ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 250...
DOGS have the same intelligence as the average two-year- old child, with studies showing they can understand 250 different words and signals, count up to five and do basic maths. The research, conducted at the University of British Columbia in Canada, found that retrievers and border collies were the brightest breeds. PROLIFIC Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, author of Barchester Towers and Doctor Thorne, had strict rules for writing. He’d wake at 5 am and aim to write
250 words every 15 minutes for three hours, before going off to his job at the Post office. IN pre-revolutionary France, there were up to 250,000 different units of weights and measures, with variations across almost every province, district and town.
THERE ARE 116 DAYS LEFT
EIGHTY pieces of jewellery that had belonged to film star Elizabeth Taylor sold for $ 116 million (£74.9 million) in 2011, including the fabulous Krupp diamond (right), the 33.19 carat ring given to her by her husband Richard Burton. He bought it at auction for $ 307,000 (£ 230,000) in 1968 and presented it to Taylor onboard their yacht while moored on the Thames in London. ONLY one in two billion people will live to be 116 or older. According to records, no one in the UK has lived to be more than 115. THE Hundred years War, fought between England and France, actually lasted for 116
years from 1337 to 1453 and included battles such as Crecy and Agincourt as English and French kings fought for control of France. Two years after it ended, England descended into civil war with the Wars of the Roses.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
TIM HENMAN, 42. The British tennis No 1 in the days before Andy Murray. one of the secrets to his tennis success was a hearty breakfast. Every morning before Wimbledon, he had three eggs and three pieces of toast smeared with Bovril. EMILY MAITLIS, 46. The Newsnight presenter, who speaks Spanish, Italian, French and Mandarin. She said a BBC boss once told her that as a woman she would need to appear on Strictly Come Dancing to take her career to the next level. ‘I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
JACKIE TRENT (1940-2015). The singersongwriter from Staffordshire had a No 1 hit in 1965 with Where Are you Now?, which she wrote with her husband, composer Tony Hatch. The duo also wrote hits for Frank Sinatra and Shirley Bassey, but are perhaps best known for composing the theme tune to Neighbours. In fact, their song gave the Aussie soap its title, as Trent and Hatch thought its original name Ramsay Street was too similar to Coronation Street. CHARLES FOLEY ( 1930- 2013). The co-inventor of Twister saw his game take off when talk show host Johnny Carson and actress Eva Gabor played it on The Tonight Show in 1966. Gabor, wearing a low-cut gown, ended up on all fours with Carson on top of her. The game sold out the very next day.
ON SEPTEMBER 6th . . .
IN 1975, 18-year- old Martina Navratilova asked the U.S. for political asylum after the Czech Tennis Federation complained she was becoming too ‘Americanised’ and tried to restrict her from competing abroad.
IN 2007, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 71.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The term “serious actor” is kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it? Like “Republican party” or “airplane food”. Johnny Depp, actor
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHERE do frogs keep their savings? In the river bank.