October 4, 2018 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE OCTOBER 4, 1945
PEDESTRIAnS will be barred from the new trunk motorways if Minister of Transpprt Mr Alfred Barnes’s request to Parliament to do so is successful. He is convinced this is the only way to achieve almost complete road safety. Pedestrians and cyclists will use existing roads linking towns.
OCTOBER 4, 1965
‘DRAMATIC… frighteningly authentic… How do they do it?’ That was the reaction to new ITV puppet series Thunderbirds that burst into living-rooms at the weekend. Viewers thrilled to Lady Penelope (right) as her Rolls shot up a saboteur on the M1, and a plane carrying an atom bomb overshot a runway. Creators, husband and wife Gerry and Sylvia Anderson revealed that for the M1 chase, invisible wires pulled the cars.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
LIEV SCHREIBER, 51. The American star of Wolverine and Spotlight, studied at Rada in London and has two children with British actress naomi Watts. His mother said she named him after Russian author Leo Tolstoy, (whose Russian name was Lev) but his father said he was named after the doctor who saved his mother’s life. Ann WIDDECOMBE, 71. When on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010, the former prisons minister and novelist was described by the judges as ‘a dancing hippo’ and ‘a Dalek in drag’. She refused to wear even remotely revealing costumes, saying: ‘What I wouldn’t show the Pope, I won’t show the audience. And I would show the Pope very little.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
BUSTER KEATON (1895-1966). The silent film star was named Joseph, until at six months, he fell down stairs and was picked up unhurt by illusionist Harry Houdini, who said the child could really take a ‘buster’, or fall. Keaton rarely used a stunt double. The scene in Steamboat Bill Jr when the front of a house falls on him is said to be ‘arguably the most dangerous stunt ever filmed’. CHARLTON HESTON ( 1923- 2008). The 6ft 2in American actor, star of The Ten Commandments, drove a chariot himself in BENHUR (for which he won an Oscar) for ‘about 80 per cent of the race’. Heston, an advocate of gun ownership in the u. S., was national Rifle Association president. In 2000, he held a rifle above his head and told a convention the government would only take his right to bear arms ‘from my cold, dead hands’.
ON OCTOBER 4…
In 1895, the first u.S. Open Championship golf tournament was launched. In 2006, the WikiLeaks website was set up when its domain name was registered.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Captology (1996) A) Science of travellers’ health. B) Much talk with little to say. C) Method by which computer technology is used to influence people’s decisions. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Happy as a sandboy: Meaning very jolly. From 19th century London, it referred to those who sold the sand spread on pub floors. They were often paid in beer.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I DO not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don’t understand. Sir Edward Appleton, English physicist (1892-1965)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I’D LIKE to reward the inventor of the knock-knock joke… With a No-bell prize. Guess The Definition answer: C.