ON THIS DAY
August 1, 2019
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
AUGUST 1, 1936
A LITTLE flame, brought through the darkness last night on a lonely country road south of Berlin, will crown today the greatest festival of sport in history. This flame will be raised by Herr Hitler in the sight of 100,000 people in the huge stadium and he will light with it a brazier to symbolise the opening of the 11th Olympic Games.
AUGUST 1, 1961
THE BBC admitted last night it hoaxed Third Programme listeners who tuned in to Piotr Zak’s Mobile For Tape And Percussion. It said ‘there is no Mr Zak’ and the piece was a tape of percussion instruments played at random. It was an experiment to show that some contemporary pieces were ‘indistinguishable’ from random sounds.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JASON MOMOA, 40. The Hawaiian-born actor has starred as superhero Aquaman and appeared in Game Of Thrones. Momoa says he developed a crush on his wife, Cosby Show star Lisa Bonet, when he was eight and saw her on TV (she is 11 years his senior). The couple (right) — at 6ft 4in, he is 14 inches taller — had two children before he told her ‘otherwise it would be creepy and weird . . . she was a queen, always’. He is also stepfather to Lisa’s daughter, Zoe, from her first marriage to rock star Lenny Kravitz.
AMBER RUDD, 56. The Work and Pensions Secretary was one of the few ministers to retain their job in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet reshuffle last week. Her marriage to A.A. Gill, the late restaurant critic, hit the rocks after she surprised him at Heathrow airport after he flew in from Monte Carlo and caught him returning with a blonde on his arm. Rudd then offered her husband and his mistress a lift back to London. Recalling the surreal car journey, she said: ‘We were all in denial.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891). The U.S. author, born 200 years ago today, received poor reviews for what is now regarded as his masterpiece, Moby-Dick. A critic wrote in the New York Albion: ‘There is no method in his madness.’ In 2010, Emoji Dick was published, after more than 800 people translated the book’s 10,000 sentences into emoticons.
JERRY GARCIA (1942-1995). The guitarist of the Grateful Dead chose the U.S. band’s name after finding the phrase in a dictionary: ‘Everything else on the page went blank, diffuse, just sorta oozed away, and there was “GRATEFUL DEAD”, big black letters edged all around in gold, man, blasting out at me, such a stunning combination.’ An asteroid and cockroach are named in his honour.
ON AUGUST 1…
IN 1086, the results of the Domesday survey were presented to William the Conqueror. IN 1986, U.S. tennis ace John McEnroe married U.S. actress Tatum O’Neal.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Pearl (from 1960s) A) A ponytail. B) To have your surfboard nosedive into the waves. C) A teeny-bopper.
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Brick and mortar: Meaning a shop or a building; coined by novelist Charles Dickens in his novel Little Dorrit.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright (1856-1950)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call a one-armed karate star? A partial artist.
Guess The Definition answer: B.