October 31, 2018 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
OCTOBER 31, 1946 STEPNEY’S food control committee has warned traders that Petticoat Lane street market will be closed if black market trading does not cease. The Daily Mail reported that traders were seen doing roaring business in £4-a-yard worsted suit-lengths (no coupons) in the lane.
OCTOBER 31, 1957 PRINCESS Margaret visited the Lords yesterday as the House was discussing the admission of women peers. The Princess, in a red dress and beret-type hat, stayed an hour. The Earl of Home, Leader of the House, announced plans for life peers, including women, as ‘a recognition of the place which women have created for themselves as of right in modern society’.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MICHAEL COLLINS, 88. The Italian-born American (centre) was the frequently overlooked member of Apollo 11, alongside Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (also pictured). He remained as pilot in the command module spacecraft while his colleagues walked on the Moon’s surface — ‘sweating like a nervous bride’, he said, at the thought of perhaps returning to Earth without them. SANjEEV BHASkAR, 55. The Emmywinning star of Goodness Gracious Me is married to Meera Syal, who played his grandmother in BBC2 comedy The kumars At No 42. It was during a 24-hour flight to Australia that they realised they wanted to be together. He once said: ‘I have an OBE so I can order Meera about because she’s only got an MBE.’ Syal has now done one better — she has a CBE.
BORN ON THIS DAY
jOHN kEATS (1795-1821). The English Romantic poet, who died of tuberculosis aged 25, wrote all of his most famous poems, including Ode To A Nightingale and Ode On A Grecian Urn, in 1818 and 1819. His contemporary Lord Byron was not a fan, writing: ‘I think he took the wrong line as a poet, and was spoilt by Cockneyfying, and Suburbing.’ DAME ZAHA HADID (1950-2016). The Iraqiborn British ‘starchitect’ (right) spent years being seen as, in the words of one obituary, ‘a fantasist who never actually got anything built’. Described as ‘ the Queen of the Curve’, who liberated architectural geometry, her major works include the aquatic centre for the London 2012 Olympics. In 2004, she became the first woman to win the Pritzker — the ‘Nobel Prize for architecture’.
ON OCTOBER 31…
IN 1940, the Battle of Britain — described by the RAF as the most important event in its history — came to an end.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Bezoar (1653) A) A miser. B) Good fortune. C) A hard ball of fibre in the stomachs of cud- chewing animals. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Black sheep: A disgraced or disreputable member of a group or family; it comes from biblical shepherds who considered a black sheep an unlucky omen as it would disturb the rest of the flock.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
POLITICS is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
JOKE OF THE DAY
TWO clairvoyants meet. One says to the other: ‘You are fine, and how am I?’ Guess The Definition answer: C.