ON THIS DAY
April 27, 2018
APRIL 27, 1944
PILOTS of the RAF flew Spitfires into Germany for the first time yesterday — and saw Germans waving ‘like mad’ to them.
‘They must have thought we were Messerschmitts,’ said Flt Sgt. D. J. Watkins.
The fighters, fitted with long-range fuel tanks, returned without loss after setting a grounded plane ablaze, pouring cannon shells into four gliders on an airfield and attacking a goods train near Stadtkyll.
APRIL 27, 1961
WOMEN in childbirth should scream louder, Baroness Summerskill advised in the Lords last night. The mother of two protested that too much nonsense had been written by men about easy childbirth. ‘Young mothers read books which convince them that if they breathe in some particular way, they will find childbirth painless,’ she said. ‘The mistake women make is not to scream loudly enough.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SALLY HAWkINS ( pictured), 42. The star of the Paddington films has been nominated twice for an Oscar, most recently for this year’s Best Picture winner The Shape Of Water. She acted alongside chat show host James Corden in the 2002 film All Or Nothing, and the pair made a pact that if they were still single at 35, they would marry each other (Corden has since wed; Hawkins has not). WILLEM-ALExANDER, 51. The king of the Netherlands since 2013, when his mother Queen Beatrix abdicated, is a keen pilot. Last year, it was revealed that he had been flying passenger planes as a ‘ guest pilot’ twice a month for 21 years without being recognised. He is happy for his subjects to ‘address me the way they want’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
CECIL DAY-LEWIS (19041972). The Anglo- Irish writer ( pictured), an English poet laureate who was a Communist for many years, was the father of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Cecil had several affairs, including with a close friend of his wife, the actress Jill Balcon, herself his former mistress. She said: ‘He had colossal magnetism. He was beautiful to look at and tremendously funny. So I was prepared to go through any kind of hell.’
ON APRIL 27…
IN 1828, the London Zoological Gardens (London Zoo) opened in Regent’s Park. IN 1994, South Africa held its first multiracial parliamentary elections, which brought Nelson Mandela to power.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Prosopagnosia (coined 1950) A) An inability to recognise familiar faces. B) Damning by faint praise. C) The affected use of archaic language. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED Don’t throw the baby out with the
bathwater: Used for an avoidable mistake in which something good is also lost when trying to get rid of something bad. It comes from a 16th-century German saying: ‘ Das Kind mit dem Bade ausschutten.’
QUOTE FOR TODAY
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness. Mary Wollstonecraft, English author (1759-1797)
JOKE OF THE DAY
HOW many feet are there in a yard? It depends how many people are walking across it. Guess The Definition answer: A.