ON THIS DAY
July 9, 2015
IT’S DAY 190 OF 2015
AN AVERAGE person’s two kidneys filter about 190 litres of blood every day. NINA was the 190th most popular name given to a baby girl in England last year. LIVERPOOL Football Club have made 190 signings and spent close to £800 million during a 25-year wait to win a 19th League title. THE emergency phone number to call the fire service in Gibraltar and the police in Brazil is 190.
THERE ARE 175 DAYS LEFT
AFTER its relaunch in 2002, BBC motoring series Top Gear — with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May — ran for 175 episodes. THE world’s oldest picture postcard was created 175 years ago. It depicted a group of scribes working around a large inkwell and sold in 2002 for £31,750. IN GROSS income worldwide, the 175th most popular film in cinema history is the 2007 Matt Damon movie The Bourne Ultimatum, having earned £288 million.
IT’S THEIR BIRTHDAY
HOLLYWOOD actor Tom Hanks, 59. His role in 1998 WWII film Saving Private Ryan (right) so impressed American sailors and soldiers who actually took part in the Normandy landings that he was awarded the U.S. Navy’s highest civilian honour, the Distinguished Public Service Award. AMANDA KNOX, 28. After almost four years in an Italian jail for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, Knox was acquitted of all charges in March this year — eight years after the killing. COMEDIAN Paul Merton, 58. Within three months of leaving London’s Maudsley Hospital, where he had been receiving psychiatric treatment, he accepted the team captain’s role in TV’s Have I Got News For You. FORMER American footballer O. J. Simpson, 68. Having been acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife Nicole and her male friend in one of the most publicised court cases ever, he went on to be convicted, in 2008, of robbery and kidnapping. Simpson is now serving a 33-year sentence in Nevada.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ROMANTIC novelist, Barbara Cartland (1901-2000). The Birmingham-born socialite, who published 723 books in her lifetime, was also the step-grandmother to possibly the most romantic female character of the 20th century — Diana, Princess of Wales. FORMER Prime Minister Edward Heath (1916-2005). As a British officer in World War II, he took command of a firing squad that executed a Polish soldier convicted of rape and murder.
ON JULY 9th...
IN 1982, the Queen was woken in her bedroom at Buckingham Palace by intruder Michael Fagan. He sat on her bed and asked for a cigarette before being apprehended. The public’s most common response to the incident was to ponder the fact that the monarch didn’t sleep in the same room as Prince Philip. IN 1540, Henry VIII divorced his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, because he thought her looks and smell unpleasant and refused to consumate the marriage. Unlike most of his other wives, the two remained friends.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.
American poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
JOKE OF THE DAY
HOW do astronomers organise a party?
They planet ahead!