ON THIS DAY
JUNE 15, 2017
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JUNE 15, 1946
The United States today offered to destroy every atom bomb it has made and never to produce another — as soon as a world ‘police’ force can be created to control atomic energy and ensure universal inspection. The pronouncement represents civilisation’s first official attempt to save itself from a devastating atomic war.
JUNE 16, 1965
A FORMER french-Canadian Liberal MP and a British war hero are sending back their MBES because The Beatles were given the same award last week. ex-MP hector Dupuis, 69, of Montreal, said last night: ‘I do not want to be in the same Order that recognises such stupidity and hysteria as that long-haired Mersey group exhibits.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
COURTENEY COX, 53. The American actress ( right) played Monica Geller in sitcom friends and Gale Weathers in the horror film series Scream. Before she was famous, she appeared and danced in the music video to Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 hit Dancing In The Dark. A year later she became the first person to use the word ‘period’ in a TV commercial, when she appeared in an advert for Tampax. SIMON CALLOW, 68. The english actor and director is best-known for playing Gareth in four Weddings And A funeral, who died of a heart attack during one of the weddings. In real life, he married his partner Sebastian fox, 33, on the Greek island of Mykonos last summer. The actor has had his tonsils ‘taken out twice’ after doctors left a bit behind when he was operated on as a child. he chose a nose hair trimmer as his luxury on Desert Island Discs.
BORN ON THIS DAY
REVEREND Wilbert Awdry (1911-1997). The Anglican cleric created Thomas the Tank engine ( right) to entertain his son, Christopher, when he had the measles. Awdry made models of the engines out of a broomstick and scraps of wood, and drew faces on them. It was his wife who sent the stories to a literary agent after reading them scribbled on scraps of paper. ringo Starr narrated the first two series of the TV show spin-off, Thomas & friends.
ON JUNE 15...
IN 1996, 200 people were injured and £700million of damage was caused by an IRA bomb in Manchester Arndale Centre.
IN 2012, American nik Wallenda became the first person to cross the niagara falls on a highwire.
WORD WIZARDRY NEW WORD OF THE DAY
Nip-slip: Accidental display of a nipple.
GUESS THE DEFINITION Wallydrag (coined 1506)
A) A worthless, slovenly person (especially said of a woman) B) A boy with no more pocket money C) A large dress-pannier, fashionably fixed to a lady’s dress Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass
monkey: One theory is that the ‘monkey’, a brass rack used to stack cannon balls on board a ship, would contract in extreme cold, so the balls, being iron, would roll off.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there F. Scott Fitzgerald, U.S. novelist (1896-1940)
JOKE OF THE DAY
What did the green grape say to the purple grape? Oh my God, breathe! Breathe! Guess the definition answer: A)