ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE MaRCH 7, 1985
BRITAIN is demanding a six-figure sum from Libya as compensation for the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan mission last April. The funds will benefit her family.
MaRCH 7, 1988
THE British are becoming a nation of pill-poppers. One in three adults take vitamins and now thousands of children are being given them following findings that they may boost IQ levels, said officials at the Health Food Exhibition in Birmingham.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ROBERT HARRIS, 67. The former journalist from Nottingham wrote Fatherland, Enigma and political thriller The Ghost about a once-popular ex-British prime minister. He was friends with Tony Blair, but said: ‘He is the great classical tragic figure of our time. A man to whom the gods have given all these gifts and [for whom], through some personal flaw, everything he touched has gone wrong.’ RACHEL WEISz, 54.
The London-born star of
The Mummy and The Favourite won an Oscar for The Constant Gardener. She is married to ex-Bond Daniel Craig.
They had their daughter when she was 48. She lives in New York and says she most enjoys ‘puttering around the kitchen with a glass of wine . . . with Radio 4 on’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JACk BAMFORD (1937-2023). The youngest person to have been directly awarded the George Cross, aged 15 in 1952, having saved his brothers from a blazing bedroom at their Nottinghamshire home. He spent weeks in intensive care. On release, he said all he wanted was a cup of tea.
JOHN HEARD (1946-2017). The U.S. actor played a corrupt detective in The Sopranos and the father in Home Alone — one of the highest-grossing comedies in film history.
ON MARCH 7… IN
1965, comedy Round the Horne was first broadcast on BBC radio. IN 1989, the Iranian government broke diplomatic relations with the Uk over the row about Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Lirp (c. 1548) A) Disguise a horse’s age. B) Snap one’s fingers. C) Play with one’s food.
answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Face that launched a thousand ships: said of an archetypal feminine beauty and in reference to Helen of Troy, after whom the Greeks sent an army when she was abducted. The phrase comes from Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus of 1604.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I have derived continued benefit from criticism at all periods of my life and I do not remember any time when I was ever short of it.
Sir Winston Churchill, British prime minister (1874-1965)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I USED to claim to be the best masseur in the world. But I was just patting myself on the back. Guess The Definition answer: B.