ON THIS DAY
September 18, 2018
SEPTEMBER 18, 1951 AMERICAN viewers last night watched a TV broadcast comedy while the studio’s switchboard chief lay dead across the controls. There were still 40 minutes of the show to go when Mr Joseph Eisner, 76, dropped dead with a heart attack. Engineers worked on, reaching across him to get at the switches. They did not miss a cue. SEPTEMBER 18, 1961 THE beer shampoo girls of Acton, London, won another battle yesterday when their works manager, Mr Herbert James, apologised for saying they were too tubby. Some 40 girls threatened to take action if the management did not drop a weight investigation after Mr James complained their beer ration was making them fat.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
TIM MCINNERNY, 62. The actor has appeared in all four series of Blackadder (including as Captain Darling in Blackadder Goes Forth), Notting Hill and Game Of Thrones. He also starred in the video for Kate Bush’s 1989 song This Woman’s Work. He said: ‘The money was terrible, but I didn’t care. I was prepared to pay her to be in it.’ DIZZEE RASCAL, 34. The London-born rapper, whose hits include Dance Wiv Me and Bonkers, won the £20,000 Mercury music prize when he was 19. In 2008, in a Newsnight interview about Barack Obama’s presidential victory, Dizzee told Jeremy Paxman (who called him Mr Rascal) that he’d consider running for office, saying: ‘I think a black man, purple man, Martian man can run the country... as long as he does right by the people... Dizzee Rascal for Prime Minister, yeah! Wassappenin!’
BORN ON THIS DAY
GRETA GARBO (19051990). The ‘Swedish Sphinx’ was born Greta Gustafsson in poverty in Stockholm. She made her name in silent films and shocked her legions of fans with her heavily accented first line in a talkie, in the film of the play Anna Christie, saying: ‘Gimme a visky with chincher ale on the side and don’t be stingy, baby.’ SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784). The Staffordshire-born writer was Britain’s leading lexicographer. He spent more than eight years producing the first proper English dictionary. One famous entry was: ‘Oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’ A lexicographer was defined as ‘a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge’. ON SEPTEMBER 18…
IN 1961, the body of Dag Hammarskjold, the UN secretary-general, was discovered in the wreckage of a plane crash in Rhodesia. IN 1977, Voyager I took the first photo of the Earth and Moon in a single frame. WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Impignorate (1830) A) To pledge or mortgage. B) To incriminate. C) To accuse. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Dot and carry one — it refers to a person with a limp; it derives from around 1775, in reference to a person with a wooden leg; the ‘dot’ is the impression made by the wooden leg, while the ‘one’ is the ‘widowed’ leg. QUOTE FOR TODAY To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all. Randall Jarrell, U.S. poet (1914-1965) JOKE OF THE DAY WHy can’t you use beef stew as a password? It’s not stroganoff. Guess The Definition answer: A