spoonful of it every day. He lived to be 96. SCIENTISTS have found that 96 per cent of people can tell the difference between the sound of hot and cold water being poured. one reason is that hot water generally has more bubbles, so produces a higher frequency sound.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BRYAN FERRY, 71. Roxy Music’s lead singer was once described as ‘more likely to redecorate a hotel room than smash it up’. The son of a farm labourer, in 2007 he told a German newspaper that Nazi marches, films and architecture were ‘fantastic, really beautiful’. He apologised for the comments, which he said ‘were solely from an art history perspective’. RICKY TOMLINSON, 77. The Royle Family star says his most deplorable trait is being too lazy to keep fit: ‘Some people are built like bananas; I look like a pear on two legs.’ A socialist, his most treasured possession is a Davy lamp given him by Arthur Scargill. WINNIE MANDELA, 80. South African activist and politician and Nelson Mandela’s second wife of 38 years. Pictured (right) on their wedding day, they had four months as a married couple before he spent 27 years in jail. They eventually divorced in 1996. She once said: ‘If I’d had time to know him better, I might have found faults, but I only had time to love him and long for him all the time.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937). American pianist and composer of Rhapsody In Blue, An American In Paris and Porgy And Bess. His childhood piano teacher refused payment, saying: ‘I have a new pupil who will make his mark if anybody will. The boy is a genius.’ ERIC MORLEY (1918-2000). The promoter of Mecca dance halls, Morley created Miss World and the BBC’s Come Dancing and introduced commercial bingo to Britain in 1961. He twice stood unsuccessfully as Conservative candidate for Dulwich.
ON SEPTEMBER 26 . . .
IN 1960, the first televised U.S. presidential debate took place, between Republican Vice-President Richard Nixon and Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy, and was watched by more than 60 million people.
In 1969, The Beatles released Abbey Road — the final recording sessions in which all the Fab Four participated.
In 1973, Concorde made its first non-stop Atlantic crossing, from Washington to Paris, at an average speed of 954 mph and halving the flight time to 212 minutes.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it’s for ever. Carl Sagan, American scientist (1934-1996)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call a creature with nothing between its head and shoulders? The Lost Neck Monster.