ON THIS DAY
December 7, 2020
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE DECEMBER 7, 1921
UNDER the terms of the Peace signed by t he Briti s h Government and t he representatives of Sinn Fein at 2.20am yesterday, Ireland becomes the Irish Free State. Ulster is left free to choose whether she goes in or stays out. She has a month in which to decide.
DECEMBER 7, 2005
IT WAS David Cameron’s moment of triumph [as new Tory leader]— and there to share it was his pregnant wife Samantha. The newly-crowned Tory leader whispered ‘I love you’ and tenderly stroked her bump before giving her a hug and a kiss.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SUE JOHNSTON, 77. The Cheshire - born actress played Sheila Grant in Brookside, Barbara Royle in The Royle Family, Dr Grace Foley in Waking The Dead and Maggie Smith’s lady’s maid in Downton Abbey. During the 1960s, she worked with Beatles manager Brian Epstein above his record shop and befriended the band: ‘I was the intelligent one who Paul wrote l etters to f rom Hamburg,’ she said.
NICHOLAS HOULT, 31. The Berkshireborn actor starred in About A Boy and the X-Men films and played the author of Lord Of The Rings in Tolkien. An ex-boyfriend of actress Jennifer Lawrence, he almost quit showbusiness after hating the fame he received for acting in Channel 4’s Skins.
BORN ON THIS DAY
VICTOR KIAM ( 19262001). The American entrepreneur made his name as CEO of Remington shaving products. Kiam, who had never used an electric shaver before buying the firm, appeared in his own ads, declaring that he was ‘so delighted and impressed [with the product] that I bought the company’. He returned Remington to profit after it had lost $30 million.
GIAN LORENzO BERNINI (1598-1680). The Italian Baroque artist and architect was celebrated for his ‘living marble’ sculptures and for redesigning St Peter’s Square — the plaza in front of the Vatican. He was commissioned by eight popes and transformed 17th- century Rome, becoming, according to the National Gallery, ‘virtual dictator of the arts’.
ON DECEMBER 7…
IN 1909, Belgian- born i nventor Leo Hendrick Baekeland received a patent for the first synthetic plastic, Bakelite. IN 1982, lethal injection was used for the first time to execute a U.S. prisoner, in Texas.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: whelked (c 1425) A) ridged like the shell of a snail B) tired from complaining C) hard to handle, ticklish ( answer below)
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Keeping up with the Joneses — refers to the comparison to one’s neighbour as a benchmark for social class or the accumulation of material goods; deriving in 1913 from the American Arthur Momand’s strip cartoon based on his experiences of living beyond his means in a prosperous neighbourhood.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
IF GOD had intended men to smoke, he’d have put chimneys in their heads J.B. Priestley, English novelist (1894-1984)
JOKE OF THE DAY
What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? a carrot.
GUESS The Definition answer a