ON THIS DAY
October 12, 2018
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE OCTOBER 12, 1944
A NEW all-purpose electric plug and socket will prevent the housewife throwing the whole house into darkness when she blows a fuse by misusing electrical apparatus, such as letting her iron get too hot.
OCTOBER 12, 1963
AMERICAN actors stepped in tonight to try to halt the British invasion of Broadway. More than 900 performers, at an equity meeting in New York, called for action by Robert Kennedy, the Attorney- General. They want him to end the ‘indiscriminate issue’ of working permits to British actors and actresses.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
KATIE PIPER, 35. The TV presenter ( right) had sulphuric acid thrown in her face in 2008. Now a mum of two, she has just become one of only 12 people to guest edit National Geographic magazine to mark its 130th anniversary. As a child, she would tapdance on her parents’ fireplace; now she’s hoofing it in the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing. HUGH JACKMAN, 50. The Australian actor has played Wolverine in the X-Men and several spin-off films. After having a cancerous growth removed from his nose last year, his surgeon told him he must not sing while it healed. But during a read-through for The Greatest Showman the following day, Jackman gave a rousing performance — and burst his stitches.
BORN ON THIS DAY
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (18721958). The Gloucestershire-born composer is best known for The lark Ascending. The melody came to him on the day Britain entered World War I, as he was walking along cliffs in Margate. After writing a few notes, he was stopped by a suspicious boy scout who thought he was recording details of the coastline to pass on to the enemy — and made a citizen’s arrest. LUCIANO PAVAROTTI ( 1935- 2007). The Italian opera star ( right) set a world record in 1988 at the Berlin opera House when he notched up 165 curtain calls and was applauded for more than an hour. His tour demands included a banquet in an airconditioned suite, a golf car, and no noise or ‘distinct smells’ backstage. In 2003, he married his former assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani. Then 34, she was younger than his three daughters from his first wife.
ON OCTOBER 12…
IN 1901, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt officially renamed the executive Mansion the White House — more than 100 years after it was built.
IN 1984, Margaret Thatcher survived an IRA bomb at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton that killed five people.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Darg (1881) A) A fool; an idiot. B) A day’s work. C) An urchin. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
The heebie-jeebies — describes a certain type of anxiety or apprehension, typically related to a person or place. Coined by an American cartoonist in 1923, it is synonymous with ‘the jitters’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
No PLEASURE is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare Kingsley Amis, English writer (1922-1995)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did the dalmatian say after lunch? ‘that hit the spot’. Guess the Definition answer: B.