ON THIS DAY
April 13, 2021
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE APRIL 13, 1961
AN EMERGENCY stock of more than 200,000 anti-polio pills has been ordered by the Government.They will be rushed to any area hit by an epidemic, and laboratories are geared to produce another 1,000,000 doses within 48 hours. Fears of a widespread outbreak, because of the mild weather, are believed to have accelerated the decision.
APRIL 13, 1970
STAND-IN astronaut Jack Swigert last night confessed to a boob as Apollo 13 sped past the half-way point to man’s third Moon landing. Swigert, 38, revealed he hadn’t filled in his income tax return. Laughter could be heard from Apollo as Swigert replied: ‘Things kinda happened real fast down there and I do need an extension.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
AL GREEN, 75. The American soul singer-songwriter had hits with Let’s Stay Together and Tired Of Being Alone. He became a born-again Christian while on tour in 1973, and went on to buy his own church in Tennessee and became a minister. Justin Timberlake said: ‘Al Green has helped overpopulate the world. He’s got some serious babymaking music.’
GARRY KASPAROV, 58. The six-time world chess champion from Azerbaijan became a grandmaster on his 17th birthday and the youngest winner in history in 1985, aged 22. He learned how to play by watching his parents work out chess problems in the newspaper. He has become a political activist and critic of Russian President vladimir Putin and now lives in exile in New York.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JOSEPHINE BUTLER (1828-1906). The social reformer from Northumberland campaigned against child prostitution and succeeded in pressuring Parliament to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16. She also helped repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, which allowed police to arrest women they suspected of being prostitutes and force them to be examined for VD.
SEAMUS HEANEY (19392013). The Irish writer sold more books in Britain than any other living poet. He won the Nobel Prize in 1995, and a year later, he won the Whitbread for his translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. The professor of poetry at Oxford, nicknamed ‘famous Seamus’, Heaney counted u.S. President Bill Clinton among his fans.
ON APRIL 13…
IN 1742, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah oratorio was performed publicly for the first time, in Dublin.
IN 1919, British troops fired on an unarmed crowd at Amritsar in India killing hundreds.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: bombazine (c1550)
A) a padded jacket B) a fabric of silk and wool C) to bedazzle Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
pilot scheme — meaning an experiment to test the demand for a product without incurring heavy expenditure on it’s production; it alludes to a pilot who guides ships into and out of a harbour.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
VIRTUE is like a rich stone, best plain set Francis Bacon, English philosopher (1561-1626)
JOKE OF THE DAY
How do hens and roosters dance? Chick to chick.
GUESS the Definition answer: B