ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
FEBRUARY 14, 1963
ASIAN flu is back in Britain. It is the same type that caused hundreds of deaths in 1957. But a health spokesman said last night: ‘There is no general epidemic, and we do not think it will be as bad as in 1957.’ In five weeks, 285 people have died.
FEBRUARY 14, 2000
CHARLES SCHULZ, creator of the Peanuts cartoon [right] has died aged 77, just as a speciallypenned farewell strip was rolling from the presses of U.S. newspapers. His death was unexpected, even though he had been diagnosed with colon cancer and had suffered a series of strokes during emergency abdominal surgery last November. He announced his retirement and said his last strip would appear on February 13.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
KEVIN KEEGAN, 69. England football star Keegan was known for his tight shorts and bubble perm. In 1979 he tried his hand at pop, releasing Head Over Heels In Love. It peaked at number 10 in the singles chart in Germany where he had played for Hamburg, but only made it to 31 in the UK. SIR STELIOS HAJIIOANNOU, 53. The Greekborn entrepreneur (right) founded easyJet aged 28 and his family is now worth £2.2 billion. When he was knighted in 2006, he held a raffle among his 10,000 employees to choose two to take as his guests to Buckingham Palace. He has vowed to give more than half his fortune to charity after being inspired by a phone call from Bill Gates.
BORN ON THIS DAY
PATRICIA KNATCHBULL (1924-2017). The daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Britain’s last imperial viceroy in India, she inherited the title Countess Mountbatten of Burma in 1979, when the family boat was bombed by the IRA, killing her father. She was hurt and needed 120 facial stitches, calling them ‘my IRA face-lift’. CHRISTOPHER SHOLES (1819-1890). The U.S. inventor developed the QWERTY keyboard in the 1870s and sold his typewriter patent to gunmaker Remington & Son. The firm’s typing courses led to a revolution in the number of women doing clerical work. Before his death, Sholes said: ‘I do feel that I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will enable them more easily to earn a living.’
ON FEBRUARY 14
IN 1984, Elton John, then 36, married German sound engineer Renate Blauel, 28. They divorced four years later.
IN 1989, Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie for his ‘blasphemous’ novel The Satanic Verses.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Over the lefter (c. 1909)
A) A partridge or pheasant shot before the season begins. B) A call to horses. C) A person carried on a bicycle. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Namby-pamby: Feeble in behaviour or expression; coined in 1725, another version is ‘mamby pamby’ and it’s a derogatory term for someone who is weak or indecisive.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.
Aldous Huxley, English writer (1894-1963)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY do oars love Valentine’s Day?
Because they’re row-mantic. Guess The Definition Answer: A.