ON THIS DAY
SEPTEMBER 12, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE SEPTEMBER 12, 1940
BROADCASTING to the nation last night, Mr Churchill said that German troops are massed across the Channel, with ships waiting in ports and harbours from Hamburg to Brest. An attack may be launched at any time on England, Scotland or Ireland — or upon all three. We cannot be sure invasion will be tried at all, but no one should blind himself to the fact that it is being prepared ‘with all the German thoroughness of method’.
SEPTEMBER 12,1968
ZSA ZSA GABOR (pictured) left Lisbon for New York today after rows at two hotels. ‘They wanted to hold my jewellery worth $1million until I paid the bill,’ said the actress. A member of the U.S. Embassy was called to the hotel and the bill was settled. By then, Zsa Zsa had missed her plane and went to the Ritz Hotel for coffee and cakes. The bill came to £2 8s but she left only 16s. ‘When asked to pay the difference,’ the male receptionist said, ‘she threw $7 on the desk and slapped me.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JAMES McCARTNEY, 40. The only son of Sir Paul and his late wife Linda. As a student he’d often refuse to tell new friends his surname — before reluctantly embarking on a career in music himself. He said: ‘I thought about doing other things. I did art, I made furniture. I didn’t want to be a cliché: the Beatle’s son who became a musician.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
BARRY WHITE (1944-2003), the 27st singer (pictured) known for his distinctive deep voice and romantic songs, such as You’re The First, The Last, My Everything and Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe. His music was so sexy that the U.S. Senate cited his name in a report on the baby boom of the Seventies, and ‘Barry Babies’ — children conceived to his tracks — were frequently held aloft by fans at his concerts. RICHARD GATLING (1818-1903). The U.S. inventor created what is regarded as the first machine gun. He said the Gatling, which was cranked by hand but could manage 200 rounds per minute, was as similar to a traditional firearm as a sewing machine was to a needle, saying: ‘A few men with it can perform the work of a regiment.’
ON SEPTEMBER 12 ...
IN 1846, poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning wed in secret in London. IN 1919, Adolf Hitler attended for the first time a meeting of the German Workers’ Party (later to become the Nazi Party). IN 1992, astronauts Jan Davis and Mark Lee became the first married couple to go into space, aboard the shuttle Endeavour.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION Swabble (coined 1848)
A) A cover for the back of a chair. B) To catch trout by groping with the hands under the stones or banks of a stream. C) To make a noise like water being sloshed around. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Come down to earth: Meaning back to reality. Comes from P.G. Wodehouse’s Very Good, Jeeves, published in 1930: ‘I had for some little time been living, as it were, in another world. I now came down to earth with a bang.’
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he makes so many of them. Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president, 1809-65
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHO stole the soap? The robber duck. Guess The Definition answer: C