ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
FEBRUaRy 21, 1979 THE ordinary people of Iran got a taste yesterday of what life is going to be like under strict Islamic rule. The songs of the country’s favourite pop star, a young woman called Googoosh, were banned from state-controlled radio and TV, along with all other ‘Westernised music’. Instead, Iranians are being treated to a daily diet of revolutionary classical music.
FEBRUaRy 21, 1998 FOR months, it has been the £758million question: What will be inside the Millennium Dome? Today, the Daily Mail provides the most revealing glimpse so far, with a preview of some of the attractions that might make up the controversial super-show. They include a self-sufficient rainforest, a 30ft steel sphere suspended by magnetism and a New Age pyramid.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JAy BLADES, 54. The London-born furniture restorer presents The Repair Shop on BBC TV. Having concealed his inability to read, Jay’s dyslexia was undiagnosed until his 30s. He recited his autobiography to a ghostwriter but said he had not read it: ‘I’ve really tried, but it’s just too much.’
HANNAH FRy, 40. The University College London professor, ‘Britain’s most recognisable mathematician’, hosts BBC2’s The Secret Genius Of Modern Life and Radio 4’s The Curious Cases Of Rutherford & Fry. She said that had she not pursued maths, she would have become a hairdresser.
BORN ON THIS DAY
NINA SIMONE (19332003). The U.S. singersongwriter had hits with I Loves you Porgy and My Baby Just Cares For Me. She called music executives ‘racketeers’ and at one meeting she pulled out a gun ‘because there was a record company that stole my albums and didn’t pay me’. She followed the boss to a restaurant. ‘I tried to kill him. I’m sorry I didn’t get him.’
ROBERT MUGABE (1924-2019). The former president of Zimbabwe presided over violence, corruption and food shortages. Aged 94, he vowed he would fight elections and that he would remain in power ‘until God says “come” ’. But he was placed under house arrest by the army in 2017 and replaced by his former deputy.
ON FEBRUARY 21 . . .
IN 1848, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx was published. IN 1925, the first issue of The New yorker magazine was published.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Popjoy (coined 1853)
A) A puppeteer’s mouthpiece to make Mr Punch’s voice. B) To amuse oneself. C) A lively jig. answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Robbing Peter to pay Paul: meaning to take from one to give to another; one theory dates it to 1550, when many of the estates of St Peter’s Westminster were appropriated to pay for repairs to St Paul’s Cathedral.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. london is a teenager.
John Berger, English art critic (1926-2017)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHy should you never date an apostrophe? They’re too possessive.
Guess The Definition answer: B.