ON THIS DAY
November 20, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
NOVEMBER 20, 1939 AT lEAST one sack of German propaganda leaflets destined for France has gone to waste, after falling in the back garden of a German residing in Switzerland. Apparently, leaflet dropping does not appeal to Nazi airmen: the sack was not even untied. NOVEMBER 20, 1953 A WORKMAN found a green dress with the words ‘Equal Pay For Women’ stitched in red braiding fluttering from the flagstaff of the Victoria Tower, 380ft above Parliament.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BO DEREK, 61. The American actress (right) is best remembered for her slowmotion run on a beach in the 1979 film 10. She met her husband, director John Derek, who was 30 years her senior, when she was 17 and he was married to Dynasty star linda Evans. In 1989, Bo starred with Donald Trump in Ghosts Can’t Do It — for which he won a Razzie award for Worst Supporting Actor. KIMBERlEY WAlSH, 36. The Bradfordborn pop star, actress and TV host, who found fame with Girls Aloud, says she was the band’s sensible one. Compulsively punctual, she’d be the only one of the five dressed and ready to go. ‘It used to drive me mad. I’d be the loser sat in the car on my own for half an hour, while the others were running around trying to find all their stuff.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
ROBERT F. ( BOBBY) KENNEDY ( 1925- 1968). The U.S. politician (right) served as attorney general under two presidents before being assassinated, aged 42, while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Explaining his reputation for being aggressive, he once said: ‘I was the seventh of nine children — and when you come from that far down, you have to struggle to survive.’ NADINE GORDIMER (1923-2014). The South African political activist and Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author had her first story published at 15. She helped her friend Nelson Mandela edit his three-hour ‘I Am Prepared To Die’ speech, which he gave from the dock at his 1962 trial, before he was jailed for life and served 27 years.
ON NOVEMBER 20…
IN 1947, Princess Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten in Westminster Abbey, wearing an ivory silk gown by Norman Hartnell.
IN 1985, Microsoft’s Windows 1.0 operating system was released.
IN 1995, Princess Diana gave a candid interview to BBC’s Panorama about her love life, Prince Charles and Camilla, saying: ‘There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.’
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Bream (coined 1626) A) To clean a ship’s bottom by burning off seaweed. B) Eminently embraceable. C) Shiny and new-looking. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Made of sterner stuff: Meaning to be strong and determined, it comes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in which Mark Antony says: ‘ When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.’
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I REMEMBER when safe sex was a padded headboard. Bob Monkhouse, comedian (1928-2003)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I HAD an argument with one of the seven dwarfs. He wasn’t Happy. Guess The Definition answer: A