ON THIS DAY
APRIL 23, 1941
DoCkErS on Merseyside need more meat. Employers and union leaders said yesterday that canteen arrangements are so bad that dockers have often to do hours of overtime on tea and cake. The Ministry of labour says there may be a plan to coordinate the buying of meat by the canteens.
APRIL 23, 1968
THE Tory Shadow Cabinet unanimously supported Mr Edward Heath’s decision to sack Mr Enoch Powell from his post as Shadow Defence Minister [after his ‘rivers of Blood’ speech on immigration]. Mr Heath said: ‘I believed his speech was liable to damage race relations.’
lEE MaJorS, 79. Best known for TV series such as The Six Million Dollar Man and The Fall Guy, he only got into acting after a severe back injury ended a promising football career. once married to Farrah Fawcett, the couple were said to be the inspiration for Midnight Train To Georgia. Songwriter Jim Weatherly, who was friends with Majors, phoned one evening and was told by Fawcett that he wasn’t home and she was taking a midnight plane to Houston to visit her family. The song title was later changed to Georgia, and was a no 1 hit for Gladys knight & The Pips. DEV PaTEl, 28. The london-born actor has starred in Slumdog Millionaire, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films and lion. last year, he attended the oscars with mum anita (pictured), who secured his big break when she answered a local newspaper advert for the Channel 4 teen drama Skins. She dragged Patel, then 16, out of school the day before a science exam to audition.
J.M.W. TurnEr (1775-1851). regarded by many as Britain’s greatest ever painter, Joseph Mallord William Turner has been described as a ‘pug-ugly, money-grabbing philanderer’. The landscape artist was known for being stingy, and the author, Sir Walter Scott, who commissioned several engravings, complained: ‘He will do nothing without cash, and anything for it.’ JaMES BuCHanan (1791-1868). The 15th u.S. president (1857-61) is the only one to have been a bachelor. His niece, Harriet Johnston, acted as First lady (Buchanan had become her guardian after she was orphaned aged 11). He is regarded as one of america’s worst-ever leaders, due mainly to his failure to stop Southern states from seceding in the lead-up to the civil war.
IN 1616, William Shakespeare ( pictured) died, aged 52.
IN 1992, Princess anne and Mark Phillips divorced after 18 years of marriage.
GUESS THE DEFINITION Zenzizenzi zenzic (coined 1557)
a) Chirping like that of the cicada insect. B) a terrible noise from heaven. C) The eighth power of a number. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Bean feast: Primarily an annual dinner at which a ‘ king cake’ had a bean hidden inside it, and the bean-king was whoever had that slice of the cake.
War is what happens when language fails. Margaret Atwood, Canadian novelist