ON THIS DAY
April 3, 2024
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
APRIL 3, 1980
LABOUR MP Willie Hamilton was rebuked by the Speaker in the Commons last night when he referred to Princess Margaret as ‘this wayward woman’. Mr Hamilton, MP for Fife Central, bitterly attacked the latest Civil List increases, in which Princess Margaret’s allowance rose from £71,500 a year to £82,000. His outburst brought angry protests and cries of ‘order’ from Tories.
APRIL 3, 2000
AN ENIGMA encoding machine, used by the germans to send secret messages during World War II, has been stolen from the Bletchley Park spy centre. Embarrassingly, work was going on to install state-of-theart infra-red security systems at the Buckinghamshire centre at the time.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
PARIS JACKSON, 26. Michael Jackson’s only daughter is a model, actress and singer. As a child, her father had her wear a mask whenever she was in public. Aged 11, she made her first unveiled public appearance at her father’s funeral. She was ten when she realised that she and her brothers must have a mother — she met Debbie Rowe when she was 13. NIGEL FARAGE, 60. The GB News presenter is the former leader of ukip and the Brexit Party. He was reported to have been paid £1.5 m for his appearance on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity . . . in 2023, in what was described as ‘a remarkably bad investment’ after plummeting ratings.
BORN ON THIS DAY
CHARLOTTE COLEMAN (19682001). The London-born actress was best known for playing Scarlett in Four Weddings And A Funeral. She died of an asthma attack in her London flat, aged 33. One producer said that had she lived, ‘she would have become a British Shirley MacLaine’. MARLON BRANDO (1924-2004). The u.S. actor won Oscars for On The Waterfront and The godfather. The first one was stolen and Brando insisted he had no idea it had gone missing until his lawyer told him a London auction house was planning on putting it under the hammer.
ON APRIL 3…
IN 1721, Sir Robert Walpole became the First Lord of the Treasury.
IN 2011, Adele broke the record for the longest time at No 1 in the uk charts by a female solo artist with 21.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Mimp (coined 1786) A) Speak in a prissy manner. B) Pick one’s nose. C) Feet that knock together in walking. answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
High jinks: meaning boisterous fun; derives from a dice game in which one person would throw dice and have to complete a silly task.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Without stories, we wouldn’t be human beings at all.
Sir Philip Pullman, English writer
JOKE OF THE DAY
HOW did I get a flat tyre? There was a fork in the road. Guess The Definition answer: a.