ON THIS DAY
JANUARY 23, 1942
CHILDREN in Dover sang and played in their school shelters for four hours yesterday while heavy shells from German cross-Channel guns were crashing in the area. ‘My children nearly sung the shelter roof off with Roll Out The Barrel and Coming Round The Mountain,’ one teacher said. ‘When they heard a shell, they paused to keep count and then went on singing.’
JANUARY 23, 1988
WEATHERMAN Jim Bacon missed his morning TV forecast yesterday, because he failed to predict how bad the snow would be, with the worst falls of the winter blanketing his area. After battling for 45 minutes to drive to the TV studios in Norwich, he was forced to turn back and telephone his forecast from home. ‘I do see the double-twisted irony in it all,’ he said.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DEE CAFFARI, 47. The sailor from Hertfordshire became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe ‘the wrong way’ in 2006. Dee, pictured, was also the first woman to have circumnavigated the globe, non-stop, three times and to have sailed single-handed, non- stop, around the world in both directions. Her mum, who’s scared of water, was horrified when Dee gave up her job as a teacher to sail full-time. DAVID ARNOLD, 58. The film composer from Luton has scored films Independence Day and Godzilla, and TV shows Little Britain and Sherlock, along with five James Bond films. Legendary 007 composer John Barry recommended Arnold as his successor after the two were introduced by Beatles producer George Martin. Arnold’s score for Casino Royale featured a percussion instrument made out of goats’ testicles.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JEANNE MOREAU (19282017). Dubbed the ‘thinking moviegoer’s femme fatale’, Moreau, pictured, made her name in 1962’s Jules Et Jim. She was the daughter of a French restaurateur and a Tiller Girl dancer from Oldham. She once said: ‘I’d like to have a big house where there’d be enough space for every man I’d ever loved to have a room to himself, and we’d all live together.’ AIREY NEAVE (1916-79). The shadow Northern Ireland secretary was murdered by an INLA car bomb as he drove out of the House of Commons. When Mrs Thatcher heard of the explosion, she reportedly said: ‘Please God, don’t let it be Airey.’ During World War II, he became the first British prisoner- of-war to escape from Colditz, dressed in a fake German uniform.
ON JANUARY 23...
IN 1944, Norwegian artist, painter of The Scream, Edvard Munch died, aged 80. IN 1997, Madeleine Albright became the first woman U.S. Secretary of State.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: goitre (c1615)
A) The act of cutting a sucking leech to increase its suction. B) The strong tendon in an animal’s neck. C) The enlargement of the thyroid gland. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED — Honour among
thieves: Meaning thieves will not steal from each other; used by Shakespeare in Henry IV, it alludes to the notion of a moral code used by criminals.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Be secret and exult, / Because of all things known / That is most difficult.
W. B. Yeats, Irish poet (1865-1939)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT happened to the number of wrinkled shirts after the iron was invented?
It decreased.
Guess the Definition answer: C