ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE MaRCH 14, 1946
HERMANN GOERING went into the witness box at the Nuremberg war trial and admitted that he originated the concentration camps and the Gestapo to obliterate Hitler’s Communist opponents.
MaRCH 14, 2000
THE UK has leapfrogged France to become the world’s fourth-biggest economy, it was revealed. Figures for national wealth showed that last year Britain now stands behind the U.S., Japan and Germany in the world economic league.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
RITA TUSHINGHAM, 82. The actress from Liverpool won a Bafta and Golden Globe for A Taste Of Honey in 1961 (she beat 2,000 hopefuls for the role aged 17) and starred in 1965’s Doctor Zhivago. Asked what it is like to be a leading face of the 1960s, she replied: ‘Can you imagine walking around thinking, “Ooh, I’m an icon”? It would be dangerous.’ BILLy CRySTAL, 76. The actor and comedian starred in Analyze This and played Harry in When Harry Met Sally. It was Crystal who came up with the film’s most memorable line. After Meg Ryan’s Sally fakes an orgasm in the middle of a New york deli, an elderly woman tells a waiter: ‘I’ll have what she’s having.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
FRANK BORMAN (1928-2023). The U.S. astronaut led Apollo 8, the first space mission around the moon, though he admitted he was bored. ‘I was there because it was a battle in the Cold War,’ he once said. ‘I wanted to participate in this American adventure and beat the damn Russians.’ HORTON FOOTE (1916-2009). The Pulitzer prize-winning U.S. playwright and screenwriter won Oscars for Tender Mercies and To Kill A Mockingbird. The author of the latter, Harper Lee, called his movie ‘one of the best translations of a book to film ever made’.
ON MARCH 14 . . .
IN 1883, German-born philosopher Karl Marx died, aged 64. He was buried at London’s Highgate Cemetery. IN 1987, Boy George was enjoying his first solo UK No 1 single, Everything I Own.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Abacinate (c 1866)
A) To suffocate in mud. B) To blind by putting a hot copper basin near someone’s eyes. C) To stretch and yawn. answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED Bubble and squeak:
The sound the ingredients — initially boiled meat and greens — make in the frying pan.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses.
Stephen Fry, English actor
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do a tapeworm and the Louvre have in common?
They’re both Paris sites. Guess The Definition answer: B. Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN
and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD