ON THIS DAY
October 30, 2019
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
OCTOBER 30, 1929
THE Wall Street debacle culminated yesterday in the blackest day the famous stock market has ever experienced.
More than 23 mllion shares were thrown overboard by desperate investors, including millions of pounds’ worth of gilt-edge stocks dumped in hysterical efforts to hold on to vanishing fortunes.
OCTOBER 30, 1972
Anthony Booth, one of the stars of TV’s Till Death Us Do Part, signs on the dole this morning — hours before appearing in tonight’s Royal Variety Performance. The 34-year- old will collect his £8.50 unemployment benefit before going on to final rehearsals, then appear before the Royal Family at the Palladium. Booth [Cherie Blair’s father] said: ‘It isn’t a publicity stunt. I’ve got a wife and two kids to be fed.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
OTIS WILLIAMS, 78. The. U.S. singer is the founder and last original surviving member of The Temptations, who had hits such as My Girl and Papa Was A Rolling Stone. After an award-winning run on Broadway, Ain’t Too Proud, a musical about the group told from the perspective of Williams, is opening in London next year. The line-up of The Temptations changed so frequently — 26 people have been members — that the band received the nickname The Temps. JULIET STEVENSON, 63. The Essex-born actress and Extinction Rebellion protester, who has starred in Truly Madly Deeply, Bend It Like Beckham and nicholas nickleby, said she has shunned Hollywood because: ‘They’re interested in youth and perfection and I lay no claims to either. It’s not a place that’s particularly interested in talent.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
MICHAEL WINNER (1935-2013). The director of Death Wish and food critic was, his boarding school reports said, ‘spoilt’, with a ‘craving for power which he is trying to achieve by the use of his money’. one of his first films was a comedy set in a nudist camp, Some Like It Cool, but claimed Bambi as one of his favourite films. He met Geraldine Lynton-Edwards in 1957, but they did not marry until 2011.
ON OCTOBER 30…
In 1922, fascist leader Benito Mussolini made a speech in front of tens of thousands of his followers before being sworn in as Italian prime minister.
In 1923, Andrew Bonar Law, the shortestserving Prime Minister of the 20th century (211 days in office) and the only one to have been born outside Britain, died aged 65.
In 1938, mass hysteria reportedly broke out across the U.S. after orson Welles’ radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of The Worlds was broadcast, with listeners believing Martians were really invading.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: sough (coined c 900) a) a big toe; b) unsettled weather c) the soft moaning and sighing (of winds and waves) Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED: Butterflies in one’s stomach — nervous anticipation; it originates from the early 1900s from the idea that a fluttering feeling in the stomach feels like actual butterflies.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Dame Edith Sitwell, English poet (1887-1964)
JOKE OF THE DAY
Why did the jellybean go to school? Because it wanted to be a Smartie.
Guess The Definition answer: C.