ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
SEPTEMBER 1, 1953 PeoPLe are making their tea stronger, especially in the North of england. Consumption of tea is 2,000,000 lb a week more than when rationing ended last year.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1983 THe angler who caught the first salmon in the Thames for 150 years made light of his achievement yesterday. ‘He came quietly and there was no struggle,’ said Russell Doig, 46, who collected a trophy and £250 for his 6lb 12oz catch. The last one to be caught by rod and line upstream of London was in 1833 before the river became so polluted.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SIR BARRY GIBB, 74. The last surviving Bee Gee — his bandmates and brothers Maurice and Robin died in 2003 and 2012 respectively, while the trio’s youngest brother Andy died in 1988 — was born on the Isle of Man before his family moved to Manchester, then Australia. He said: ‘My greatest regret is that every brother I’ve lost was in a moment when we weren’t getting on, so I have to live with that and I’ll spend the rest of my life reflecting on that.’
LILY ToMLIN, 81. The U.S. actress and comedian has starred in move Tea With Mussolini and in Netflix’s Grace And Frankie. of fighting for equal pay in Hollywood, she says: ‘When I started in the movement, women were making 59 cents to the [male] dollar. Now they’re making, like, 74 cents or something to the dollar... and we’re supposed to be grateful for those crumbs.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
SUNNY voN BULoW (1932-2008). The U.S. heiress, who inherited an estimated fortune of $75 million when she was three, died after being in a coma for almost 28 years. Her second husband, lawyer Claus von Bulow, was found guilty of trying to kill her with an insulin overdose in 1982, but he won an appeal and was acquitted at a retrial. von Bulow was born Martha Sharp Crawford, but nicknamed Sunny because of her optimistic disposition.
MARSHALL LYTLe (1933-2013). The U.S. bass player made his name with Bill Haley & His Comets. He co-wrote Haley’s first hit, Crazy Man, Crazy, and performed on Shake, Rattle And Roll, and Rock Around The Clock, credited as the first rock ’n’ roll song.
ON SEPTEMBER 1…
IN 1914, the last known passenger pigeon (or wild pigeon), a female named Martha, died in captivity in Cincinnati Zoo.
IN 1962, the UN confirmed the world’s population had grown beyond three billion. It is now an estimated 7.8 billion.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Recension (c1635)
A) A revision of a literary work. B) Recovery from an illness. C) A poetry recital.
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Arms akimbo — meaning ‘in or into a position in which the hands are on the hips and the elbows are bowed outward’. As a result, the cliche ‘legs akimbo’ is logically meaningless. A ‘akimbo’ began as ‘kenebowe’ in 1400 and the posture implies one of ‘attitude’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
You can’t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. Somerset Maugham, English novelist (1874-1965)
JOKE OF THE DAY
MY FRIeND has been a limo driver for 25 years and hasn’t had a single customer. He’s had nothing to chauffeur all that time.
Guess The Definition answer A