November 14, 2022 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE NOVEMBER 14, 1940
A BoMB which fell on a London suburb flung a perfect cube of masonry nearly a quarter of a mile. It smashed a neat hole in the roof of a house and dropped on to a neatly made bed.
NOVEMBER 14, 1972
THE BBC has ordered its disc jockeys to co- operate with airport officials and stop announcing flight details of pop groups. The aim is to avoid scenes like yesterday’s, when 600 weeny-boppers screamed themselves into a frenzy at Heathrow Airport to see off their idols, the osmond brothers.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
WENDy CARLoS, 83. The U.S. electronic music pioneer composed the scores for Stanley Kubrick classics A Clockwork orange and The Shining. She has said: ‘Stanley told me I was the most outspoken person he had worked with. This merely meant that I had a big mouth.’ Born Walter, she was one of the first public figures to reveal that she had undergone sex reassignment surgery, in a 1979 Playboy interview. LETITIA DEAN, 55. The actress has played Sharon Watts in EastEnders on and off since its first episode in 1985, when she was just 17. Born in Hertfordshire, in a cottage on the grounds of an estate belonging to the late romance novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, Dean lied to the show’s producers, pretending she was from Hackney, in East London, so she could get the part.
BORN ON THIS DAY
PATRICK JAKE o’RoURKE (1947-2022). The U.S. conservative satirist, better known by his initials, P. J., was described by Auberon Waugh as a ‘deep thinker who people mistakenly dismiss as a humorist’. In the 1990s, he starred in an ad campaign for BA, in which he said ‘17 million of us Johnny Foreigners would rather fly your airline than any of our own. I guess you should be proud of that, but that wouldn’t be very British, would it?’ ASTRID LINDGREN (1907
2002). The Swedish author made her name with the children’s book Pippi Longstocking, a story she made up for her daughter while she was ill with pneumonia. She sold 170 million books and her face appeared on the 20 kronor banknote. ‘you must never put things in a children’s book that amuse only adults,’ she once said. ‘That would be rude to the child.’
ON NOVEMBER 14…
IN 1987, George Michael was at No. 1 with his debut solo album, Faith.
IN 2020, English entertainer Des o’Connor died, aged 88.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: estivate (17th C)
A) To damn by faint praise.
B) To spend the summer in a state of torpor or dormancy
C) To perspire, to sweat. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED All of a doodah:
meaning very agitated or very excited; it comes from the nonsense word ‘doodah’ in the refrain of the song Camptown Races, originally sung by slaves on American plantations.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
We must recall that the Church is always ‘one generation away from extinction’.
Lord (George) Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury
JOKE OF THE DAY
A FRIEND dug a hole in the garden and filled it with water. I think he meant well. Guess The Definition answer: B Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD