ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
OCTOBER 29, 1962 THE Cuban crisis is over. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev has ordered all missile bases to be dismantled and shipped back to Russia. President John F. Kennedy swiftly welcomed the surprise Kremlin move as ‘a statesmanlike decision’ and ‘a constructive contribution to peace’. Tonight, in a letter to Mr Khrushchev, the President said that perhaps now — ‘as we step back from danger’ — East and West could make real progress on disarmament. OCTOBER 29, 1971 INTO Europe we go — with the Commons last night voting by a resounding 112 majority in favour of Britain joining the Common Market. It was a spectacular victory for Prime Minister Edward Heath — by kind permission of a solid flank of Labour pro-marketeers determined to pursue their idealism into the division lobby.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
WINONA RYDER, 48, pictured. The U.S. actress, who s t arred in Little Women, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, was cast in her first movie at 14. She was sentenced to probation and drug counselling in 2002 after a shoplifting spree at a Beverly Hills shop, and more recently has been nominated for a Golden Globe and and Emmy for her role in the Netflix series, Stranger Things. ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF, 81. President of Liberia from 2006 until 2018, she was Africa’s first elected female head of state. Johnson Sirleaf, whose grandmothers were illiterate, was educated at Harvard. In 2011, she won the Nobel Peace Prize.
BORN ON THIS DAY
WILFRED Rhodes (18771973), pictured. The bowler from Yorkshire has been described as ‘perhaps the greatest England cricketer ever’. He was the first to reach 1,000 runs and take 100 wickets in Test matches and still holds the Guinness World Record f or most wickets taken in a first-class career — 4,204 in 1,110 matches while playing for Yorkshire and England between 1898 and 1930. DON SIMPSON (1945-1996). The U.S. film producer — nominated for ten Oscars — was best known for Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun, which made a star of Tom Cruise and increased U.S. Navy recruitment by 500 per cent.
ON OCTOBER 29 ...
IN 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opened the final section of the 117-mile, M25 motorway around London.
IN 2015, China announced the end of its one-child policy after 35 years — estimated to have prevented about 400 million births.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Thaumaturge (c1705) A) A catastrophe B) A worker of wonders and miracles C) A measure of heat Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Kiss of death: The downfall of someone or an organisation or the undoing of a project or plan; it derives from the Gospel of Luke in The Bible — referring to Judas Iscariot’s kiss to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before he betrayed him.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
OnE-fifth of the people are against everything all the time. Robert Kennedy, U.S. politician (1925-1968)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the cantaloupe jump into the lake? It wanted to be a watermelon. Guess The Definition answer: B