ON THIS DAY
October 23, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE OCTOBER 23, 1953
Two burglars in Strangeways Jail, Manchester, squeezed their way to freedom last night through a narrow ventilation shaft — and brought the number of escapes there in two days to six. The other four, who escaped over a wall on wednesday, their bath night, are still free.
OCTOBER 23, 1969
The hunt for Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs intensified in Melbourne today. Superintendent Jim Milner, chief of Victoria’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, said: ‘we have got every hole around Melbourne plugged. This city is shut up tight. we want Biggs very badly.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Baroness Trumpington, 95. Tory peer Jean Barker, pictured, will retire from the House of Lords tomorrow, after almost 40 years. During world war II, she was a Land Girl before translating German messages for code breakers at Bletchley Park. Later she served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Her rich parents lost everything in the 1929 wall Street Crash, prompting her to quip: ‘we used to say my mother’s idea of being poor was going to the Ritz on the bus.’ Ryan Reynolds, 41. The Canadian star of Deadpool has had an eventful love life. He was engaged to singer Alanis Morissette before marrying actress Scarlett Johansson. After they divorced, he wed his Green Lantern co- star Blake Lively. In 2008, he ran the New york marathon for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and in honour of his dad Jim, a sufferer.
BORN ON THIS DAY
MICHAEL CRICHTON (1942-2008). During the Nineties, the 6ft 9in Chicago-born doctor and writer penned the U.S. number one film (Jurassic Park, pictured), book (Disclosure) and TV series (eR, which shot George Clooney to fame). while writing on a project, he ate the same lunch every day, believing it aided concentration. For Jurassic Park, it was egg salad sandwiches with pepper. JOHNNY CARSON (1925-2005). The TV host, described as ‘the founding father of the TV chat show’, presented his Tonight programme for 30 years. He was reportedly being paid $20 million a year before his retirement. Carson banned British comedians from appearing on his show because their humour was too ‘lavatorial’.
ON OCTOBER 23...
IN 1942, the world war II Battle of el Alamein began in egypt. IN 2001, Apple launched the iPod.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Griffonage (coined 1832) A) A confused babble (eg, at a fair). B) An indistinct pronunciation, such as produced by a lisp or by stammering. C) Illegible or sloppy hand writing. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED Bright Young Things:
Said of hedonistic young socialites, it was used in the late Twenties by the press to describe those who partied through the years after world war I.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth. George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist (1856-1950)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call cattle with a sense of humour? Laughing stock. Guess the Definition answer: C.