April 7, 2021 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE APRIL 7, 1976
A TEAM of lawyers yesterday began unravelling the last secret of billionaire Howard Hughes. As the body of the 70-year- old recluse lay under guard in the basement of Houston Methodist Hospital, legal firms in New York and Los Angeles set out on a golden paperchase to establish what will happen to the £1,000 million fortune from Hughes’s vast gambling and business empire.
APRIL 7, 1981
PARENTS were urged yesterday to support a new generation who will feel at home with micro-computers. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, launching a scheme to put one in every secondary school by 1982, said: ‘It’s absolutely vital that children learn to adapt. We want to be in this world of microcomputers and want to be in it big.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ANNE-MARIE, 30. The singer- songwriter from Essex, whose surname is Nicholson, teamed up with Clean Bandit to notch up a Christmas No 1 with Rockabye in 2016, had the biggest debut album of 2018 and is a coach on ITV’s The Voice. A former child actress, she performed in Les Miserables in the West End and is a triple world champion in karate. JACKIE CHAN, 67. The actor and martial arts star from Hong Kong was among the 100 highest-paid celebrities of last year, according to Forbes, with earnings of almost £30 million. During his career, he has broken his jaw once, his nose three times, two fingers, his knee, his ankle, his shoulder bones, ribs and had emergency brain surgery.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ANDREW SACHS (1930-2016). The actor and his family fled Nazi Berlin and headed to London because his father was Jewish. Sachs made his name as Manuel in Fawlty Towers, despite working on the sitcom for only three months in all, at £150 an episode. The role overshadowed his serious acting, which included playing Trinculo in Shakesepeare’s The Tempest. RAVI SHANKAR (19202012). The Indian sitar player and composer had a ‘genius and humanity’ to rival Mozart, according to violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Shankar counted The Beatles among his fans and gave sitar lessons to George Harrison, who called Shankar ‘the Godfather of world music’. Shankar’s two daughters are both musicians — multi-million-selling singer Norah Jones and sitar player Anoushka Shankar.
ON APRIL 7…
IN 1970, Hollywood actor John Wayne won his first and only Oscar, for True Grit. IN 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent his first full day in intensive care after his coronavirus symptoms worsened.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Bilk (c1630) A) To swindle someone. B) To shy away from. C) To show disdain. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED To write something off — Meaning to acknowledge that something no longer has any value; it is a book-keeping phrase for cancelling the value of an item shown in the accounts as an asset.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
THE sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises, walking is best. Thomas Jefferson, third U.S. president (1743-1826)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I WAS so angry when I found out I had been cloned… I was beside myself. Guess The Definition answer: A.