ON THIS DAY
January 17, 2020
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JANUARY 17, 1948
INDIA’S capital, New Delhi, will stop work to pray for the life of Mahatma Gandhi today — the fourth day of his fast. The 78-year-old, speaking in a hoarse whisper through a bedside microphone, said doctors had asked him to end the fast, ‘but I have no wish to live unless there is peace in India and Pakistan’. [This was during post-independence strife. he was shot two weeks later.]
JANUARY 17, 1969
The Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 capsules locked together, and brought Russia three dramatic ‘firsts’. The link-up was the first between two manned capsules, and it formed the world’s first experimental space station. The third ‘first’ was the transfer of two cosmonauts from Soyuz 5 to Soyuz 4 during the capsules’ four-hour, 35minute connected flight up to 155 miles above the earth.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BETTY WHITE, 98 (pictured). The American actress was awarded a Guinness world record for the longest TV career of any female entertainer in 2018, now over 80 years since her debut in 1939. She has appeared in more than 15 films but is best known for playing Rose Nylund in The Golden Girls between 1985 and 1992 and is the sitcom’s last surviving star. White, who enjoys a nightly vodka, said: ‘My favourite food is hot dogs with French fries. And my exercise: I have a two-storey house and a very bad memory, so I’m up and down those stairs.’ JAMES EARL JONES, 89. The American actor, Oscar-nominated for 1970’s The Great White hope, voiced Darth Vader in Star Wars and Simba’s father Mufasa in The Lion King. But as a child he was almost mute for eight years because of a severe stutter. In 2002, a plaque in Florida that was supposed to honour the actor instead mistakenly paid tribute to James earl Ray — the man who killed Martin Luther King. Ray’s death in 1998 was also wrongly broadcast as Jones’s.
BORN ON THIS DAY
DAVID LLOYD GEORGE (1863-1945, pictured). The Liberal was the first and only Welshman to serve as British PM. Lloyd George was known as ‘the Goat’ for his womanising and Lord Kitchener quipped that he tried to avoid sharing military secrets with ministers because they’d tell their wives — except for Lloyd George, who would tell someone else’s wife.
ON JANUARY 17…
IN 1946, the UN Security Council held its first meeting. IN 1998, girl band All Saints secured their first of five No 1 singles with Never ever.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE CORRECT DEFINITION: censer
A) An electioneer.
B) A vessel in which incense is burned.
C) A long stick with shears for cutting high branches.
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED Hit the ground running — Meaning to start something immediately and to start it with urgency; popularised in the 1970s, it may derive from troops who start running as soon as they get off a vehicle in action.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.
Sir John Mortimer, barrister and author (1923-2009)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did one rockpool say to the other?
Show us your mussels.
Guess The Definition answer: B.