ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 285...
The shortest woman to give birth is American Stacey herald, who is 28.5in tall (2ft 4in). She has osteogenesis imperfecta, which stunts growth and causes brittle bones, but defied doctors to have three children. eldest daughter Kateri and youngest child, son Malachi, inherited her condition, but middle child Makya didn’t. At birth, Makya was 18in long, more than half her mum’s body length, and weighed 4lb 7oz. The National Lottery celebrated its 21st birthday last year by getting 285 of the 4,250 millionaires it has created to break the record for the longest cork-popping relay.
THERE ARE 81 DAYS LEFT
A CANNIBAL would consume more than
81,000 calories if he were to eat an average cooked human body, according to James Cole, a lecturer on human origins at the University of Brighton. An arm would offer 1,800 calories and a leg 7,150. The 124-minute 1975 film Jaws runs for 81 minutes before the shark makes an appearance. Director Steven Spielberg was having technical problems with the mechanical beast (right) used in the movie, so rewrote the script to focus on suspense and fear. The driving test became compulsory 81 years ago. A Mr Beere was the first to pass in 1935, paying 7/6d (37.5p) to take the test. Would-be drivers had to arrange to meet an examiner at a post office or town hall.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JOHN NETTLES, 73. The star of Bergerac reportedly earned £700,000 for every series of Midsomer Murders until he quit in 2009. Nettles met his wife, Cathryn, when his panto co-star Les Dawson was ‘boring her rigid with a very rude joke’ at a party. ‘I asked her if she wanted a drink and whisked her away.’ DAWN FRENCH, 59. The comedienne-turned-novelist, right, found passages in her autobiography about her father’s suicide when she was 19 so painful that she couldn’t record the audio-book version herself, asking actress Liza Tarbuck to do it on her behalf.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (1884-1962). The longest-serving First Lady of the U.S. appeared in adverts for mattresses and hot dogs. She gave a $35,000 fee for a margarine ad to charity and was inundated with letters after it aired. ‘The mail was evenly divided,’ she said. ‘One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation.’ EMILY DAVISON (1872-1913). The suffragette was arrested nine times and was killed after she stepped in front of King George v’s horse at the Derby. While serving a six-month sentence in holloway Prison for setting fire to post boxes, she threw herself down an iron staircase in protest at being force-fed.
ON OCTOBER 11th...
IN 1967, PM harold Wilson received an apology from pop group The Move after he sued them for printing a postcard with a caricature of him in the nude. It was to promote their new record, Flowers In The Rain, which went on to be the first single played on BBC Radio 1.
IN 1982, henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, was raised from the Solent, 437 years after it sank on its way to fight the French.
IN 1987, an investigation using £1 millionworth of sonar equipment failed to find any evidence for the Loch Ness monster.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
THE length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
Alfred Hitchcock, film director (1899-1980)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT does coincidence mean? That’s funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.