ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
SEPTEMBER 23, 1940 THE Government is considering urgently the adaptation of London Tube stations as air raid shelters. Experts say thousands might be given safe shelter from bombs. SEPTEMBER 23, 1958 PRIvATE Elvis Presley, the rock ‘n’ roll singer, left New York in a troop ship today for 18 months’ Army service in Germany. He said he looked forward to seeing Europe and ‘having a date with Brigitte Bardot’.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
NICHOLAS WITCHELL, 64. The BBC’s royal correspondent (pictured) appeared as himself in the Doctor Who Christmas Special, voyage Of The Damned, broadcast on Christmas Day 2007. In 2005, a mic picked up the Prince of Wales reacting to a question by Witchell, whispering to son William: ‘I can’t bear that man. I mean, he’s so awful, he really is.’ HENRY BLOFELD, 78. Eton-educated BBC cricket commentator ‘Blowers’ retired this month after 47 years. During lunch in his last Test Match Special, Nottingham City Transport named a bus after him in tribute to all those he had mentioned trundling around Trent Bridge. James Bond villain Blofeld was named after his father, whom writer Ian Fleming knew at school.
BORN ON THIS DAY
WALTER PIDGEON (18971984). The Oscar-nominated Canadian-born actor was at the peak of his fame in the Forties with films such as classic wartime drama Mrs Miniver (right, with Greer Garson) and How Green Was My valley. He enlisted in the Canadian army during World War I but, before he could see action, he was trapped between two rolling gun carriages in France and was hospitalised for 17 months. JOHN COLTRANE (1926-1967). The U.S. jazz saxophonist became addicted to heroin and alcohol in his 20s and on one recording, fellow jazz star Thelonius Monk shouts: ‘Coltrane! Coltrane!’, after he fell asleep. He was given a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for ‘supreme musicianship’, and made a saint of the African Orthodox Church.
ON SEPTEMBER 23…
IN 1889, the Nintendo Koppai firm was founded in Japan as a playing cards maker. It became a computer games giant famous for Super Mario, the Game Boy and Wii.
IN 1909, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux was first printed in Parisian paper Le Gaulois. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version has racked up an estimated worldwide box office gross of £4.4billion.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Fremescence (coined by Thomas Carlyle, 1837) A) To disappear then reappear. B) Incipient rumbling or roaring sound. C) The angle of an angry bull’s head before it charges. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Robbing Peter to pay Paul: To discharge a debt by incurring another. From the fact that in 1550 in London many estates of St Peter’s Westminster were appropriated to pay for repairs to St Paul’s Cathedral.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
THE car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad and incomplete in the urban compound. Marshall McLuhan, Canadian scholar (1911-1980)
JOKE OF THE DAY
IF YOU’RE here for the yodelling lesson… please form an orderly, orderly, orderly, orderly queue! Guess The Definition answer: B.