ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE DECEMBER 27, 1963
BEATLE Ringo Starr (right) put down his drumsticks yesterday and sat at the controls as second-in-command of a chartered Viking. He was flying back to work after spending Christmas at his Liverpool home. Also on board: thousands of pounds worth of the Mersey sound, including Tommy Quickly and Cilla Black. Ringo said: ‘This is better than a car — and no roundabouts.’
Brian Epstein, manager of almost everyone on the plane, paid £400 so they could leave their London Christmas show to fly home.
DECEMBER 27, 1967
THE first breath-test Christmas has been a much safer one on the roads. Provisional figures show a dramatic drop in the death toll. In the four days up to Christmas Day, 86 people died. The equivalent figures for last year were 136 dead. In Northern Ireland, where the breath test law does not apply, the number of accidents, deaths and people injured all increased.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JANET STREET-PoRTER, 71. The journalis, broadcaster, and passionate rambler has been married four times. She never washes her own hair; someone comes round to do it for her once a week. Street-Porter said Elton John named one of his Alsatians Janet ‘because it yapped and barked a lot’. VISCoUNT ASToR, 66. Samantha Cameron’s stepfather had a surprising reconciliation with Mandy Rice-Davies, who’d rebutted his father’s claim to have had an affair with her during the Profumo scandal with the line: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ The fourth viscount said: ‘Any girl of 19 who can get into the oxford Dictionary of Quotations, whether with something true or not true, has to be rather admired.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
SCoTTy MooRE (1931-2016). The U.S. guitarist was crucial to creating Elvis Presley’s sound — working with him from his first recordings and appearing in films such as Jailhouse Rock and G.I. Blues. Rolling Stone Keith Richards has said: ‘All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like that. Everyone else wanted to be Elvis. I wanted to be Scotty.’ HEATHER o’RoURKE (197588). The U.S. child star shot to fame playing Carol Anne Freeling in the 1982 horror film Poltergeist (right) — uttering the famous line ‘They’re heeeere!’ — and its two sequels. She died at 12 from an infection caused by a congenital intestinal disorder.
ON DECEMBER 27…
IN 1836, Britain’s most deadly avalanche hit Lewes in Sussex, killing eight people. Today a pub — named the Snowdrop Inn in commemoration — stands on the site.
IN 2007, Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto, the first woman leader of a democratic Muslim nation, was assassinated, aged 54.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Porrect (coined early 15 century) a) To crowd together into a narrow room. b) A grumbler. c) To stretch out horizontally. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
A bolt from the blue: Meaning a complete surprise, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. It derives from Thomas Carlyle, in his 1837 book The French Revolution: A History: ‘arrestment, sudden really as a bolt out of the blue, has hit strange victims’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again. Anne Frank, German-born diarist (1929-1945)
JOKE OF THE DAY
Why are Christmas trees so bad at sewing? They always drop their needles. Guess the Definition answer: C