ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
MARCH 2, 1985 PRINCE Charles rolled up his sleeve yesterday and gave the nation a pint of his blood. We have to report that it is not blue. It’s red like yours and mine, and in fact the most common kind you can find: Group O. The royal donor was helping to show that giving blood carries no danger of catching Aids. MARCH 2, 2009 TWO Monty Python stars will attend the first screening of their Life Of Brian film in a town which banned it 30 years ago. Michael Palin and Terry Jones will travel to Aberystwyth in Wales for the town’s first screening of the classic 1979 movie. Their host will be mayor Sue Jones-Davies, who played Brian’s girlfriend in the film.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, 90. The eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union and ‘the man who ended the Cold War’ pushed through reforms called ‘glasnost’ (openness) and ‘perestroika’ (restructuring). He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and seven years later appeared in adverts for Pizza Hut to raise money for his foundation and said: ‘It’s not only consumption, it’s also socialising. If I didn’t see it was beneficial for people, I wouldn’t have agreed to it.’ NATHALIE EMMANUEL, 32. The actress from Essex got the role of Missandei in Game Of Thrones while she was working on a zero-hours contract in a clothes shop. She started performing in The Lion King in the West End at ten before making her screen debut in C4 soap Hollyoaks and starring in such films as the Fast & Furious franchise.
BORN ON THIS DAY
DEREK WATKINS (1945-2013). The trumpeter from Reading played on every James Bond film soundtrack from Dr No (in 1962 when he was 17) to Skyfall (in 2012). Watkins, who learned the cornet at four, played with everyone from The Beatles and Frank Sinatra to the London Symphony and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, and was widely considered the foremost British Big Band trumpet player of all time. TOM WOLFE (1930-2018). The cream-suited U.S. author and journalist wrote best-selling fiction, including The Bonfire Of The vanities and non-fiction, such as The Right Stuff. He is often credited with introducing several expressions into the English language, including ‘the right stuff’ and ‘radical chic’.
ON MARCH 2…
IN 1996, Oasis went to No.1 with Don’t Look Back In Anger. IN 2002, the new digital television channel BBC Four was launched with the slogan ‘Everybody needs a place to think’.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Gigot (c 1520s) A) The youngest of a litter of pigs. B) A girl who is forward. C) A leg of mutton or lamb. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED Throw in one’s hand:
Meaning to yield, to stop trying. From card playing, when a player who had been dealt a bad hand threw his cards on the table and stopped playing.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
' A man in the house is worth two in the street '
Mae West, U.S. actress (1892-1980)
JOKE OF THE DAY
HOW did the boy feel when his torch ran out of battery? Delighted. Guess The Definition answer: C.