ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 266 OF 2015
SOME 266 people live in Hell — the village of Hell in Michigan, U.S., that is. The other Hell, in Norway, has a population of 1,440. THE furthest a dried cow pat has ever been thrown is 266 ft, by Steve Urner, at the Tehachapi Mountain Festival in California in 1981. The competition rules state that the pat must be 100 per cent organic and ‘not have been moulded into a spherical shape’. GOVERNMENT officials have 266 excuses to enter your home, including checking whether you are housing seals (‘damaging to fish stocks’) or foreign bees (outlawed under the Bees Act 1980). LOS Angeles has an average of 266 days of sunshine each year.
THERE ARE 99 DAYS LEFT
AN ESTIMATED 50 to 80 per cent of all life on Earth is found under the ocean surface, and the oceans contain 99 per cent of the living space on the planet. ITALIAN ice cream sellers are said to have given us the 99 cornet. They used ‘99’ to refer to anything great, the slang deriving from the Ragazzi del 99, (Boys of 99) — the last group called up to fight in World War I. AFTER the September 11 attacks on New York, it took 99 days for firefighters at Ground Zero to extinguish the flames completely. A GIANT panda’s diet is 99 per cent bamboo, though they will also eat small rodents. ACCORDING to the Bible, Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, 66. Fans include Barack Obama, who said he ran for President only because he ‘couldn’t be Springsteen’. LIBERTY ROSS, 37. The model and actress, right, appeared in Snow White And The Huntsman, but had her first taste of showbiz posing as a child bride on the cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s 1988 album No Rest For The Wicked. JULIO IGLESIAS, 72, a former Real Madrid footballer and Grammy Award-winning singer. In 2005, his father died aged 90, soon after finding out that his second wife Ronna, 42, was pregnant again. It means the singer has a half-brother, Jaime, 11, and a nineyear-old half-sister, Ruth.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ALDO MORO (1916-1978). The five-time Italian prime minister was kidnapped by the Left-wing Red Brigades terror group and held for 55 days before his bullet-ridden body was found in the boot of a Renault 4, dumped in a central Rome side street. RAY CHARLES (1930-2004). The singer (right), blind from the age of six, appeared in a Tv advert driving a Peugeot 306 — without assistance — in the Death valley desert. MICKEY ROONEY (1920-2014). Though just 5ft 2in and with goofy teeth, the MGM star had an 88-year film career and eight wives, including legendary beauty Ava Gardner.
ON SEPTEMBER 23 . . .
IN 1846, Johann Galle became the first astronomer to observe Neptune, the eighth known planet, and the first whose existence was theorised with the use of mathematics. IN 1955, ITv launched the first quiz show offering cash prizes, with Michael Miles hosting Take Your Pick. An early round earned contestants just five shillings (25p). IN 1981, a statue of Winnie-the-Pooh was unveiled at London Zoo to honour a real bear, Winnie, who lived there in the Twenties, and inspired A. A. Milne to write his classic. IN 1980, Bob Marley played his final concert, in Pittsburgh. It was entitled Live Forever.
QUOTE FOR TODAY The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to be late for the one before.
G. K. Chesterton