ON THIS DAY
January 29, 2016
IT’S DAY 29 OF 2016
THE longest non-medical word in English — floccinaucinihilipilification — is 29 letters long. Meaning the habit of estimating something as worthless, in 2012 Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg used it during a Commons debate on the European Court of Justice, so it’s also the longest-ever word to appear in Hansard. THE average age at which a UK Prime Minister is first married is 29. The last unmarried leader was Edward Heath and the last PM to wear a wedding ring was Margaret Thatcher. OF ALL 526 murders in England and Wales in 2014, 29 were the result of being shot. THERE are 29 billion coins — worth £4 billion — in circulation in the UK, the most numerous being the 1p coin (11.2 billion), the least numerous being the £2 coin (417 million).
THERE ARE 337 DAYS LEFT
LAST June, some 337 whales became stranded along the remote Aysen area of southern Chile in the largest known mass whale beaching in history. STANDING at the stumps for 16 hours and ten minutes during the longest Test innings in cricket, Hanif Mohammad, playing for Pakistan against the West Indies in Barbados in 1958, scored 337 runs.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CLARE BALDING, 45. The Hampshire-born TV sports presenter and former amateur flat racing jockey, whose father is the Queen’s former horse trainer. She wants the Black Beauty theme tune at her funeral. OPRAH WINFREY, 62. America’s most famous talk- show host who grew up in poverty then went on to become the world’s first black female billionaire. GERMAINE GREER, 77. The outspoken Australian academic best known for her 1970 feminist bestseller The Female Eunuch, which likened marriage to slavery. Two years later, she wed builder Paul du Feu, but the marriage lasted just a few weeks.
BORN ON THIS DAY
W.C. FIELDS (1880-1946), right. The comedy genius — whose distinctive face peers out from the cover of The Beatles’ iconic Sgt Pepper album — was America’s most successful juggler before becoming a Hollywood star. Despite consuming vast amounts of alcohol — he famously said: ‘I don’t drink water. Fish f*** in it’ — Fields never lost his juggling skills. LINDA SMITH (1958-2006). Best known for her appearances on the BBC’s news Quiz and Have I Got news For You, in 2002 Radio 4 listeners voted her the ‘Wittiest Living Person’. She once noted of her home town, Erith, in Kent: ‘Erith isn’t twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham.’
ON JANUARY 29 . . .
IN 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles first stepped on an island known locally as ‘Singapura’ (Lion Place) to sign a treaty with the Sultan of Johor to create a British trading centre. You can toast his memory at the city-state’s legendary Raffles Hotel — home of the Singapore gin sling cocktail.
IN 1856, the Victoria Cross was created. Struck from the metal of Russian guns captured in the Crimean War, its first recipient was John Simpson Knox, right, of the Scots Guards, for valour at the Battle of the Alma. Later in the campaign, a Russian cannonball tore away his left arm.
IN 1942, Vic Oliver, the Austrian-born comic and son-in-law of Winston Churchill, became the first castaway on Desert Island Discs. His first piece of music was Chopin’s Etude no.12 in C minor. It wasn’t until 1951 that the choice of a luxury was introduced, with actress Sally Ann Howes picking garlic.
IN 1951, Elizabeth Taylor was divorced from U.S. hotel heir Conrad Hilton Jnr — the first of her eight marriages, to seven men, to fail.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Either you run the day or the day runs you. U.S. entrepreneur Jim Rohn (1930-2009)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I SUFFER from kleptomania. When it gets bad, I take something for it.