ON THIS DAY
MARCH 1, 1945
COLOGNe, fourth city of Germany, was last night almost within the grasp of General Hodges’s American First Army. His tanks yesterday swept across the last defensive position in front of the city — the erft Canal. Goebbels [Hitler’s propaganda chief] told the German people that the nation’s leaders will ‘go before them into honourable death’ rather than face defeat.
MARCH 1, 1962
WHO is the legal owner of a wife’s clothes? This legal point was raised at Loughborough, when Harold Betts, 36, was accused of damaging clothing valued at £49 [£985 today] partly owned by him and partly by his wife. An official said: ‘If a wife keeps the money she earns and the housekeeping money in one purse, clothes bought from that money are jointly owned. If she keeps her money separate from the housekeeping and buys her own clothes, the clothes are hers.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
PAUL HOLLYWOOD, 51. The Great British Bake Off judge, from the Wirral, started out in the family business, and his mother, father and brother are all bakers. He says he sometimes washes his Aston Martin every couple of hours: ‘I wonder if I love it a little too much.’ ROGeR DALTReY, 73. The lead singer of The Who assembled the band while still at school. In the early days, he worked in a sheet metal factory and made the band’s guitars himself. He played the lead role in the 1975 rock opera Tommy.
BORN ON THIS DAY
AUGUSTUS PUGIN (18121852). Best known for the detailed design of much of fellow architect Charles Barry’s Pa la c e of Westminster, including the clock tower of Big Ben. He was briefly committed to Bedlam, an asylum for the insane in London, and died before the iconic masterpiece was finished. YITZHAK RABIN (1922-1995). The Israeli PM was killed by a Right-wing Israeli extremist who opposed his signing of the Oslo Accords, a peace process with the Palestinians. These words of the Song Of Peace he had just sung with 100,000 supporters were found in his pocket, punctured by the bullets: ‘ Let the sunrise light up the morning. It will not return those whose candle has been blown out.’
ON MARCH 1...
IN 1968, Johnny Cash married fellow country music star June Carter, a week after proposing on stage in Canada. WORD WIZARDRY NEW WORD OF THE DAY Kill switch: A facility which makes a mobile phone useless when stolen.
GUESS THE DEFINITION Acersecomic (coined 1612) A) One whose hair has never been cut. B) Lacking stamina (said of horses). C) Blub-cheeked, wide-mouthed. Answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED
Best thing since sliced bread: The bread slicer was invented in the early 20th century, but the phrase wasn’t popular until the Sixties; it may have been based on a slogan advertising the first sliced bread.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
A dAy without laughter is a day wasted. Charlie Chaplin, actor (1889-1977)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY are colds such bad robbers? Because they’re so easy to catch! Guess the definition answer: A