ON THIS DAY
November 8, 2021
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
NOVEMBER 8, 1951
FRANK SINATRA married Miss Ava Gardner, the film actress, at Philadelphia this evening. As soon as the ceremony was over Mr Sinatra grasped the hand of the judge who performed it and said: ‘Well, we finally made it.’
NOVEMBER 8, 2000
HILLARY CLINTON completed her historic move from the White House to the U.S. Senate early today. She beat republican Rick Lazio in New york by a clear margin of up to 10 per cent to become the first presidential wife elected to the Senate.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
NERYS HUGHES, 80. The Welsh actress, who didn’t speak English until she was six, is best known for playing Sandra Hutchinson in sitcom The Liver Birds (pictured, top, with co-star Polly James) and for starring in The District Nurse, having started out with the royal Shakespeare Company.
SIR KAZUO ISHIGURO, 67. The novelist won the Booker Prize for The remains Of The Day, turned into a film starring Emma Thompson (whose damehood was announced on the same day as his knighthood in 2018). Ishiguro, who was born in Japan and moved to England when he was five, said he was ‘deeply touched to receive this honour from the nation that welcomed me as a small foreign boy’. In 2017, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
BORN ON THIS DAY
MARTIN PETERS (19432019). The footballer from East London played in right midfield for England in 1966 and scored the team’s second goal in the final that won them the World Cup. The West Ham star, whose later clubs included Spurs and Norwich City, said: ‘The emotion was like being struck by lightning, it was unbelievable.’ He was described by teammate Sir Geoff Hurst (the only other Englishman to score in a World Cup final) as ‘one of the all-time greats’.
PATTI PAGE (1927-2013). The U.S. singer, the biggest-selling female star of the 1950s, is best remembered for her hits Tennessee Waltz (the last song to sell a million copies of sheet music) and How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? (which Margaret Thatcher said was her favourite song). Born Clara Ann Fowler, she starred in the film Elmer Gantry alongside Burt Lancaster.
ON NOVEMBER 8 . . .
IN 1605, robert Catesby, ringleader of the Gunpowder Plot was shot dead and found clutching a picture of the Virgin Mary. IN 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad roentgen discovered X-rays. It would earn him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Rowel (c. late 14th century)
A) revolving wheel with projecting points. B) rock cavity. C) Spade depth in digging.
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Be an also-ran: meaning be a failure; the phrase comes from horse racing in which an ‘also-ran’ is a horse that reaches the winning post but only after the first three horses.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
As you get older, you don’t get wiser. You get irritable. Doris Lessing, British novelist (1919-2013)
JOKE OF THE DAY
ACCORDIAN to a recent survey, replacing words with the names of musical instruments often goes undetected. Guess The Definition answer: A.