ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE AUGUST 28, 1896
THE British lion has at last been roused, and Said Khalid [the Sultan of Zanzibar] has ascertained that there are limits to the Christian patience with which England accepts defiance. [On August 27, the shortest war ever recorded ended, when Britain defeated Zanzibar after 38 minutes.]
AUGUST 28, 1975
RICHARD BURTON is to remarry Elizabeth Taylor. He said yesterday: ‘I want to live with Liz for ever. This time it’s for keeps. I want it to be just like Darby and Joan.’ [The couple (right) wed for the second time six weeks later but divorced the following year.]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JACK BLACK, 50. The U.S. actor and comedian, dubbed ‘Hollywood’s favourite joker’, starred in King Kong (2005) and School Of Rock. The son of satellite engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, he said he was such a ‘wild and reckless’ teenager he ‘should have been put in jail’. In 2006 he married former school classmate Tanya Haden. They have two children. SHANIA TWAIN, 54. The Canadian singer-songwriter (right) has sold 85 million records. She was a huge star in the 1990s, with Come On Over becoming the best- selling studio album ever by a female singer. A 2016 comeback saw her annual earnings soar to £23 million. Recalling her difficult upbringing with her mum Sharon and violent stepfather Jerry, she said: ‘Many nights I went to bed thinking: “Don’t go to sleep, don’t go to sleep, wait till they are sleeping.” And I would wake up and make sure everybody was breathing.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
WINDSOR DAVIES (1930-2019). The welsh actor, who died aged 88 in January, found fame as the pompous sergeant major — nicknamed ‘Old Shut Up’ — in sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum after working as a miner and teacher. One obituary wrote that Davies, who was married for 62 years and had five children, ‘had one of the most eloquent moustaches in the business’. DONALD O’CONNOR (1925-2003). The U.S. actor is best remembered for playing Gene Kelly’s sidekick Cosmo Brown and performing Make ’Em Laugh, in Singin’ In The Rain. The son of vaudeville performers, he made his first film appearance at just 13 and went on to become a teen idol in the 1940s. A New York Times critic said: ‘To call Donald O’Connor a song-and-dance man is like calling Shakespeare a strolling player.’
ON AUGUST 28…
IN 1964, The Beatles met Bob Dylan in New York. It is believed this is when Dylan introduced the Fab Four to marijuana.
IN 1972, Prince william of Gloucester, 30, the Queen’s cousin, was killed in an air crash while piloting his plane in a competition. GUESS THE DEFINITION: Frigorific (1925) A) Maddening. B) Causing cold; chilling C) Causing a fright. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
All hell broke loose: A situation that changes from peaceful to chaotic. From Paradise Lost by John Milton, itself a biblical story about Satan who rebelled against God and was expelled from heaven into hell.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
DYING is an art, like everything else. Sylvia Plath, U.S. poet (1932-1963)
JOKE OF THE DAY
HOW do you make a lemon drop? Just let it fall. Guess The Definition answer: B.