ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JULY 5, 1945 THE charred body found by the Russians in a concrete bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery was not Hitler’s, a Soviet staff officer told me today as he showed me round this fantastic structure. ‘It was a double, and a rather poor one at that,’ he said. JULY 5, 1966 A BREEZE block and a bottle of stout were flung into Ulster history today because, though the bottle missed, the block hit the bonnet of the Queen’s car, a glass-topped Rolls-Royce. The Queen was unhurt and, inspecting the dent in the bonnet, said: ‘It’s a strong car.’ [The 17-year-old apprentice who threw the block was charged under the 1847 Treason Act and jailed for four years.]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ELIZABETH EMANUEL, 64. The British designer (pictured) has dressed everyone from Madonna to Elizabeth Taylor. Of her most famous creation — Princess Diana’s wedding dress — she said: ‘It’s a two-edged sword because it is the only thing people ever associate you with.’ MARC COHN, 58. The U.S. singer-songwriter is best known for his hit Walking In Memphis, which was covered by Cher. In 2005, during an attempted carjacking, he was shot in the head but survived. He said: ‘Doctors told me I was the luckiest unlucky guy they’d met.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
ROBERT FITZROY (1805-65). The English naval officer, who was Charles Darwin’s captain on HMS Beagle, founded the Met Office, invented daily weather predictions and coined the term ‘forecast’. He was so influential that Queen Victoria enquired of him whether the weather was good enough for her to take a trip to the Isle of Wight. VERONICA GUERIN (195896). The Irish crime reporter (pictured) was shot dead while investigating Dublin’s drugs barons. She’d been shot in the leg by a hooded gunman a year before her murder and wrote a report about it from her hospital bed. She was played by Cate Blanchett in the 2003 film Veronica Guerin.
ON JULY 5...
IN 1841, the first guided holiday was organised by English cabinet-maker Thomas Cook, with a one-day rail trip from Leicester to Loughborough costing a shilling. IN 1946, the bikini was revealed in Paris. Its inventor, French engineer Louis Réard, named it after Bikini Atoll, where U.S. atomic tests had taken place that week.
WORD WIZARDRY
NEW WORD OF THE DAY
Dumbsize: To reduce staff numbers to such low levels that work can no longer be carried out effectively. GUESS THE DEFINITION Accismus (coined 1753) A) An indistinct pronunciation, such as produced by a lisp or by stammering B) A good disposition towards something — willingness, promise, aptness to learn. C)Feigning of lack of interest in something while in truth desiring it. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Taken to the cleaners: Meaning to have been the victim of a con and lost one’s money. Comes from the 1800s when the expression to be cleaned out referred to having been ‘stripped clean’ of one’s possessions, either from gambling or fraud.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I’ll not listen to reason . . . Reason always means what someone else has got to say Elizabeth Gaskell, novelist (1810-1865)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHy don’t ants get sick? Because they have antybodies. Guess The Definition answer: C Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD