ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JANUARY 14, 1937
EASTBOURNE police were tonight trying to solve the mystery of a middle-aged eccentric woman who was today found dead in her home — a large house in which one room was festooned with electric wires connected to about a dozen wireless sets, besides about a score of gold and silver watches, most of them working. Miss Bessie Norah Madeleine Hornby lived alone in one of the best districts of the town. It is believed she died from natural causes two days ago.
JANUARY 14, 1967
ACTRESS Jane Asher flew to America yesterday — with too many things on her mind to worry about it being Friday the 13th. There was the memory of a candelit dinner with Beatle Paul McCartney the previous night. Miss Asher, 20, who has said that she and Paul plan to marry this year, could not name the date. Paul was not at the airport. But at his London home, he said: ‘If I marry anyone it will be Jane Asher.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
EMILY WATSoN, 50. The English actress, who starred in Angela’s Ashes, War Horse and Gosford Park and is soon to play the lead in BBC1’s adaption of Apple Tree Yard, has been twice nominated for an oscar. Emily (right) says she’s often confused for Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, 26, but never corrects anyone: ‘No, I’m quite flattered.’ SIR TREvoR NUNN, 77. The theatre, film and opera director has worked on everything from Shakespeare to Les Misérables to Acorn Antiques: The Musical! He first directed a production at school aged 16, a role he took because he ‘had the loudest voice’. He made a fortune from writing the lyrics to the Cats’ show tune, Memory.
BORN ON THIS DAY
SIR CECIL BEAToN ( 1904- 80), the celebrated English society photographer, who took the official Coronation Day pictures of the Queen. But in his diaries, he could be scathing of his subjects: he said Marilyn Monroe was ‘like an over-excited child asked downstairs after tea’ and Mick Jagger looked ‘like a self-conscious suburban young lady’. HUGH LoFTING ( 1886- 1947). The Maidenhead-born author is most famous for his character Doctor Dolittle, the medic who could talk to animals. Lofting got the idea while fighting in the trenches in World War I and saw the lack of compassion for the horses on the battlefield.
ON JANUARY 14 . . .
IN 1970, Diana Ross (right) and The Supremes performed their final concert at the Frontier hotel in Las vegas.
IN 1989, 1,000 Muslims marched through Bradford to protest against Salman Rushdie’s award- winning novel The Satanic verses, and burned a copy.
WORD WIZARDRY
NEW WORD OF THE DAY
Menoporsche — the phenomenon of middleaged men attempting to recapture their lost youth by buying an expensive sports car.
GUESS THE DEFINITION
Anagogic (coined 1388)
A) Relating to things spiritual and mystical. B) Quarrelsome; contentious about trifles. C) Tired from complaining.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Playing to the gallery — from the mid17th century, the highest, cheapest part of a theatre was the gallery, where the least refined members of the audience were. To play to the gallery is to appeal to popular taste.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Friendship, I have said, is born at the moment when one man says to another ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .’ C .S. Lewis (1898-1963)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call a gorilla with a machine gun? Sir! Word wizardry answer: A