ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE DECEMBER 1, 1982
THE crisis over security burst into the Prime Minister’s own office yesterday in the form of an exploding letter bomb, exposing woeful gaps in protection at No. 10 Downing Street, supposed to be one of the most heavily guarded addresses in the country. Anti-vivisection extremists were blamed for this and three others bombs.
DECEMBER 1, 1995
BILL CLINTON twice extended the hand of friendship to Gerry Adams, the leading apologist for IRA terrorism, yesterday. During his visit to Northern Ireland, the U.S. President went out of his way to meet the Sinn Fein leader, who refuses to bow to demands over the surrender of IRA arms.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BETTE MIDLER, 75. The American singer and actress (right) had hits with The Rose and Wind Beneath My Wings and starred in Beaches and The First Wives Club. Midler’s mother named her after Bette Davis — and pronounced it with one syllable because that was how she thought Davis said it.
LEE TREVINO, 81. The American golfer, of Mexican ancestry, grew up in a home without electricity or plumbing and was working in the cotton fields by the time he was five. He became the first person to win the U.S., British and Canadian opens in the same year. In 1975, he was almost killed when he was struck by lightning, but returned to the sport after surgery.
BORN ON THIS DAY
MATT MONRO ( 1930-1985). The bus driver from London’s east end (right) honed his singing by serenading his passengers. He went on to have hits with Born Free and From Russia With Love. Born Terence Parsons, he released Yesterday as a single before The Beatles got around to it. Frank Sinatra once said Monro was the only British singer he ever listened to.
PABLO ESCOBAR ( 1949- 1993). The Colombian drug lord started out selling forged school diplomas and stealing tombstones. But he went on to smuggle so much cocaine that he became a billionaire. In 1993, he was shot dead by police on a roof.
ON DECEMBER 1 . . .
IN 1955, African American Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger when the bus was full. It sparked a 381- day boycott of the bus system in Montgomery, Alabama, and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transport. IN 1990, Channel Tunnel construction workers broke through the final wall of rock to join the British and French halves — connecting the UK to europe for the first time since the Ice Age.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: caracal (c1755)
A) A love letter
B) A shell
C) A slender cat-like mammal
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Born on the wrong side of the tracks: meaning to be socially disadvantaged — poorer people would live downwind of a big railway yard, richer people upwind.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
i love fishing. it’s like transcendental meditation with a punchline. Billy Connolly, Scottish comedian
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call a red-headed baker? A ginger bread man. Guess The definition answer: C