ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
AUGUST 24, 1954 ViSCOuNTESS [Katie] Boyle, the TV personality, yesterday received a letter threatening to murder her by Friday night. Scotland Yard are investigating. The letter said: ‘unless you resign from TV in the next seven days you will be signing your own death warrant, as i shall erase you from the land of the living.’ it was written on three pages of pastel-blue notepaper. AUGUST 24, 1967 THiRTY bachelor policemen are boycotting the canteen at their station in Streatham High Road, London, because they are fed up with the food. Some have asked their girlfriends to give them cooking lessons.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DAME A. S. BYATT, 81. The Yorkshire-born Booker Prize-winning author of Possession has spent a life-time feuding with her novelist sister Margaret Drabble. They fell out when Byatt discovered Drabble had been the first to write about a family tea set and now never read each other’s books. MARLEE MATLiN, 52. The American star (right) is the only deaf person to have won an Academy Award for acting, scooping Best Actress for her first film role, in Children Of A Lesser God, in 1987, aged 21. On one 2011 episode of u.S. show The Celebrity Apprentice Matlin raised $986,000 for charity — a record for a single TV event. Host Donald Trump made it up to $1million.
BORN ON THIS DAY
GEORGE STuBBS (1724-1806). The Liverpool-born artist is best known for his large paintings of horses — pictures that were so accurate because of his study of anatomy at the York County Hospital. He also dissected horses, suspending them from the ceiling so he could adjust their postures to make them look as if they were alive. KENNY BAKER (1934-2016). The Birmingham-born actor, who stood at just 3ft 8in, played R2-D2 in the Star Wars films. The noise inside his costume was so loud that someone had to knock on it with a hammer to let Baker know that the director had shouted ‘Cut!’.
ON AUGUST 24...
In 1932, Amelia Earhart (right) became the first woman to fly non-stop across the u.S. (travelling from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in 19 hours).
IN 1990, Kidnappers released irish hostage Brian Keenan after more than four years of captivity in Beirut.
IN 2006, scientists from the international Astronomical union announced that Pluto was no longer a planet and had been demoted to the status of ‘dwarf planet’.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION AGNATE (coined 1534) A) related through the father’s side or male side only B) having a pearly lustre C) violet-coloured. Answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED Morganatic marriage — where the wife does not take the husband’s rank and where the children do not inherit the title of the father. it is based on the Gothic ‘morgjan’, meaning to curtail or limit: in the marriage settlement the wife received only the dowry and the estates don’t pass to the heirs. WhAT will you do now with the gift of your left life? Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did Cinderella say when her photos did not show up? Someday my prints will come! Guess the definition answer: A