ON THIS DAY
February 20, 2016
IT’S DAY 51 OF 2016
THE CIA did not acknowledge the existence of Area 51, the military base in Nevada rumoured to hold an alien craft, until 2013. Hillary Clinton says that if she is elected president, she will ‘ get to the bottom’ of questions about what the government knows of UFOs. THE Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, which runs the Oscars, comprises 51 members including Tom Hanks and Annette Bening. Of the 51, 49 are white. VARIOUS grains can be used to make whiskey, but bourbon whiskey, or bourbon, has to be made from a mash of at least 51 per cent corn. This is because early european settlers in the U.S. found the rye they normally used for whisky hard to obtain.
THERE ARE 315 DAYS LEFT
WHEN it was rebuilt in 2007, Wembley Stadium’s ‘twin towers’, used as cleaning supplies stores, were replaced by the world’s longest single-span arch — which measures 315 metres long. AT 315ft, Norwich Cathedral’s spire is the second tallest in england after Salisbury Cathedral’s (404ft). edith Cavell, the British nurse executed by the Germans in World War I after treating soldiers on both sides, was buried in the grounds at Norwich, her home city.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
RIHANNA, 28 (right). The singer and actress, born Robyn Rihanna Fenty in Barbados, is best known for songs Umbrella, and What’s My Name. To promote her seventh album, she chartered a Boeing 777 and flew 150 journalists to seven countries in seven days. GORDON BROWN, 65. The son of a Church of Scotland minister, the former Chancellor and Prime Minister is blind in his left eye after a kick in the head while playing school rugby. At edinburgh University he dated Margarita, Crown Princess of Romania, who later was quoted as saying: ‘I never stopped loving him, but . . . It was politics, politics, politics.’ BRENDA BLETHYN, 70. Now on TV as Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope, she was born Brenda Anne Bottle in Ramsgate, the youngest of nine, and used to be a typist. She was asked for her autograph while out with her mother, who said: ‘Who did they think you were?’
BORN ON THIS DAY
KURT COBAIN (1967-1994). The lead singer of Nirvana, best known for their hit Smells like Teen Spirit, killed himself with a shotgun at the height of his career. At his wedding to fellow rock singer Courtney love in 1992, he wore green gingham pyjamas. ROBERT ALTMAN (1925-2006). At the 2006 Academy Awards, the Gosford Park director, then 81, said he’d had a heart transplant a decade earlier. The heart came from a woman in her 30s so, he jokingly suggested, he had 40 years more to live.
ON FEBRUARY 20 . . .
IN 1935, Norwegian Caroline Mikkelsen became the first woman to land on Antarctica, where a mountain is named after her.
IN 1962, the people of Perth in Australia all turned their lights on at the same time to greet astronaut John Glenn who was orbiting above them in Friendship 7.
IN 1985, the sale of contraceptives became legal in the Republic of Ireland.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
Harper Lee (1926-2016)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY should you never go out with a tennis player? Because ‘love’ is ‘nothing’ to them.