ON THIS DAY
IT’SFOr every DAY 100,000 290 peopleOF 2015in Britain, there are is THE 600; 290 world’sin hospital France oldest beds.an even In restaurantPoland,better 640. the still figure in operation,290 it in yearshis 1926 ago.the novel Casa Ernest The Botin HemingwaySunin Madrid,Also rises: refers opened ‘We to lunchedand drank at three Botin’s bottles. . . I ateof riojaa very Alta.’big meal ONE recordedof the struck strongestSan Francisco earthquakesin April 1906.ever TheLos Angeles,ground shooka distancefrom southernof 700 miles, Oregon and to a crack3,000 290 people miles died long in rippedthe earthquakeopen. More thanand ensuing fire.
THERE ARE 75 DAYS LEFT FEMALEmales, eat ladybirds,as many as which75 aphidsare largera day. than WHEN roadside the food McDonaldstand in brothers California first in set 1937,up a theythe globalsold hot fast-fooddogs, not chain hamburgers.that bears Today their name sells 75 burgers every second. ArOUND 10 per cent of the land area on Earth is covered by glacial ice, in which 75 per cent of the world’s fresh water is held. SHAKESPEArE’S Hamlet has been performed and published in more than 75 languages, including Klingon and Esperanto.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAMErON Mackintosh, 69. It hasn’t al ways been standing ovations for the t heatrical Titan worth £1.05 billion thanks to hits such as Cats (starring Nicole Scherzinger, right) and Les Miserables. His debut West End show, Cole Porter’s Anything Goes in 1969, was a flop, lasting just 20 performances. MICHAEL EAVIS, 80. The Somerset farmer charged £1 for tickets to his Worthy Farm Pop Festival in 1970. He still runs what is now called Glastonbury, attended by 135,000 people a year, paying, on average, £233 a head. EMINEM, 43. The rapper, born Marshall Bruce Mathers III, is best known for his 1999 album The Slim Shady LP. Married (and divorced) twice to the same woman, he was also sued for $11 million (£7.1 million) by his mother over a lyric wrongly accusing her of taking drugs. She settled for $25,000.
BORN ON THIS DAY EVEL KNIEVEL (1938-2007, pictured). The daredevil stuntman was charged with kidnap in 1953 after he seized a girl from his Montana hometown, hoping to persuade her to elope. Six years later, he kidnapped Linda Bork again, taking her off on his motorbike. This time she agreed to get married and they were together for almost 40 years. POPE JOHN PAUL I (1912-1978). The papacy of the ‘smiling Pope’ lasted just 33 days before he was found dead in bed, still wearing his reading glasses. The Vatican’s swift diagnosis of a heart attack led to conspiracy theories that the Pope — a surprise choice, who had sailed through a medical weeks earlier — was murdered for fear he would be too liberal.
ON OCTOBER 17 . . . IN 1931, Chicago gangster Al Capone was finally jailed — for tax evasion, despite being linked to the deaths of at least 33 people. He nearly died in Alcatraz after reacting to malaria injections used to treat his syphilis, before eventually succumbing to a heart attack in 1947 after his release from jail. IN 1814, one of the huge beer vats at the Horse Shoe Brewery on Tottenham Court road ruptured. More than one million litres of beer flooded out, killing eight people.
QUOTE FOR TODAY Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns (1896-1996)
JOKE OF THE DAY ‘DOCTOr, Doctor, I keep thinking I’ve got a dog’s life.’ ‘sit on the couch and we’ll talk about it.’ ‘I can’t, I’m not allowed on the couch.’