ON THIS DAY

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JANUARY 15, 1898

‘LEWIS Carroll’ (real name

Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) died yesterday at The Chestnuts, Guildford, the residence of his sisters. The author of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland attained the position of a classic writer when in 1865 he agreed to its publication.

JANUARY 15, 2002

PRESIDENT Bush yesterday shrugged off a pretzel-induced blackout with a joke. Just 24 hours after choking on the snack, fainting and falling off a couch, the 55year- old President began a three- state trip insisting he felt ‘great’. He said: ‘I hit the deck, when I woke there was Barney and Spot [family dogs] showing concern.’

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

DAME MARGARET BECkETT, 81. The Labour member for Derby South is the only sitting MP to have served as a minister and junior minister under the last four Labour prime ministers. Britain’s first female Foreign Secretary and longestserving female MP was also Labour’s first woman leader — she served briefly after the death of John Smith in 1994. JAMES NESBITT, 59. The Northern Irish actor starred on TV as Adam Williams in Cold Feet and in three Hobbit films as Bofur the dwarf. His mother had wanted Nesbitt to devote himself to God, but he said: ‘I suppose I became a missionary of a different sort.’ He said he had his six hair transplants ‘more through vanity than anything else’.

BORN ON THIS DAY

PHyLLIS COATES (1927

2023). The American, born

Gypsie Ann Stell, was the first actress to play Superman’s love interest

Lois Lane in TV’ s Adventures Of Superman.

Of its low budget, she said:

‘I had one suit! One suit, and a double in case I got egg on it!’ In 1994, she played the mother of another Lois, played by Teri Hatcher, in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman. HuGH TREVOR-ROPER (1914-2003). The Oxford history professor wrote 19 books including The Last Days Of Hitler and became a life peer as Lord Dacre of Glanton, but is perhaps best remembered for authenticating the Hitler Diaries, which turned out to be a hoax.

ON JANUARY 15 . . .

IN 1559, Elizabeth I was crowned Queen of England.

IN 2009, Captain Chesley Sullenberger safely landed his plane on New york’s Hudson River after a bird strike almost led to catastrophe. He was played by Tom Hanks in the 2016 film Sully.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION: Mundungus (c 1641)

A) Tail of a graduate’s hood. B) Pretentious nonsense

C) The stench of tobacco. Answer below.

PHRASE EXPLAINED Be made a cat’s paw of:

said of someone used unwittingly by another to accomplish the other’s purpose; it alludes to the fable by La Fontaine of the monkey who wanted roasted chestnuts and took the paw of the cat to get them from a hot fire.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

The only ‘ism’ that has justified itself is pessimism.

George Orwell, English novelist (1903-1950)

JOKE OF THE DAY

What do you call a Franciscan on a plane? An air friar.

Guess The Definition answer: C. Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD