ON THIS DAY
May 9, 2018
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
MAY 9, 1964 TELEVISION researchers doing work for a new programme recently asked members of the public: ‘Have you heard of Lenin?’
And the answer they got from four people was: ‘Yes, he’s one of The Beatles — the married one.’ Lenin, the first Soviet president died in 1924 ... and the married Beatle is John Lennon. MAY 9, 1969 A NEW sort of motorway madness is growing — more and more pets are being thrown out of cars in the hope that they will be killed by speeding traffic.
Chief offenders are families going on holiday. They don’t want to pay kennel fees, so they push the dog out onto the road.
RSPCA inspector Mr Allan Simms, of Rugby, said: ‘In the past year I have been told of about a dozen dogs a week which have been abandoned on motorways.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DOROTHY HYMAN, 77. The sprinter from Yorkshire (pictured) was one of the fastest women in the world during the early Sixties, winning medals in the Olympics, Commonwealth and European championships. At 13, when she began training, the nearest track was eight miles away. She said: ‘After work, I’d eat, get the bus, train, get the bus home and go to bed.’ There is a stadium named after her in her home town of Cudworth. ALAN BENNETT, 84. The playwright and screenwriter from Leeds, son of a butcher, said he could recall ‘a time when I thought my only connection with the literary world would be that I’d once delivered meat to T.S. Eliot’s mother-in-law’. Speaking of his past relationships with men and women, he has said he had had ‘something of both in my life’ but ‘not enough of either’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JOAN SIMS (1930-2001). The Rada-trained comedy actress from Essex (pictured) starred in 24 Carry On films but was the victim of a gaping gender pay gap. The men were paid £5,000 per film but the women received only £2,500. Sims never married and said most men were not interested in funny women.
COLIN PILLINGER (1943-2014). The Bristol-born professor of planetary science was the driving force behind Beagle 2, the probe designed to search for life on Mars, but which vanished without a trace in 2003. It was located a year after Pillinger’s death on the surface of Mars, ‘silenced’ by the fact that its solar panels had failed to open.
ON MAY 9…
IN 1941, British naval officers captured an Enigma machine from a German U-boat, crucial to helping intelligence experts crack the Germans’ secret code.
IN 1960, the U.S. became the first country to legalise the oral contraceptive pill.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Unicorn (1785) A) A large playing marble. B) A coach drawn by three horses. C) A crooked horse breeder. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Keep harping on: To go on and on. Refers to Victorian musical evenings where daughters were encouraged to ‘delight’ their parents’ guests by playing the harp.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It’s sad, really Philip Larkin, English poet (1922-85)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I ACCIDENTALLY sent my friend flowers over the internet. whoops, E-Daisies. Guess The Definition answer: B.