ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 350...
THE Great Fire of London broke out
350 years ago. Diarist Samuel Pepys buried his wine and a wheel of Parmesan cheese in a pit in his garden to protect them. CHINA, the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco, is home to at least
350 million smokers. DURING the past six years more than
£350,000 has been spent on government cars to chauffeur ministers’ red boxes around Whitehall — without their owners.
THERE ARE 16 DAYS LEFT
AT 16 letters long, unprosperousness is the longest word in the English language in which each of its letters occurs at least twice. THE wife of Russian peasant Feodor Vassilyev has been called the world’s ‘most prolific mother’, having apparently given birth to 16 sets of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets, totalling 69 children from 27 labours in the 18th century.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
FRANkIE DETToRI, 46. The Italian-born 5ft 4in jockey (right) says he is ‘always hungry’ and has been on a diet for 30 years, frequently needing to get down to less than 9st: ‘I’ve tried all sorts: diuretics; laxatives, even sweating in a hot car.’ DAVE CLARk, 74. The leader and drummer of The Dave Clark Five band sold more than 100 million records in the Sixties with hits including Glad All over and Bits And Pieces. As a friend, he was keeping a bedside vigil and was the only person with Freddie Mercury when the Queen frontman died at his home in kensington in 1991, at the age of 45. MICHELLE DoCkERY, 35. The actress played Lady Mary Crawley in ITV’s Downton Abbey and on a less grand scale was the voice of a ‘British Woman’ in U.S. cartoon Family Guy. She’s ambivalent about her Essex roots, saying in 2012: ‘I am not an Essex girl. That doesn’t mean that I’m not proud of where I’m from.’ A year later she called herself a ‘proud Essex girl’ whose accent ‘comes back if I’ve had a couple of drinks’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JEAN PAUL GETTY (1892-1976). The American oil tycoon was named the world’s richest private citizen and died worth more than $2 billion. But he was also known as a miser, installing a payphone in his Surrey mansion and ‘dial-locking devices’ on other phones. ALAN FREED (1921-1965). The U.S. disc jockey was the first mainstream radio presenter to play rock ’n’ roll on his shows in the early Fifties. His career was ruined when it was discovered that he was taking ‘payola’ — bribes from record companies to play specific records. He was fined in 1962 after admitting ‘commercial bribery’, and died three years later as a result of alcoholism.
ON DECEMBER 15 . . .
IN 1939, Gone With the Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh (right), had its world premiere in Atlanta, Georgia. The mayor declared a threeday festival and ‘ urged every Atlanta woman to put on hoop skirts and appealed to Atlanta males to don tight trousers and a beaver, sprout a goatee, sideburns and kentucky colonel whiskers’.
IN 1966, Walt Disney died aged 65 of lung cancer after a lifetime smoking cigarettes and a pipe.
IN 2004, Home Secretary David Blunkett resigned after fast-tracking a visa application for his ex-lover’s nanny.