ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JULY 12, 1968
THE Broadway hippie musical Hair, in which men and women face the audience naked, has been refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain and the opening at the Shaftesbury Theatre on July 29 has been postponed. [It opened in September — the day after theatre censorship ended.]
JULY 12, 1969
POLICE in Perth found balloon manufacturer Harry Hithersay over the legal limit, fined him £30 and banned him from driving for 18 months. Mr Hithersay, 43, then claimed on his insurance policy with the St Christopher Motorists’ Association, who agreed to pay a chauffeur 6s 6d an hour to drive him for a year.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MALALA YOUSAFZAI, 20 (pictured). The activist was shot in the head aged 15 by the Taliban after campaigning for girls’ education in Pakistan. The youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize, she joked that she was the first winner who still fought with her younger brothers. Malala has just finished her A-levels and hopes to go on to Oxford. ANNABEL CROFT, 51. The former British No 1 tennis player, retired at just 21, blaming the stress of the sport, which she compared to ‘having an argument every day and preparing for another one tomorrow’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
AMEDEO MODIGLIANI (1884-1920). The Italian painter and sculptor made little impact in his lifetime. A landlord who seized some of his work in lieu of rent used the canvases to patch up old mattresses. He died destitute at 34 from tuberculosis. The next day, his distraught girlfriend, who was eight months pregnant, threw herself out of a window, killing herself and their unborn child. In 2015, a nude by the artist sold for £113 million in New York. SIR ALASTAIR Burnet (1928-2012). The TV news anchor (right) presented the first ITN News At Ten in July 1967. His father, a cricket-mad Scot, sent his wife to Sheffield to give birth, hoping that his son would one day play for Yorkshire. ON JULY 12 ... IN 1776, Captain James Cook began his final voyage, to try to discover the Northwest Passage sea route.
IN 1962, the Rolling Stones played their first concert, at London’s Marquee club. WORD WIZARDRY NEW WORD OF THE DAY Egosurfing — looking up your own name on an internet search engine. GUESS THE DEFINITION Bruxism (coined 1930s) A) The enslavement of ants by ants. B) Ancient method of executing criminals by covering them with honey and letting the sun and insects finish the job. C) The involuntary grinding of the teeth, typically during sleep. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED The cat’s whiskers: An expression from the roaring Twenties, meaning to be better than everyone else. Said to have originated from the name of the adjustable wire (the cat’s whisker) in early crystal radio sets. QUOTE FOR TODAY PhotogrAPhY is truth. the cinema is truth 24 times per second. Jean-Luc Godard, French film director JOKE OF THE DAY MY MUM told me I’d never amount to anything, because I procrastinate too much. I said, ‘Oh, yeah? Just you wait...’
guess the Definition answer: C