ON THIS DAY
February 16, 2018
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
FEBRUARY 16, 1927 DRINKING is on the decline. Modern youth does not drink, it dances; but the queer part is that increased sobriety does not make for a decrease in crime. There is as much crime incubated over a cup of coffee or cocoa as ever there was in the bad old days across a beer-stained table. FEBRUARY 16, 1940 ARE you a good father? Ask yourself: Do I keep the wireless blaring, fill the house with cigarette smoke or monopolise Tommy’s mechanical toys? Unless you can answer these questions, and more, with a ‘No’, you still have much to learn, according to How To Be An Ideal Father, a booklet from the National Baby Welfare Council and National Advisory Fathercraft Council.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
AMANDA HOLDEN, 47. The Hampshire- born actress is the longestserving Britain’s Got Talent judge, who says: ‘I’m the old bag in the middle. That’s how everyone sees me, isn’t it?’ She nearly died while giving birth to second daughter, Hollie, in 2012: ‘I lost a lot of blood. It took 36 people to save me — and I can’t thank them enough.’ Vegetarian since the age of 13, in 2002 she posed for the cause (pictured). LORD (PETER) HAIN, 68. The Labour former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland grew up in South Africa and was an anti-apartheid campaigner. After his family fled Africa, he was dubbed ‘one of the most troublesome teenagers in Britain’ for organising protests against South African cricket and rugby tours. In 1976, he stood trial at the Old Bailey after being falsely accused of robbing a bank in London. He believes he was framed by the South African regime.
BORN ON THIS DAY
OTIS BLACKWELL (1932-2002). The American songwriter penned Elvis Presley’s Don’t Be Cruel, Jerry Lee Lewis’s Great Balls Of Fire and Peggy Lee’s Fever. A music publisher once told him: ‘You can write about anything — write about this!’ and shook a pop bottle. The result was the Presley hit All Shook Up. SIR FRANCIS GALTON (18221911). The Birmingham-born tropical explorer, anthropologist and sociologist is best known for his research in human intelligence and eugenics (he coined the term). A cousin of Charles Darwin, he was the first to show scientifically how fingerprints could identify individuals.
ON FEBRUARY 16…
IN 600, as bubonic plague raged in Europe, Pope Gregory I decreed ‘God bless you’ was the correct response to a sneeze.
IN 2016, China announced it was relocating 9,000 people in Guizhou province to make way for the world’s largest radio telescope, which would search for extraterrestrials.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Drupelet (1880) A) Globule making up a raspberry. B) Cavity in a rock. C) Column of raindrops. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Pay the piper: To bear the consequences of your actions. Comes from the phrase ‘who pays the piper calls the tune’. In medieval times, musicians toured the country and whoever gave them money chose the tune.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
THE sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. Adlai Stevenson, U.S. politician (1900-1965)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you get if you cross a pig and a centipede? Bacon and legs. Guess The Definition answer: A