ON THIS DAY
April 3, 2018
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
APRIL 3, 1945 THE first weather forecast put out in Britain since the war began was broadcast yesterday [previously they’d been censored to prevent giving useful information to the enemy, and regular TV weather forecasts were not revived until July 1949]. It was a warning to farmers: ‘Slight ground frost expected tonight in the South-East of Scotland, and England and Wales.’ APRIL 3, 1950 AMERICANS who have already survived National Peanut Week, National Kraut and Frankfurter Week and National Cherry Week in the first three months of the year are being called on to make this National Laugh Week. The slogan is ‘Bigger laughs for better living’ and all laugh-makers have been urged to form ‘funny-bone committees’.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SALLY THOMSETT, 68. In 1970, the Sussex- born actress was cast as 11-yearold Phyllis in The Railway Children (right), despite being 20 at the time — three years older than Jenny Agutter, who played her elder sister, Bobbie. Her contract forbade her from revealing her age during film-making, and she was not allowed to be seen smoking, drinking or driving her car. ALEC BALDWIN, 60. The U.S. actor, whose film credits include The Hunt For Red October, is now known for his impersonations of Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live on American TV. Mr Trump is less than amused, tweeting that the impressions ‘stink’. Baldwin tweeted back: ‘Agony though it may be, I’d like to hang in there for the impeachment hearings, the resignation speech . . . You know. The Good Stuff. That we’ve all been waiting for.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
JENNIFER PATERSON (1928-1999). The motorbike-riding cook was one of BBC2’s Two Fat Ladies, alongside Clarissa Dickson Wright. Diagnosed with lung cancer in July 1999, she asked for caviar for her last meal but died before she could eat it. MARLON BRANDO (19242004). The double- Oscar winning American actor starred in Guys And Dolls and The Godfather (right). Director Elia Kazan said of his role in On The Waterfront: ‘If there is a better performance by a man in the history of American film, I don’t know what it is.’ In 1978, Brando earned $3.7 million (£2.6 million) plus 11.75 per cent of the gross profits from the 1978 Superman film for less than two weeks’ work.
ON APRIL 3…
IN 1922, Joseph Stalin became first general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
IN 1933, British aviators David McIntyre and Sir Douglas Douglas-Hamilton made the first flight over Mount Everest.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Mumblebee (1891) A) A ditherer. B) A boat. C) To whisper. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Cock and bull story — meaning a long, implausible story; it comes either from old fables or from the coaching days when gossip was heard in one inn (‘The Cock’) and retold in another (‘The Bull’).
QUOTE FOR TODAY
We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to. Graham Greene, novelist (1904-1991)
JOKE OF THE DAY
EINSTEIN finally formulated a theory on space. And it was about time too. Guess The Definition answer: B.