AUGUST 11, 2017 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE auGuST 11, 1945
THE celebrations in Britain yesterday marking victory over Japan exploded at lunch-time, dwindled in the afternoon, died down in the evening, to burst into fuller flame in the darkness. But this night of August 10 was not to be compared with the spontaneous uprush of feeling on May 7 and 8 that marked victory in Europe.
auGuST 11, 1969
TORY leader Edward Heath last night told Radio 4’s Subject For Sunday that he would like to get married. When interviewer Leslie Smith asked: ‘Would you like to find a wife?’ The 53-year-old replied: ‘Yes, I . . . yes. But it hasn’t worked out that way.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ASHLEY JENSEN, 48, right. The Scottish actress starred in Channel 4 hit Catastrophe and U.S. comedy Ugly Betty. She got her big break, at age 35, in UK sitcom Extras, then moved to Hollywood for a time, where — unlike Americans — she used to walk about. ‘Well, that certainly got me noticed!’ she said. ‘Any woman who walks is automatically regarded as a hooker.’ STEVE WOZNIAK, 67. The American inventor co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs and developed its first computer singlehandedly. He titled his autobiography iWoz and was played by Seth Rogen in the 2013 film Jobs. After steel cutlery was banned on flights after the 9/11 terror attacks, Wozniak had metal business cards produced so he could use them to cut his on-board steak.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ANNA MASSEY ( 19372011). The English actress won a Bafta for playing a lonely spinster in 1986 TV drama Hotel Du Lac. Her first husband was Sherlock Holmes actor Jeremy Brett, whose mother’s death in a car crash, she said, ‘released Jeremy from past restraints’ and he left her for a man. ‘ No Botox for me, and no facelifts’, she once said, adding she was a ‘fully paid-up member of the plainer folk’. FRIEDRICH LUDWIG JAHN (1778-1852). The German ‘father of gymnastics’ invented the parallel bars, the rings, the balance beam, the horse and the horizontal bar — still standard equipment to this day.
ON AUGUST 11…
IN 1942, actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil patented a communication system that was the basis for technologies in wireless telephones and wifi internet.
IN 1999, about 350 million people worldwide saw the century’s last total solar eclipse. Cloudy skies meant most Britons did not. The next major solar eclipse visible in the UK is on August 12, 2026.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Uranomania (coined 1890) A) Desire to pull out one’s hair. B) Belief that one is of Heavenly descent. C) Delusion one is an ox. answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED
Play fast and loose: To behave recklessly and/or immorally. From a scam at country fairs where a player is asked to pin a belt to a table; but the scammer moves or ‘looses’ it, showing the player has been deceived.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I reMaIn just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. Charlie Chaplin, actor (1889-1977)
JOKE OF THE DAY
A MAN said he was going to hit me with a guitar’s neck . . . I said, ‘Is that a fret?’ Guess The definition answer: B.