ON THIS DAY
July 5 2016
IT’S DAY 187 OF 2016
THE Metropolitan Police Force was set up in London 187 years ago by Tory home secretary Robert Peel — the first modern police force in Britain. A year later, PC Joseph Grantham was the first officer to be killed on duty, when he intervened in a fight between two drunks and was beaten to death. At his inquest, the jury returned a verdict of ‘justifiable homicide’, possibly due to public dislike of the new police force. BLENHEIM Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill (right) has 187 rooms. He said of the Oxfordshire estate: ‘At Blenheim I took two very important decisions: to be born and to marry. I am happily content with the decisions I took on both occasions.’ TO count from one to 187,000,000 would take you about eight years.
THERE ARE 179 DAYS LEFT
PABLO PICASSO’S 1955 work Les Femmes d’Alger (Women Of Algiers) was sold for
$179 million last year (£115 million), making it the most expensive painting sold at auction. Covering the story, a New York TV station was mocked by art lovers when it blurred out the Cubist depictions of breasts so as not to offend its viewers. AVATAR, by Titanic director James Cameron, holds the record for the film with the highest worldwide box office takings —
£1.79 billion. For the sci-fi movie, a linguist created an entire ‘alien’ language, Na’vi, from scratch, with words such as Kaltxì for Hello, Nga for You and Tskxe for Rock.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
AMÉLIE MAURESMO, 37. The French tennis player and former world No 1 went on to become Andy Murray’s coach, before the two parted ways in May this year. One of the first mainstream French athletes to come out as gay, she gave birth to a son Aaron last August. FASHION designer Sir Paul Smith, 70. Born in Nottingham, Sir Paul had dreamt of being a professional racing cyclist but was forced to change tack after an horrific accident — on his bike — at age 17, while on his way to work at a clothing warehouse. Today he has 300 stores worldwide, with 200 in Japan, where he enjoys cult status.
BORN ON THIS DAY
DOLLY the sheep (19962003), the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, was born in Edinburgh. Dolly got her name from an off-the-cuff remark made by a research assistant. As she’d come from a mammary gland cell, he said: ‘We’re going to have to call it Dolly’ — in homage to the famously busty singersongwriter Dolly Parton. CECIL RHODES (1853-1902), one of the most famous imperialists of the 19th century, who founded the southern African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), which was named after him. His father was a Hertfordshire vicar who boasted he never preached a sermon longer than ten minutes.
ON JULY 5TH ...
IN 1954, the BBC broadcast its first daily TV news programme. The 20-minute bulletin was read by Richard Baker and introduced as an ‘Illustrated summary of the news’.
IN 1954, Elvis Presley recorded his first single, That’s All Right, at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee.
IN 1975, American tennis player Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win Wimbledon, beating defending champion Jimmy Connors three sets to one.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I WASN’T always rich. There was a time I didn’t know where my next husband was coming from. Mae West, actress (1893-1980)
JOKE OF THE DAY
THERE’S a problem with one-armed butlers. They can take it but they can’t dish it out.