ON THIS DAY

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE

FEBRUARY 26, 1940 FARMERS won’t have Land Army girls because their wives don’t like them as they think they’re ‘too glamorous’. That, at any rate, is the position in Buckinghamshire, according to Mr Peter Bell of Steeple Claydon, Bletchley. ‘Some of the younger wives are frankly jealous, and some of the older ones say they can’t be bothered with these younger women about the place.’ FEBRUARY 26, 1964 IF John, George, Paul and Ringo had been among the foreign correspondents at the Savoy Hotel in London yesterday, they would have voted Prince Philip fab, with-it and three times yeah. For when a fellow guest with a slight non-British accent asked if the Prince considered Beatlemania to be helpful or harmful to the British way of life, the Prince replied: ‘Entirely helpful.’

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

SANDIE SHAW, 71. The singer ( pictured) from Essex was Britain’s first Eurovision winner, with Puppet On A String in 1967 — but on the eve of the contest the BBC tried to drop her because she had been implicated as the ‘other woman’ in a divorce case. She said one of the reasons she sang bare-footed was her terrible sense of balance. She retired from music in 2013 and now works as a psychotherapist. JOSEPHINE TEWSON, 87. The English comedy actress played Miss Davenport in Last Of The Summer Wine and Elizabeth Warden, the accident-prone neighbour of Hyancinth Bouquest in Keeping Up Appearances. She was married to Reginald Perrin star Leonard Rossiter for four years, describing him as ‘a wonderful actor and a terrible husband’.

BORN ON THIS DAY

FATS DOMINO ( 19282017). The U. S. singersongwriter had hits with Ain’t That A Shame and Blueberry Hill and in the 1950s sold more records than anyone except Elvis — who referred to Domino (right) as ‘the real king’. His New Orleans home — and gold discs — were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. LEVI STRAUSS (1829-1902). The Germanborn American dry goods merchant invented jeans in 1873 with the help of one of his customers, patenting the use of rivets to make men’s work trousers last longer. They were called ‘waist overalls’ until 1960, when people started using the word jeans.

ON FEBRUARY 26…

IN 1993, six people died and 1,000 injured when a truck bomb exploded in a car park below New York’s World Trade Center.

IN 1995, Britain’s oldest merchant bank, Barings, collapsed after ‘rogue trader’ Nick Leeson had hidden losses of £827million.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION Xiphopagus (1848) A) Twins joined at the abdomen. B) A person who eats fine food, a glutton. C) Having two toes pointing forward and two backwards. Answer below

PHRASE EXPLAINED

Red letter day: Refers to any day of special significance; it originates from the Roman Republic when important days were indicated on a calendar in red.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

ThE more bombers, the less room for doves of peace Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet leader (1894-1971)

JOKE OF THE DAY

WHAT did the alien say to the garden? Take me to your weeder. Guess The Definition answer: A Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD