ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
AUGUST 9, 1968 RADIO disc jockey Tony Prince told listening pop fans: ‘Go out and set fire to your school.’ And he offered first prize to the firebug who burned down most schools. Police and fire chiefs were horrified. Listeners complained. Radio Luxembourg said: ‘Tony got carried away. It was supposed to have been very funny. It was ridiculous.’ AUGUST 9, 1972 REFUGEE Phan Thi Kim Phuc is laughing again — just two months after she ran screaming in pain from a South Vietnamese napalm strike which hit her village by mistake. Now she is almost recovered after Vietnamese surgeons at Saigon’s Barsky Centre planted a patchwork of small grafts over her burned back, neck and arms.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ROD LAVER, 81. The Australian former world No 1 tennis star won a record 200 singles titles, including Wimbledon four times in the Sixties. His prize winnings of $1.57 million across his 23-year career were roughly half what a U.S. Open champion wins today. He was nicknamed ‘The Rocket’ sarcastically by his coach, who thought he was ‘one of the slowest kids in the class’. AUDREy TAUTOU, 43. The French star of The Da Vinci Code nearly didn’t get the role that made her name in romcom Amelie. It had been written for British actress Emily Watson, but she turned it down. The former face of Chanel No 5 was named after Audrey Hepburn. She graduated from the Sorbonne in literature, then gave herself a year to make it in acting. If she hadn’t, she planned to study primates.
BORN ON THIS DAY
WHITNEy HOUSTON (1963-2012). The U.S. pop star and actress was described as having the ‘Rolls-Royce of soul voices’. Asked in a 2002 interview to paint a picture of a her perfect future, she said: ‘Retired. Sitting, looking at my daughter grow up, become a great woman of God, grandchildren.’ In 2012, she was found dead in a hotel bathtub. PAMELA LyNDON TRAVERS (1899-1996). Better known as P.L. Travers, the British author (born Helen Lyndon Goff in Australia) said of the character that made her name: ‘The idea of Mary Poppins has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life.’ Left so angry by Disney’s 1964 film adaptation, Travers only agreed to a West End production if ‘no Americans’ were involved in its creation.
ON AUGUST 9…
IN 1963, the first edition of music show Ready, Steady, Go! was broadcast on ITV.
IN 1974, Richard Nixon became the first U.S. President to resign, in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Galanthophile (Coined 1892) A) A lover of snowdrops B) A coin collector. C) A teddy bear collector. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Ad nauseam: Meaning a point repeated to ridiculous excess. The term comes from the Latin meaning ‘to the point of nausea’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life. Camille Paglia, U.S. author
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you get if you walk under a cow? A pat on the head. Guess The Definition answer: A.