ON THIS DAY
August 31, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE AUGUST 31, 1949
HOUSEWIVES in Altrincham, Cheshire, yesterday tried to ambush a milk lorry. Roundsman Horace Eddisford, 30, managed to drive off, the women running behind shouting: ‘Why can’t we have our ration?’ Milk supplies in the North have worsened and the Food Ministry has ordered 20,000 gallons a day from Northern Ireland.
AUGUST 31, 1966
STUDENT Roselia Signorelli, appearing before a judge in chambers in Rome today, took an automatic pistol from her handbag and fired seven bullets into soldier Gaetano Piccito, 20. As he died she laid the gun on the judge’s blotter and said: ‘This way it is clean, certain, sure. Instant justice, I call it.’ Piccito was accused of seducing Miss Signorelli, 18, and refusing to marry her. She was charged with murder on the spot.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
QUEEN Rania of Jordan, 47. The wife (right) of Jordan’s King Abdullah II is a women’s rights activist, and critic of ‘honour killings’. Once voted the world’s third most beautiful woman, she has been dubbed by Oprah Winfrey as an ‘ international fashion icon’. Once on a trip to Edinburgh, she tweeted of her love of Irn-Bru. MARTIN BELL, 79. The ‘man in the white suit’, a war reporter turned independent MP, believes his osteoarthritis of the hips was brought on by years of wearing BBC body armour. The son of Adrian Bell, the first Times Crossword compiler, he began wearing white suits constantly after he wore one in a war zone and was not hurt.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ALAN JAy LERNER (1918-86). The Oscarwinning U.S. lyricist and playwright co-wrote the musicals Camelot, Brigadoon, Gigi, plus My Fair Lady — which starred Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison (right) — and its hit song I Could Have Danced All Night. Lerner’s father once told him: ‘I don’t understand how you can be a writer. I’ve been talking to you for years, and I doubt if your vocabulary exceeds 300 words.’ ISABELLA DE’ MEDICI (1542-1576). The Italian beauty, and daughter of the Grand Duke of Florence, took her husband’s cousin as her lover. After her father’s death, her brother backed her husband’s plan to kill her in revenge for infidelity and she was strangled. They claimed she ‘died unexpectedly’ while washing her hair.
ON AUGUST 31 …
In 1897, Thomas Edison patented the Kinetoscope, regarded as the first projector. In 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris at the age of 36. In 2010, President Barack Obama declared an end to the U.S. combat mission in Iraq.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Novercant (coined 1472) A) Verbally to belittle someone. B) Adult with juvenile characteristics. C) To act like a stepmother. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Crocodile tears: Meaning false tears, displaying insincere sorrow. Comes from the theory that reptiles cry while eating prey.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth. Philip Larkin, English poet (1922-85)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHy did the man run around his bed? To catch up on sleep. Guess The Definition answer: C.