ON THIS DAY
MAY 30, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE MAY 30, 1945
WILLIAM JOYCE, aka Lord Haw-Haw, the radio traitor whose ‘Jairmany calling’ accent yesterday gave him away, is tonight in custody. Passing two British Army officers who were gathering sticks in a wood near the German border, Joyce remarked that he too often collected firewood there. One officer said: ‘you’re William Joyce — I’d know your voice anywhere.’
MAY 30, 1956
ACTRESS Joan Collins, 23, won a divorce in Hollywood yesterday because, she said, her husband Maxwell Reed belittled her talent and told her she looked ‘terrible’. He said she’d better get all the work she could ‘because by the time I was 23 I’d be too old. He met me at the airport and said I’d aged ten years — then repeated it before friends.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
IDINA MENZEL, 46. The U. S. actress and singer (right) became a household name when John Travolta introduced her performance of the song Let It Go from Disney’s Frozen at the 2015 Oscars, pronouncing her name ‘Adele Dazeem’. At the following year’s awards, Menzel introduced Travolta as ‘my very dear friend, Glom Gazingo’. HELEN SHARMAN, 54. The Sheffield-born astronaut became the first Briton in space in 1991, inside the Soviet Soyuz TM-12 space capsule. She now manages Imperial College London’s chemistry department, where she says she is treated by students ignorant of her place in history ‘with the same lack of respect as everyone else’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
HOWARD HAWKS (1896-1977) has been described as ‘the greatest American film director who is not a household name’. It was Hawks who brought together Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. A close friend of Ernest Hemingway, Hawks made a bet with the author that he could make a good film out of his ‘worst book’, To Have And Have Not. Bacall and Bogart fell in love on set and married soon after. BENNY GOODMAN (19091986). The clarinetist and bandleader (right), hailed as the King of Swing, was born in the slums of Chicago and began playing professionally at 13. His was the first white band to hire a black musician to appear on stage, in 1936. In 1962, following a concert tour of Russia, President John Kennedy described him as ‘ our international ambassador with clarinet’.
ON MAY 30...
IN 1990, France banned imports of British beef at the height of the BSE crisis. IN 1996, Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were divorced, after ten years of marriage.
WORD WIZARDRY NEW WORD OF THE DAY
Conlang: A constructed language from fiction, for instance Klingon from Star Trek.
GUESS THE DEFINITION Crizzles (coined 1876)
A) White specks under the finger nails. B) Rough, sunburnt areas on face and hands. C) Wax drips from a candle. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Alma mater: A person’s old school or university, from the Latin for ‘nursing mother’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children. The Duke of Windsor (1894-1972)
JOKE OF THE DAY
IF ANYONE ever asks you to spell ‘part’ backwards, don’t do it … It’s a trap. Guess The Definition answer: C.