ON THIS DAY
May 12, 2021
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE MAY 12, 1981
JAMAICAN reggae star Bob Marley (pictured) died yesterday after a seven-month battle against cancer. Marley, 36, who with his group the wailers was the world’s best- known reggae star, died in hospital in Miami. Many of his records were million-selling hits, including No woman, No Cry and Jamming. MAY 12, 1997 IN ITS 50 years, the Cannes Film Festival had rarely seen anything like it. Amid 300 jostling photographers, 60 camera crews and an excited crowd of 2,000, Girl Power arrived at the Hotel Martinez, in the unmistakable shape of the Spice Girls. Britain’s pop sensations were in the French resort to reveal details of their first feature film.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
rISHI SuNAK, 41. The Southamptonborn Chancellor of the Exchequer was, less than two years ago, the most junior minister in the housing ministry. He was head boy at winchester College, married the daughter of one of India’s richest men, and is thought to be the richest person in the House of Commons, worth a reported £200 million. SuSAN HAMPSHIrE, 84. The actress from London (pictured) starred in The Forsyte Saga and Monarch of The Glen and won three best actress Emmy awards in the 1970s. Hampshire was only diagnosed with dyslexia at 30 and said: ‘I just thought I was word-blind or stupid before then.’ She has gone on to campaign about dyslexia issues, and received an oBE in 1995.
BORN ON THIS DAY
IAN DurY (1942-2000). The Harrow-born frontman of the Blockheads turned down a lucrative offer to write for Andrew Lloyd webber’s Cats because: ‘I can’t stand his music.’ After the childhood polio sufferer died from cancer aged 57, pianist Jools Holland said: ‘He should be posthumously made our poet laureate.’ DoroTHY HoDGKIN (1910-94). In 1964, the Cairo-born British chemist became only the third woman to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry ‘for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances’. She is credited with solving the atomic structure of molecules such as penicillin and insulin and remains the only British woman to have won a science Nobel Prize.
ON MAY 12…
IN 1890, the first official English County Championship cricket match was played at Bristol. Yorkshire beat Gloucestershire. IN 1978, Boney M were enjoying their first No 1 hit, rivers of Babylon.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Censer (coined early 13th century)
A) To check water at its boiling point, by dashing cold water into it. B) A severe critic of playwrights. C) A vessel in which incense is burned.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Quick on the draw: Meaning to react or think fast. It originated with cowboys in the wild west, whose lives could depend on how fast they could pull or ‘draw’ pistols out of their holsters if facing an enemy.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Henry Brooks Adams, American historian (1838-1918)
JOKE OF THE DAY
wHY did the invisible woman turn down a job offer? She couldn’t see herself doing it. Guess The Definition answer: C.