ON THIS DAY Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD

AUGUST 15, 1940

On JUNE 19, after the fall of France, Hitler announced to a conference of nazi officials: ‘Britain will be brought to her knees and peace will be declared by August 15.’ Today is August 15. Britain is still on her feet, and Goring’s ‘invincible’ air force continues to take cruel punishment from the RAF.

AUGUST 15, 1947

ELEVEN words, spoken by the first Prime Minister of the new Dominion of India, Pandit nehru, to the last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, marked the passing of the Indian Empire at midnight last night: ‘The Constituent Assembly has assumed power for the governance of India.’ new Delhi became a babel of noise. Trumpets blared, motor-horns roared; fireworks, temple bells, guns, conch-shells added to the din.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

CAROL AND MARK THATCHER, 68. The twins were born to Margaret Thatcher (right) six years before she became an MP. Mark, a businessman, was always viewed as her ‘favourite’ and journalist Carol felt second best. In the 1990s, she said: ‘Mark is married to a beautiful girl, has two fabulous children and various mansions around the world. I’m an ancient spinster living in a rented flat in a ski resort. I don’t measure up awfully well on the Richter Scale.’

BORN ON THIS DAY

STANLEY MILGRAM (1922-1984). The American psychologist has gone down in history thanks to a controversial series of ‘obedience’ tests he conducted in the Sixties. volunteers were told to deliver an electric shock every time a person answered a question incorrectly. Actors playing the role could be heard screaming in pain each time the fake 150-volt shock was given — yet eight out of ten volunteers continued to increase the voltage when instructed to. EDITH NESBIT (1858-1924). English author, who wrote more than 40 books for children under the name E. nesbit, including The Railway Children, later made into a film starring Jenny Agutter (pictured). Pregnant and married at 19 to unfaithful bank clerk Hubert Bland, who already had one child with another ‘fiancee’, nesbit raised the two children Bland fathered with a third woman, Edith’s friend Alice Hoatson, alongside her own three.

ON AUGUST 15…

IN 1935, Wiley Post (the first pilot to fly solo around the world) and Will Rogers (a U.S. actor and writer) died in a plane crash. IN 1939, The Wizard Of Oz had its premiere in Hollywood.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION Festination (coined 1878) A) Honouring with one’s company. B) Walking faster and faster involuntarily. C) To make a dog useless for hunting by cutting the balls of its feet. Answer below

PHRASE EXPLAINED

Feather in one’s cap: Refers to an award or honour for which one has reason to be proud. It alluded to the practice in Asia and among native Indians of adding a feather to their headgear for every enemy slain.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

To Americans, English manners are more frightening than none at all. Randall Jarrell, U.S. poet (1914-1965)

JOKE OF THE DAY

WHAT do you call someone who saw a robbery at an Apple Store? An iWitness. Guess The Definition answer: B