ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
DECEMBER 27, 1961
WILLIAM COx, at 103 the oldest inhabitant of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, died in hospital yesterday. He said recently that he first tasted tobacco at the age of three, and had been a smoker for 100 years. DECEMBER 27, 1991 NOT surprisingly, Boris Yeltsin shows a great deal of interest in the contents of this briefcase, ( pictured). The future peace of the world could depend on its safekeeping. The Kremlin’s ‘ nuclear briefcase’, containing the codes and buttons to trigger World War III, was handed over to the Russian President after the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev. From now on, a senior army officer carrying the case will shadow Mr Yeltsin 24 hours a day.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JANET STREET-PORTER, 73. The selfstyled ‘illiterate cockney with big teeth’ is a newspaper editor-turned-Loose Women panellist. She said she told untruths to all four of her husbands and that all the men in her life have had one thing in common: ‘They’re all pathetically grateful.’ DAVID KNOPFLER, 67. The Scottish guitarist and singer-songwriter co-founded Dire Straits with his brother Mark Knopfler. But the two long ago fell out. David, a former social worker, said: ‘It casts a huge shadow on both our lives and our families,’ adding: ‘Mark and I had a different vision of what we were up to. I was building a democracy and Mark was making an autocracy.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
LOuIS PASTEuR (1822-1895). The French chemist and biologist has saved more lives than perhaps anyone in history. He came up with the pasteurization process — killing bacteria in liquids such as milk and beer through heating — after Napoleon III asked him to rescue the French wine industry, which struggled to stop its vintages going off. Pasteur found heating it to 55 degrees killed bacteria without damaging taste. SCOTTY MOORE (19312016). The u.S. guitarist helped to craft Elvis Presley’s pioneering sound, working on his albums and films. The former dry cleaner stopped working with Presley in 1957 because of what he called ‘Elvis Economics’, complaining that he had earned $8,000 the previous year, while Presley (pictured with him in 1956) enjoyed life as a millionaire.
ON DECEMBER 27...
IN 1904, J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan was first performed, at London’s Duke of York’s Theatre. IN 1945, The World Bank was created when an agreement was signed by 28 nations.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Soricine (c1775)
A) Relating to a shrew. B) Youngest of a litter of pigs. C) Relating to the murder of a sister. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Control freak — someone obsessive who tries to control everything around them; popularised in the 1970s, the term is a rude name for someone who wants to exert their power over everything
QUOTE FOR TODAY
ACtiNg is the ability to dream on cue.
Sir Ralph Richardson, English actor (1902-1983)
JOKE OF THE DAY
MY WIFE just told me I was delusional . . . I nearly fell off my unicorn. guess the Definition answer: A