ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
FEBRUARY 14, 1957 PRINCE Charles, eight, has a new hobby — stamp collecting. The colourful stamps from places visited by the Duke of edinburgh on his tour have interested him. The Queen, owner of the multi-million-pound Royal Philatelic Collection started by her grandfather, King George V, has never shared his enthusiasm, or that of her father, King George VI. FEBRUARY 14, 1957 ON SATURDAY, television takes the biggest jump since the opening of ITV in September 1955. The 60-minute shutdown between 6 and 7pm, which has been in force since television started in Britain, comes to an end.
The shut- down was called the Toddlers’ Truce by journalists . . . because in theory it gave parents a chance to prepare children for bed without provoking ugly scenes.
It was supported by the BBC for the reasons that TV ought not to be a round-the-clock service and that there was not enough talent in Britain to maintain standards.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SIR Alan Parker, 73. The London-born, Oscar-winning director of Bugsy Malone, evita and Midnight express. He got his love of film from playing in a bombed-out cinema in the aftermath of World War II: ‘We used to pretend to watch movies even though the screen and back walls of the building were missing,’ he said. SIMON Pegg, 47. The actor (pictured) from Gloucestershire has starred in Star Trek, the Mission: Impossible films and zombie comedy Shaun Of The Dead, and has been described as ‘Hollywood’s go-to geek’. His key childhood inspiration was Star Wars, and every evening he kissed his Carrie Fisher poster good night. He is godfather to apple, daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay’s Chris Martin.
BORN ON THIS DAY
CHRISTOPHER SHOLES (1819-1890). The u.S. inventor developed the typewriter after being encouraged by a friend to adapt his page-numbering machine into a ‘letter-printing machine’. His wasn’t the first typewriter, but it was the first one to be mass-produced, and he developed the still-used QWERTY keyboard in the 1870s. JACK BENNY (1894-1974). The u.S. entertainer (pictured) appeared in almost 20 films. In his act he was a miser and also played the violin badly for laughs. He’d learned the instrument as a child. When he performed his first serious concert, a critic wrote: ‘Last night Jack Benny played Mendelssohn, and Mendelssohn lost.’
ON FEBRUARY 14 . . .
IN 1962, u.S. First Lady Jackie Kennedy presented a televised tour of the White House.
IN 1984, British ice skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won maximum points and Olympic gold in Sarajevo, in the former Yugoslavia.
WORD WIZARDRY
NEW WORD OF THE DAY Tech creche: a safe where visitors can deposit their mobile phones. GUESS THE DEFINITION Tritanopia (coined 1915) a) The act of walking backwards. B) The inability to distinguish properly between blue and yellow. C) Knocking together of knees in walking. PHRASE EXPLAINED The road to hell is paved with good inten
tions: Meaning intentions are useless of themselves and that they must be put into action. It derives from the 16th or 17th century, with the similar ‘hell is full of good desires; and heaven is full of good works’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
DREAMS are often most profound when they seem the most crazy Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst (1856-1939)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT animal do you look like when you’re having a bath? A little bear. Guess the Definition answer: B