ON THIS DAY
April 13, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE APRIL 13, 1953
LIONEL LOgUE, the voice specialist who helped King george VI to overcome his stammer, died yesterday. Treatment was so successful that the King was able to broadcast to the nation after his coronation in May 1937. Mr Logue, an Australian, came to Britain in 1924. Once, he said: ‘Only a tenth of my patients are women, and then their disabilities are usually slight.’
APRIL 13, 1960
ALIVE, Sir Jacob Epstein was a controversial sculptor; dead, he has shown with his bronze of Princess Margaret he can continue controversy beyond
the tomb (the statue, right, was unveiled months after his
death). The Princess resembles a badly groomed woman about to pick up a tea tray. I leave to others obvious remarks about a poor likeness, the scraggy face, the inelegant arms, the hair that needs a wash.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
gARRy KASPAROV, 54. The Azerbaijaniborn six-time world chess champion became the youngest winner in history in 1985, aged 22. A critic of President Vladimir Putin, he retired from chess in 2005 to campaign for democracy in Russia and moved to New york in 2013 to avoid arrest. He described his career as ‘one of the most successful in the history of any sport’. AL gREEN, 71. The U.S. singersongwriter (right) had hits including Let’s Stay Together. Rolling Stone magazine said his ‘voice sits at the perfect point between romance and sex’. He says before becoming a pastor he was ‘hooked up on jet planes, good times, fast women — everything of mine was fast’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
SAMUEL BECKETT (1906-1989). The Irish playwright, famous for Waiting For godot, was renowned for the bleakness of his work. Perhaps his most well-known line of prose was: ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826). The U.S. founding father was the main author of the Declaration of Independence. He was described as ‘freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward’.
ON APRIL 13 . . .
IN 1970, the Apollo 13 mission faced disaster after a liquid oxygen tank exploded fourfifths of the way to the Moon. The crew sent the much-misquoted message: ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem.’ The astronauts, who on the dark side of the Moon went the furthest humans have travelled from Earth, heroically returned home after six days.
IN 1992, Labour leader Neil Kinnock resigned after his general election defeat.
WORD WIZARDRY NEW TERM OF THE DAY
Endless runner: A video game in which a character continually runs into obstacles.
GUESS THE DEFINITION Carrel (coined 1919)
A) A reading area in the stacks of a library. B) Without thought, headlong. C) To make a great success in life.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED Truckle under: To adopt an inferior posture. From a truckle, a travelling bed like a wheelbarrow, as in: the master slept on the truckle bed with his servant under it.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
ChILdREn’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. Maya Angelou, U.S. writer (1928-2014)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHy are giraffes slow to apologise? It takes them a long time to swallow their pride. Guess The definition answer: A