ON THIS DAY
January 25, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JANUARY 25, 1947
MRS Rose Wood, of Great Sankey, Warrington, has had returned to her the 2oz ration of bacon and 1oz of fat which she sent to Mr John Strachey, Minister of Food.
She sent the bacon and fat as a protest against ‘the paucity of the rations’.
‘How you have the face to give a hard-working man 2oz of bacon and expect him to work on that I don’t know. Instead of us getting the food, it’s all for export. Why don’t you export yourself with it?’
JANUARY 25, 1957
IN September 1954 it was a wobbly front tooth that intrigued Prince Charles. By November last year the wobbly tooth had become a gap, and when the Prince saw the Duke of Edinburgh off on his tour of Australia he held his head down.
‘Tears,’ said observers. They were wrong. The Prince was embarrassed about that gap. But not any more. Yesterday’s picture (above) shows him with two fine, wellshaped new teeth in the front.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
PETER TATCHEll, 65. The human rights campaigner tried to make a citizen’s arrest of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe in london in 1999 for denouncing homosexuality. Tatchell called the police, but it was he who was arrested, while Mugabe was given an escort to do Christmas shopping in Harrods. ANGElA THoRNE ( pictured), 78. The English actress is best-known for her TV role in To The Manor Born, playing the uppercrust Marjory Frobisher. She and co- star Penelope Keith would often be sent off the set for giggling. Her actor sons are Rupert and laurence Penry-Jones.
BORN ON THIS DAY
WIllIAM SoMERSET MAuGHAM (18741965). The English novelist and playwright served in British Intelligence in both world wars. As a secret agent in Petrograd (now St Petersburg), he was involved in trying to prevent the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. RoBERT Boyle (1627-1691). The Irish-born, Eton-educated scientist is regarded as the first modern chemist. until this point, it was thought the best way to discover something was through philosophical argument. A cofounder of the Royal Society, he came up with Boyle’s law (the relation between volume and pressure of a gas) and the litmus test to tell acids from bases.
ON JANUARY 25 . . .
IN 1759, Scottish poet Robert Burns was born. The first Burns supper was held in July 1801, the fifth anniversary of his death. From then on, Burns Night was on his birthday.
IN 1949, the first Emmy television awards were broadcast. only six prizes were handed out at a time when there were fewer than a million TV sets in the whole of the u.S. The award for outstanding Television Personality went to ventriloquist Shirley Dinsdale.
WORD WIZARDRY
NEW WORD OF THE DAY Owling — posting pictures of yourself crouching in unlikely places (an internet craze). GUESS THE DEFINITION Pessomancy (coined 1727) Foretelling the future: A) by picking poetry at random. B) by using fingernails. C) by tossing pebbles PHRASE EXPLAINED
Pay on the nail — In medieval markets, accounts were settled at counters (short pillars known as nails) and in front of witnesses; payments were placed on these nails for people to see that all was correct.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
POP stars earn only two kinds of money: not as much as you think, and more than you could ever dream of. Bob Geldof
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did the bookworm say to the librarian? ‘May I burrow this book?’ Word wizardry answer: C