ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
NOVEMBER 21, 1939 there will be no shopping curfew on the six weekdays before Christmas. Shops will be freed of the wartime restrictions and shoppers may go gift-hunting to as late an hour as in peacetime. Since the beginning of this month, shopkeepers have been compelled to shut at a ‘curfew’ hour — 7pm in London and 6pm elsewhere. NOVEMBER 21, 1969 one cause of the increase in cases of babybeating is that fathers have hit babies whose cries interfered with the evening’s television watching, a leading pathologist said. Professor Francis Camps said the battered-baby syndrome has expanded rapidly over the past few years.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Goldie HAWN, 73. The Oscar- winning star of Private Benjamin went to school with actor Sylvester Stallone and Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein. Goldie (right) has been with actor Kurt russell for 35 years. ‘I like being not married,’ she said, ‘because I choose to live with someone every day. I won’t have any institution telling me what to do. Kurt and I wake up every morning happy.’ Alex James, 50. The Bournemouth-born former bassist of Britpop band Blur now makes cheese on a 200-acre farm in the Cotswolds. He said: ‘I thought I was doing something daring by going from three window boxes of dead daffodils in London to a farm, but I’ve realised it’s the next cliché in the book of rock clichés.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
Dame Beryl Bainbridge (1934-2010). The chain-smoking actress-turned-novelist from Liverpool created stories so dark that one publisher who rejected her first book said: ‘What repulsive little creatures you have made the central characters — repulsive almost beyond belief!’ ingrid PITT (1937-2010). The Polish-born actress dubbed Queen of Scream was best known for playing lusty vampires (right) in Hammer Horror films in the Seventies. Aged five, she was sent with her Jewish mother to a Nazi concentration camp and said she first realised she wanted to act during her three years there: ‘I used to lie on the straw and try and believe I was somewhere else.’ She later tried to escape east Berlin by jumping into the river Spree — and went on to marry the U.S. soldier who rescued her.
ON NOVEMBER 21…
IN 1983, Michael Jackson’s Thriller video was first shown to the public. Almost ten million videos and DVDs have been sold of the ‘making of’ film, and it has been watched 558 million times on YouTube.
IN 2017, robert Mugabe resigned as president of Zimbabwe after 37 years.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Contumely (1599) A) High- spirited, proud. B) Insolent or insulting language. C) Vigorously; with might and main. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Not worth the candle — meaning not worthwhile in terms of cost or effort; it dates from medieval night-time games which had to be lit by expensive candles.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
LOVE is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex. Julian Barnes, English novelist
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY are peaches so mean? They all have hearts of stone. Guess The Definition answer: B.