ON THIS DAY
FEBRUARY 18, 1970
PRINCE Charles is to make a comeback as a comedy actor in another university revue. He will appear in at least four sketches of Trinity College’s Quiet Flows The Don at Cambridge. But unlike last year, when the Prince appeared in a dustbin in one sketch, the show will not be open to the public.
FEBRUARY 18, 1972
OPERATION Peking has begun — the meeting between China and America that seemed impossible until last year’s ping- pong diplomacy. President Nixon chose as the postscript on this first visit of an American leader to China the words left on the Moon: ‘We came in peace for all mankind.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MOLLY RINGWALD, 52. The American actress, who starred in hit 1980s films The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink, was part of the ‘Brat Pack’, alongside Emilio Estevez, rob Lowe and Demi Moore. ringwald turned down the lead in Pretty Woman that made Julia roberts a global star, but said: ‘The script was OK, but I gotta say, Julia roberts is what makes that movie.’ PACO RABANNE, 86. The Spanish fashion designer (right) made his name creating the metal miniskirt. Dresses he designed in the Sixties for Twiggy inspired the costumes for children’s TV characters The Clangers. rabanne’s space-age outfits were worn by Jane Fonda in Barbarella, and he once claimed he had ‘travelled to Earth from the planet Altair, to organise civilisation here 78,000 years ago’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
TONI MORRISON (1931-2019). The Pulitzer prize-winning author of novels The Bluest Eye and Beloved was the first African-American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. She said: ‘We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.’ HELEN GURLEY BROWN ( 1922- 2012). The former American editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan (right) wrote Sex And The Single Girl, which ‘shocked early-1960s America with the news that unmarried women not only had sex but enjoyed it’. Gurley Brown admitted to having had a nose job, breast augmentation, facelifts, eyelifts and injections of fat into her face, leading one obituary writer to describe her as being ‘90, though parts of her were considerably younger’.
ON FEBRUARY 18…
IN 1546, Martin Luther, the German theologian who triggered the 16th-century Protestant reformation, died aged 62. IN 2005, the ban on fox hunting with dogs in England and Wales came into force.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Back whisperer (circa 2018)
A) A two-faced person. B) A person who helps someone manage their back pain without conventional drugs C) A rider on the handlebars of another’s motorbike Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Man does not live by bread alone — meaning people have spiritual needs as well as physical ones. From the Book of Deuteronomy, it stresses that the soul needs nourishment just as the body needs food.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going.
Phyllis Diller, U.S. comedienne (1917-2012)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I’M very good friends with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don’t know y.
Guess The Definition answer: B.