ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 53 OF 2016
THERE have been 53 prime ministers since Great Britain’s first, Sir Robert Walpole, in 1721. The most youthful was William Pitt the Younger, aged 24; the oldest was William Ewart Gladstone, who was prime minister four times and 84 when he finally left office. IT WAS 53 years after the invention of the phone that a line was installed in the White House — for Herbert Hoover in 1929. A REPLICA of the Mayflower, the ship that took the Pilgrims from Plymouth to the New World in 1620, took 53 days to cross the Atlantic in 1957— 13 days faster than the original.
THERE ARE 313 DAYS LEFT
FIVE people — each worth £325 million — share 313rd place on Britain’s rich list. They include the X Factor mogul Simon Cowell, oil family the Gettys and Riccardo Zacconi, who co-founded the company that created Candy Crush, the smartphone game. THERE are 313 black rhinos in captivity — one third of the world total.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JULIE WALTERS, 66 (right), the Birminghamborn actress known for her TV collaboration with Victoria Wood and for starring in the Harry Potter films, Mamma Mia!, Calendar Girls and Billy Elliot. Her big break alongside Michael Caine in the film Educating Rita almost didn’t happen. First choices for the roles were Dolly Parton and Paul Newman. BRUCE FORSYTH, 88. Mr Entertainment, famous as the tapdancing host of Sunday Night At The london Palladium, Play Your Cards Right, The Price Is Right and Strictly Come Dancing. His great-grandfather, William Forsyth, was a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society and gave his name to the plant genus Forsythia. DREW BARRYMORE, 41. The Hollywood actress who, aged seven, starred as Gertie in Steven Spielberg’s E.T., wrote her autobiography at 14, revealing: ‘I had my first drink at age nine, began smoking marijuana at ten and at 12 took up cocaine.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
KENNETH WILLIAMS (1926-1988, right). The comic actor appeared in 25 Carry On films, but was not paid more than £5,000 for any of them. He said he earned more for appearing in an ad for St Ivel dairy spread. STEVE IRWIN (1962-2006). The fearless Melbourneborn wildlife expert was killed by a stingray while filming a documentary at the Great Barrier Reef. He admitted he had a fear of just one creature: parrots.
ON FEBRUARY 22nd . . .
IN 1797, Britain was invaded for the first time since 1066, when 1,400 soldiers of the French Revolutionary Army landed in Pembrokeshire. They quickly surrendered to 500 reservists and militia, fighting alongside dozens of local women.
IN 1879, Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first shop in New York selling everything at five cents. The store was a failure, closing down just a few weeks later. However, a second store, selling everything for five or ten cents (a ‘five and dime’ store) led to the chain of Woolworths stores.
IN 1997, the world’s first cloned mammal, Dolly the Sheep was born. Cloned from a mammary gland cell, she was named after Dolly Parton.
IN 2011, a massive earthquake in Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand’s South Island, killed 185 people.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
We don’t have to save the world — the world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
JOKE OF THE DAY
DID you hear about the scarecrow who won a Nobel Prize?
He was outstanding in his field.