ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
FEBRUARY 8, 1937 WOMEN in Ceylon won’t be permitted to vote in council elections. Debating the issue at their urban district councils’ annual conference, delegates were told by Mr Donald Obeyesekere, formerly of Trinity College, Cambridge, and barrister of the Inner Temple: ‘By women taking part in politics, morals and womanhood in European countries have degenerated.’ The delegates decided not to allow women a vote. FEBRUARY 8, 1957 THE thriller Dial M For Murder has caused a storm in Moscow, where it is a smash hit, and because of Communist Party pressure, it will soon be taken off. Pravda has denounced it as ‘a low-level bourgeois gutter play’ but the public loves it. It is sold out for weeks ahead, and ticket touts are doing a thriving business. Like most Soviet plays, it is well acted, except for a certain woodenness in the embraces.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SARAH MONTAGUE, 51. The presenter of the Today programme was, for about a decade, the only woman hosting Radio 4’s flagship show. The former stockbroker once received a letter from a listener suggesting his dentist fix the ‘Madonnaesque gap’ in her front teeth. Her co-host John Humphrys said she accused him of making her life miserable ‘by always turning down the studio thermostat’. JOHN WILLIAMS, 85. The American is the world’s most successful film composer and, with 50 Academy Award nominations, second to Walt Disney as the most-nominated person. (He has won five.) He’s composed the scores to more than 100 films, including Jaws, the Star Wars movies and Schindler’s List. He does all his work with pen and paper.
BORN ON THIS DAY
DAME EDITH EVANS (1888-1976). The English stage actress, who often portrayed haughty aristocrats, had a career that spanned 65 years. Nominated for three Oscars in the 1960s, she is best remembered for Lady Bracknell’s line in The Importance Of Being Earnest: ‘A ha-a-a-andbag?’ JAMES DEAN (1931-1955). The film icon, killed at 24 in a head-on crash in his Porsche Spyder, was known as ‘the first American teenager’. Star of Rebel Without A Cause and Giant, he had two front teeth knocked out on a trapeze as a child. He said he lost them in a motorbike accident and would shock people by taking out his false teeth during conversations.
ON FEBRUARY 8...
IN 1587, after 19 years of imprisonment, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for plotting to assassinate her cousin, Elizabeth I.
IN 1922, President Warren Harding installed the White House’s first radio.
IN 1952, Princess Elizabeth proclaimed herself Queen, watched by 150 dignitaries at St James’s Palace. She said: ‘My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than I shall always work, as my father did throughout his reign, to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples, spread as they are all the world over.’
WORD WIZARDRY
NEW WORD OF THE DAY JOMO (acronym): joy of missing out GUESS THE DEFINITION Garbist (coined 1640) A) an old man given to telling anecdotes B) one adept at engaging in polite behaviour C) a female wool-gatherer
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Turn over a new leaf — relating to pages in a book. A similar derivation is ‘take a leaf out of someone’s book’, meaning to ‘imitate or emulate’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
COMing together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. Henry Ford, U.S. industrialist (1863-1947)
JOKE OF THE DAY
‘Doctor, Doctor, I feel like a pack of cards!’ ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ guess The Definition answer: B