ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JUNE 22, 1957 ELIZABETH TAYLOR, 24, went on strike yesterday at London Airport because husband, Mike Todd, wanted to go to Paris and she didn’t. When they missed their flight to Nice and producer Todd told his secretary: ‘Charter a plane to take us to Nice with a two-hour stop at Paris,’ Miss Taylor’s eyes flashed: ‘I don’t want to go to Paris — it bores me.’ They flew straight to Nice. JUNE 22, 1966 HEALTH officials in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea can now tell the unmarried where to get contraception after a council decision last night. The area has the highest illegitimacy rate — one in five — in London, apart from the City.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ERIN BROCKOVICH, 58. The American legal clerk (right) shot to fame when an Oscar-winning Julia Roberts played her in the eponymous 2000 film. It told how she won the biggest single legal payout in U.S. history, worth £200million, from a gas giant that polluted a town’s water. The single mother said the film was ‘98 per cent accurate,’ adding: ‘Yes, I did dress that way. Yes, I had a potty mouth in the movie and I still do.’ DAN BROWN, 54. The American is the author of The Da Vinci Code, the world’s biggest selling hardback novel once described by Salman Rushdie as ‘a book so bad it makes bad books look good’. Readers don’t seem to mind — Brown makes £15 million a year from his writing.
BORN ON THIS DAY
BILLY WILDER (19062002). The AustrianAmerican filmmaker (right) directed Hollywood’s first film noir, 1944’s Double Indemnity, plus comedies, including Some Like It Hot (1959). A famed art collector, he said: ‘It’s a sickness. I don’t know how to stop myself. I have some Impressionists, some Picassos . . . some mobiles by Calder. I also collect tiny Japanese trees, glass paperweights and Chinese vases.’ JO COX (1974-2016). The Labour MP and mum of two was shot and stabbed to death in Birstall, West Yorkshire, days before her 42nd birthday. She said Westminster was ‘a walk in the park’ compared to Cambridge University where she realised what privilege really meant. She said: ‘I spent the summers packing toothpaste at a factory . . . and everyone else had gone on a gap year.’
ON JUNE 22…
IN 1979, former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe was found not guilty of conspiracy to murder former lover Norman Scott.
IN 1986, Diego Maradona claimed the ‘hand of God’ punched in a goal in Argentina’s World Cup quarter final against England.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Furfuraceous (coined 1650) A) Covered in small scales. B) Pompous. C) Excessive. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Don’t change horses in midstream: Means don’t make changes after making a start. Comes from an Abraham Lincoln speech to people urging him to be their new presidential candidate. He said: ‘An old Dutch farmer remarked . . . it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.’