Daily Mail

ON THIS DAY

- Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE

APRIL 20, 1939 SIR JOHN ANDERSON, the Lord Privy Seal, has written to every local authority, telling them to adopt a ‘three-months’ plan to speed-up civil defence. During that time defence work must take precedence over all other work. The Food (Defence Plans) Department of the Board of Trade is also to increase reserves of flour by asking every baker to store additional supplies. APRIL 20, 1963 ELIzABETH TAyLOR is to be paid £100,000 to make her TV debut in an hourlong programme, entitled Elizabeth Taylor In London, in which she will return to sites from her early life. Her fee will be the highest ever paid for a single TV appearance.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

SEBASTIAN FAULkS, 65, right. The author of World War I novel Birdsong used to have a strict writing routine. ‘I used to draw the curtains, put in earplugs, take the phone off the hook and make tea in a Thermos so there was no excuse to leave the desk,’ he said. ‘Once, on a roll with [2005 novel] Human Traces, I even toyed with the idea of installing a catheter. But I ask you — what sort of existence is that?’ MIRANDA kERR, 35. The Australian model is married to the world’s youngest billionair­e — 27-year-old co-founder of the app Snapchat, Evan Spiegel — having divorced Lord Of The Rings star Orlando Bloom. kerr suggested she and Spiegel had not slept together before their wedding, adding: ‘My partner is very traditiona­l.’

BORN ON THIS DAY

LUTHER VANDROSS (1951-2005). The New york-born singer- songwriter, whose hits included Never Too Much and Stop To Love, sold 35 million records and won eight Grammys, but he got his big break on children’s TV show Sesame Street, singing the alphabet on its very first episode. EDIE SEDGWICk (19431971). The U. S. actress, model and It-girl (right) was best known as a muse to artist Andy Warhol. She was reportedly the inspiratio­n for her friend Bob Dylan’s song Just Like A Woman, in which he sings about ‘her fog, her amphetamin­e, and her pearls’. Having battled mental illness and drug addiction, she died of a barbiturat­es overdose aged just 28.

ON APRIL 20 . . .

IN 1968, Conservati­ve MP Enoch Powell made his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech about immigratio­n. He was fired from Edward Heath’s Cabinet the following day.

IN 1974, petrol station owner James Murphy, who was shot to death, became the 1,000th victim of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.

IN 2010, an explosion at Deepwater Horizon, an oil platform leased by BP, killed 11 people and caused 200 million gallons of crude oil to leak into the Gulf of Mexico.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION: Scrollopin­g (coined by Virginia Woolf in 1928) A) Rambling mode of writing. B) Gathering fallen fruit. C) Gossiping. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED

On cloud nine: Meaning to be supremely happy, it derives from the phrase ‘to be on cloud seven’, referring to the seventh heaven or a state of total bliss. Nine, being a multiple of three, is usually lucky as both numbers hold special significan­ce in folklore.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

MAybe this world is another planet’s hell. Aldous Huxley, author (1894-1963)

JOKE OF THE DAY

WHy was the maths book sad? because it had so many problems. Guess the definition answer: A.

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