ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JANUARY 20, 1917
AT AN Islington guardians’ meeting yesterday to discuss tenders for supplying butter for the use of Poor Law officers, the mayor, Alderman Elliott, said margarine was quite good enough. A guardian, describing margarine as ‘abominable stuff’, said Alderman Elliott would be known as ‘the margarine mayor’. Margarine won by 12 votes to 11.
JANUARY 20, 1959
TOO many Billy and Bessie Bunters eating too many sweets and iced lollies — that’s the problem of Britain’s School Health Service, which once had to worry about undernourished children. Its jubilee report said: ‘Too many sweets, chocolates, iced lollies, and biscuits . . . were the main causes of excessive weight.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SOPHIE, Countess of Wessex, 53. Born Sophie Rhys- Jones in Oxford, the former barmaid, right, and ski rep worked in PR and once represented TV’s Mr Blobby. She met husband-to-be Prince Edward at a 1993 real tennis event, but got into hot water in a 2001 tabloid sting, when she called Cherie Blair ‘absolutely horrid, horrid, horrid’ and the Queen an ‘old dear’ — but it didn’t stop her mother-in-law awarding her the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. HEATHER SMALL, 53. The lead singer of M People. Her debut solo single, Proud, was used as the soundtrack to London’s 2012 Olympic Games bid. A picture of her face on a stick was a regular prop on BBC sitcom Miranda, that prompted lead characters Miranda Hart and Sarah Hadland to launch into an impersonation of Small. PATRICIA NEAL ( 19262010). The U.S. actress won an Oscar for 1963’s Hud. After an affair with actor Gary Cooper, she married Roald Dahl and brought up their five children in England. Neal, right, partially paralysed by stroke, returned to health and regained the ability to talk after Dahl devised a brutal regime in which he and friends taught her to speak for six hours a day. The pair divorced after the writer had an affair with her friend Felicity Crosland, later his wife. CLARICE CLIFF (1899-1972). The artist from Stoke-on-Trent, famous for her Bizarre design, is called ‘one of the UK’s most prolific and important ceramicists’ by the V&A museum. She began work as a pottery gilder at 13, but became the only female art director of a china factory — keeping a cocktail dress in her office in case she had to rush to a party. One of her dishes, left on top of a wardrobe for 30 years, sold for £40,000 in 2003.
ON JANUARY 20 . . .
IN 1841, China ceded Hong Kong to Britain. IN 1987, Terry Waite, a Church of England envoy, was kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon, after trying to negotiate a hostage release.
WORD WIZARDRY
Guess the Definition: Crepitation (1656) A) A crackling noise, often in a fire. B) Fear. C) The act of crawling. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
To turn the tables: To reverse a situation in one’s favour. Derives from the practice of reversing a backgammon board so people play from an opponent’s previous position.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
THE Welsh are all actors. It’s only the bad ones who become professionals. Richard Burton, Welsh actor (1925-1984)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY are there no automatic cars in Spain? They’re all Manuel. Guess The Definition answer: A.