ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JANUARY 31, 1948
LAST night they carried the frail body of Mahatma Gandhi in a chair on to the balcony of Birla House in New Delhi so that a million people could look on his face for the last time. Yesterday, Gandhi was shot by young Hindu Nathuram Vinayak Godemand and today will be cremated.
JANUARY 31, 1969
THE Beatles gave their first public performance for nearly three years in London’s West End yesterday — an earsplitting rave-up on the roof of their Savile Row headquarters. Mr Stanley Davis, director of a neighbouring cloth wholesalers, said: ‘All hell was let loose.’ [It was the Fab Four’s final live performance together.]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, 39. The U. S. actor and Grammy-winning singersongwriter is married to actress Jessica Biel. Last month, after being pictured holding hands with another woman, he apologised to his wife on Instagram for a ‘strong lapse of judgment’, before plugging his film Palmer. BARONESS (Brenda) HALE of Richmond, 75. The Leeds-born judge, who retires today, was Britain’s first female law lord, the first woman on the Supreme Court and its first president. Dubbed ‘the Beyonce of the legal world’, she has been in Vogue magazine and was once a judge on TV’s MasterChef, despite admitting: ‘At school I excelled at everything except art, gym and domestic science.’ Lady Hale insists her brooches — including the spider she wore to give the Supreme Court judgment that Boris Johnson had unlawfully prorogued Parliament — do not give coded messages.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JEAN SIMMONS (19292010). The London-born actress starred in Great Expectations and Black Narcissus. She was under contract to producer Howard Hughes, who tried and failed to seduce her. When Simmons refused to sign up for another seven years, he threatened to wreck her career by putting her in ‘three lousy productions’. Simmons refused to sign a studio contract ever again. FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828). The Austrian composer was only 5ft 1in tall and plump, which led to him being rejected for military service and gaining the nickname
Schwammerl ( mushroom). A study, published in journal Animal Learning And Behavior, found goldfish can distinguish between Schubert’s Trout Quintet and other music. Schubert died aged just 31.
ON January 31...
IN 1956, Winnie-the-Pooh author AA Milne died, aged 74. IN 2001, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Fuliginous (c1661)
A) Secretive. B) Sooty. C) Thunderous.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Hunker down: To get into a squatting position, to stay low, to get ready for hard work. Coined in 1720, ‘hunker’ is of Scottish origin meaning to sit on one’s haunches.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.
Joan Collins, British actress
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you get if you cross a kangaroo with a sheep? A woolly jumper.
Guess The Definition answer: B