ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE OCTOBER 9, 1947
THe Worshipful Company of Glovers is to present 30 pairs of gloves in a casket as a wedding gift to Princess elizabeth. At first, the Board of Trade would permit only 20 pairs coupon free. normally 60 pairs are given to a royal bride.
OCTOBER 9, 1948
THe first man to play Christ on the London stage appeared at the Cambridge Theatre last night in brown sports trousers and an open-necked shirt. The censors allowed 26-year-old Vittorio Gassman, from Genoa, to play the part in The Man Who Murdered Pilate on condition that he made no attempt to resemble Christ.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BRIAn BLeSSeD, 82. The Yorkshire-born actor has starred in Z- Cars, Flash Gordon, and Cats. He had a courtship with co- star Katharine Hepburn and once punched Harold Pinter down a flight of stairs. He says he hates actors’ false modesty and loves his appearance because he looks ‘like a cross between a yeti and King Kong’. STeVe McQUeen, 49. The London-born filmmaker became the first black director to helm a movie that won Best Picture at the Oscars — 12 Years A Slave. He spent years being too embarrassed to call himself an artist, instead saying: ‘I make stuff,’ but beat Tracey emin’s unmade bed to win the Turner Prize with his film piece Deadpan.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JOHn LennOn (1940-1980). The singersongwriter from Liverpool was the only Beatle not to become a vegetarian. He adored cats and named his first elvis Presley. In the Sixties, The Beatles were keen to make a film of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings, with Lennon as Gollum (but their favoured director, Stanley Kubrick, and the books’ author both turned them down). SIR PeTeR MAnSFIeLD (1933-2017). The London-born son of a gas fitter, who left school at 15, went on to win the nobel Prize for inventing Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI. The former printer’s assistant had expressed an interest in science at school but had been told he ‘should consider a career in something less ambitious’.
ON OCTOBER 9…
IN 1973, elvis and Priscilla Presley divorced after six years of marriage.
IN 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom Of The Opera, starring Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman (right) opened in London’s West end, and is still running to this day.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: taphonomy (1940) A) The study of the decomposition of dead organisms B) The study of the law of gravity c) The study of depression (Answer below)
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Jolly hockey-sticks: it denotes a woman or girl having the hearty manner typical of an upper-class english schoolgirl; it was the catchphrase of a character played by Beryl Reid in the Fifties BBC radio comedy show educating Archie.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, English writer (1689-1762)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the boy eat his homework? Because the teacher said it was a piece of cake. Guess The Definition answer: A.