ON THIS DAY
December 26, 2017
DECEMBER 26, 1913
COMPETITORS were pictured leaving the water yesterday morning after the 50th 100 yards Christmas handicap, promoted by the serpentine swimming Club. The winner, Mr G. H. Gyton, was awarded the Peter Pan cup by sir James Barrie, author of Peter Pan. swimmers agreed that they’d never known the water colder.
DECEMBER 26, 1939
A MILLION people sitting at their Christmas firesides last night heard Gracie Fields (pictured) singing as though all trace of her illness [cervical cancer] had melted into the sunshine of Capri. Her voice broke through the cheers of troops she was entertaining ‘somewhere in France’. Gracie was nothing if not topical. ‘This is my ration song,’ she said, and began a number finishing on the touching line: ‘You can have all my ham and my plum and apple jam, but please leave my butter alone.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
HEATHER KNIGHT, 27. The captain of the England women’s cricket team led her country to victory in the World Cup in July. Less than a week later, she briefly lost the trophy after a few too many Pimm’s. she holds the world record for playing the highest ever game of cricket — at 18,799ft on Mount Kilimanjaro. SIMON BEAUFOY, 51. The Yorkshire screenwriter wrote The Full Monty (the highest-grossing film in the UK until it was overtaken by Titanic), salmon Fishing In The Yemen and slumdog Millionaire, for which he won an oscar. Beaufoy, who enjoys river swimming, until recently lived with his family on a Thames barge.
BORN ON THIS DAY
RICHARD WIDMARK (1914-2008). The American actor was oscar-nominated for his first film role as laughing murderer Tommy udo in 1948’s Kiss of Death, described as ‘one of the most striking debuts in Hollywood history’. In 1937, he made a documentary about Hitler Youth while touring Europe. HENRY MILLER (1891-1980). Many of the u.s. novelist’s books were banned in the UK and u.s. until the sixties because of their shocking frankness about sex. The author of Black spring and Tropic of Cancer (listed among the 100 best novels ever written) has been described as taking delight ‘in rubbing the reader’s face in filth’.
ON DECEMBER 26...
IN 1865, u.s. inventor James H. Nason was granted a patent for a coffee percolator.
IN 1973, The Exorcist, starring Linda Blair (pictured), had its premiere. It became the first horror film to be nominated for Best Picture at the oscars.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Quagswag (coined 1653) A) To shake back and forth. B) Without thought, headlong. C) unsettled weather. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
To mosey about: Meaning to wander or shuffle about leisurely, it comes either from the phrase ‘to mose about’ meaning ‘to go around in a dull, stupid way’ or from 1820s America as a corruption of spanish vamos meaning ‘let’s go’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
THE job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open. Gunter Grass, Nobel-winning German novelist (1927-2015)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do snowmen wear on their heads? Ice caps. Guess The Definition answer: A