ON THIS DAY
August 3, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
AUGUST 3, 1940
THE Home Guard will become an active second line of the Regular Army in the event of an attempted invasion.
Detachments may be equipped with machine guns and hand grenades as well as rifles. If the occasion arises, they will, literally, be defending their own homes.
AUGUST 3, 1949
FILM stars and executives are to take salary cuts of up to 20 per cent to help the British studios get back on their feet.
Sir laurence Olivier, Margaret lockwood, Ann Todd, Michael Wilding, Jean Simmons — all have up to now been paid £20,000 to £30,000 a year. last night’s decision is the answer to months of agitation from the rank and file of the film industry who asked producers to prune the big salaries.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
GINA G, 47. The Australian singer (pictured) represented the UK at the 1996 Eurovision Song Contest, with the song Ooh Aah... Just a little Bit. It is the last Eurovision entry to top the British charts. The song came only eighth in the contest, but was nominated for a Grammy.
STEVEN BERKOFF, 80. The london-born actor and writer has starred in Octopussy, A Clockwork Orange and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. He calls younger actors, ‘ghastly, uninteresting, boring, tedious — they know nothing about culture’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
SIR JOSEPH PAXTON (1803-1865). As head gardener at Chatsworth, the English gardener, architect and MP imported the Cavendish banana. The fruit that Paxton (later designer of the Crystal Palace) cultivated was shipped around the globe, and since the Fifties the Cavendish has been one of the most consumed fruits in the world.
GORDON SCOTT (19262007). Described as ‘the second most successful Tarzan’ after Johnny Weissmuller, the U.S. actor (pictured) played the role in six films between 1955 and 1960. He won the part in an arduous audition, involving jumping into pools and swinging from vines for six hours.
ON AUGUST 3…
IN 1958, the nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole under the ice.
IN 2000, then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, 49, married Sarah Macaulay, 40, at home in Fife.