ON THIS DAY
October 5, 2018
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
OCTOBER 5, 1939 THE King has helped to treat soldiers at the front to 25,000 cigarettes or the equivalent in pipe tobacco by being the first to send a donation, of £25, to the Overseas League’s tobacco fund. OCTOBER 5, 1961 GERMANS set to work on Coventry Cathedral with picks and shovels yesterday, to help shore up the 14th-century building shattered by Nazi incendiaries 21 years ago. The 14 men and two girls were taking part in Operation Reconciliation, sponsored by a German Christian organisation, and set up to repair war damage in Europe.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
HERBERT KRETZMER, 93. The South African-born journalist is a former Daily Mail TV critic, who wrote the English lyrics to musical Les Misérables. Mail colleague, Jack Tinker, with whom he had shared a desk, gave the show a poor review, dubbing it ‘The Glums’. Kretzmer also wrote the words to She, by Charles Aznavour, and comedy hit Goodness Gracious Me for Sophia Loren and his friend Peter Sellers. KATE WINSLET, 43. The Reading-born Oscar-winning actress was credited with saving the life of Richard Branson’s mother Eve in 2011 by carrying her out of his burning Necker Island mansion. Winslet has had a beetle named after her, the Agra katewinsletae.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JEFF CONAWAY (1950-2011). The American actor is best remembered for playing Kenickie, leader of the T-birds and John Travolta’s sidekick in 1978 blockbuster Grease, and was 28 when he played the school pupil. He went on to marry and divorce Grease co- star Olivia Newton-John’s sister, Rona. Conaway, who had appeared on the TV series Celebrity Rehab, died after taking painkillers. CARON KEATING (19622004). The London-born TV presenter swam with sharks, jumped under waterfalls and abseiled down skyscrapers for Blue Peter, before working on This Morning. Months after her death, her mother, TV star Gloria Hunniford, found a note she had written that said: ‘The time has come to put the singing and dancing back into our lives.’ Hunniford, who had just been asked to be a Strictly Come Dancing contestant said yes, believing it a sign from her daughter.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Carwichet (Ben Jonson 1614) A) Touch and go. B) Reckless. C) Pun or conundrum. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Hang fire: meaning to delay a decision; it relates to when guns were loaded with gunpowder and damp could make it take longer to explode and thus ‘hang fire’.
ON OCTOBER 5…
In 1962, the first James Bond film, Dr No, starring Sean Connery and Ursula Andress, had its premiere in London.
1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced sweeping cuts in nuclear weapons in response to U.S. President H.W. Bush’s arms reduction initiative.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I CAN’T be doing with sarcasm. You know what they say? Sarcasm is the greatest weapon of the smallest mind. Alan Ayckbourn, English playwright
JOKE OF THE DAY
MY bank manager pushed me over today... I’d only asked her to check my balance. Guess The Definition answer: C.