ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JULY 6, 1948
MR AnEuRIn BEvAn, Minister of Health, said ‘it was a wicked thing’ that a few doctors had promised to keep people on as paying patients, but were not prepared to put them on their national Health lists.
‘We do not want the idea to grow up that outside the national Health Service you get a better service than inside,’ said Mr Bevan, who was attending a number of ceremonies to launch the national Health Service.
JULY 6, 1957
FILM-STAR Ava Gardner won a divorce decree in Mexico City yesterday from crooner Frank Sinatra. The grounds: Sinatra left their home for six months without legally justified cause.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DAME HILARY MAnTEL, 68. The novelist from Derbyshire was the first woman and first Briton to win the Booker Prize twice (for Wolf Hall and Bring up The Bodies). She said: ‘You wait 20 years for a Booker Prize and then two come along at once.’ She writes her books at a desk with a Devon sea view, but also has a photo of the view on her computer. ‘It reminds me to actually look up from the screen,’ she says. JEnnIFER SAunDERS, 62. The Emmywinning comedienne, writer and actress from Lincolnshire was one half of French And Saunders and created Absolutely Fabulous. Saunders was nicknamed Fatty by Dawn French, whom she met when they were training to be drama teachers. They originally called themselves The Menopause Sisters and were the first duo to receive a Bafta Fellowship since Morecambe And Wise. She said: ‘I like to play against things. I need an audience, and a double act.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
FRIDA KAHLO ( 19071954). The Mexican painter was less famous during her lifetime than her artist husband Diego Rivera, but has posthumously stepped out of his shadow. In 2018, her great-niece objected to toy giant Mattel producing a Frida Kahlo Barbie doll that didn’t feature her trademark unibrow. DAvE ALLEn (1936-2005). The comedian, born David Tynan O’Mahony in Dublin, started out as a newspaper reporter and Butlins Redcoat before making his name as a comic with a stool, a drink and a cigarette. He was banned by the Irish state broadcaster RTE after a 1970s sketch featuring the Pope doing a striptease. Allen often joked: ‘I’m an atheist ... thank God.’
ON JULY 6...
IN 1956, Tony Hancock’s Hancock’s HalfHour first appeared on BBC television. IN 2002, u.S. tennis star Serena Williams won her first Wimbledon singles title by beating older sister venus. WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: bantling (c 1593)
A) A customs house officer. B) A lean deer not fit to hunt. C) A very young child. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
To come out of the closet — meaning to declare one’s homosexuality; it comes from the u.S. gay rights organisation in 1969; gay men were known as closet queens, closet being a private room. QUOTE FOR TODAY
God is in the details.
Mies van der Rohe, German-born designer (1886-1969) JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do an iPhone charger and a drinks carton have in common? They both contain
Apple juice.
Guess The Definition answer: C.