ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JUNE 24, 1940
BRITAIN’S balloon barrage brought down two German bombers during night raids last week. The Air Ministry announced: ‘These two enemy losses are additional to those reported as having been inflicted by our fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft gunfire.’
JUNE 24, 1981
John Mcenroe was fined £750 last night for his tantrum on Wimbledon’s opening day. The fine — the first on a player at Wimbledon — was the maximum for two incidents in which he insulted the umpire and swore at the referee.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
LeVi Roots, 62. The entrepreneur from Jamaica ( born Keith Valentine Graham) didn’t learn to spell his own name until he was 12, and was sentenced to nine years for possession of a firearm and conspiracy to supply drugs in the 1980s. But he secured £50,000 investment from BBC’s Dragons’ Den for his reggae reggae Sauce, and has since created a £35m food and drink empire. Betty Jackson, 71. The fashion designer from Lancashire was named British Designer of the year four years after her first collection. in 2009, she raised eyebrows with her redesign of english judiciary robes. one critic said they were ‘a cross between a Star Trek costume and a fascist stormtrooper’s uniform’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
Pearl CornioLey (19142008). The Paris-born British spy worked as an agent for the British Special operations executive during the war. She parachuted into France where she joined the resistance and was so good at her job that the Germans put a price of one million francs on her head. After the war, she was offered a civil MBe, which she declined, saying: ‘There was nothing civil about what i did.’ Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001). The physicist from yorkshire was dubbed Britain’s bestknown astronomer. He coined the term the ‘Big Bang’ to describe the theory of how the universe began. He also wrote science fiction novels and enraged medical scientists by claiming that storms on the sun’s surface drove viruses, including flu and Aids, into the earth’s atmosphere.
ON JUNE 24…
IN 1902, King edward Vii underwent an emergency appendectomy two days before his coronation was due to take place.
IN 2010, John isner and nicolas Mahut finished the longest professional tennis match in history at Wimbledon — after 11 hours and five minutes.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: carabiner (c 1915)
A) An officer who clears the route for a procession B) The D-shaped ring used for fastening ropes in mountaineering C) The man with the whip in Morris dancing Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Charlie’s dead – a euphemism said to derive from the execution by beheading of Charles i in 1649, where women in the crowd are said to have dipped their petticoats in his blood as a way to honour him.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead
James Thurber, American humorist (1894-1961)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you get if you cross a centipede with a parrot? A walkie-talkie.
Guess The Definition answer B Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD