ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JUNE 27, 1962
TO PRESERVE the Rhine Army’s good name, War Minister Mr Profumo has ordered a midnight curfew from tomorrow for unmarried soldiers in West Germany and Belgium. The curfew was called in response to the lengthening list of street brawls and damage to property by British troops.
JUNE 27, 1969
PRINCE ChARLES talked last night about the girl he will marry. The 20-year-old said: ‘The one advantage about marrying a princess, for instance, or somebody from a royal family, is that they do know what happens. The only trouble is that I often feel that I would like to marry somebody English. Or Welsh, or British.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MEERA SyAL, 56. The actress, comedian and writer (pictured) played Sanjeev Bhaskar’s grandmother in The Kumars At No 42, despite being younger than him (they later married). She grew up in a two-up, two-down terrace house in a Staffordshire mining village, with an outside toilet and no central heating. In 2005, she was a guest at Charles and Camilla’s wedding. KEVIN PIETERSEN, 37. The South Africanborn cricketer, former England Test and one-day captain, was reduced to tears by a parody Twitter account, KP Genius, reportedly set up to mock him. he will retire from playing for Surrey this year to build a house near Kruger National Park and devote more time to wildlife conservation programmes.
BORN ON THIS DAY
hELEN KELLER (1880-1968). The American deaf-blind author, political activist and crusader for the handicapped, lost her sight and hearing at 19 months, probably from scarlet fever or meningitis. As a child, she developed her own sign language to communicate with her parents, then learned to lip-read by putting her fingers on the lips of the person to whom she was talking. DAME Catherine Cookson (1906-98). The author (right), born Katie McMullen in Tyneside, went into domestic service at 13. She took up writing seriously in her 40s as therapy to tackle her depression and went on to write almost 100 books.
ON JUNE 27...
IN 1957, lung cancer was directly linked to smoking by the Medical Research Council, in findings that tobacco firms said were a ‘matter of opinion’.
WORD WIZARDRY
NEW WORD OF THE DAY
Urbeach: An urban beach (from a trend starting with the Paris Plage in 2002).
GUESS THE DEFINITION Windlestraw (coined 1818)
A) A thin, lanky person. B) The grown-out shoot of a stored potato. C) An idle person who stands staring for prolonged periods at anything unusual. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Catherine wheel: the spinning firework is named after St Catherine. According to legend, she was martyred by being tied to a spiked wheel and rolled down a hill.