ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JULY 19, 1943
A WOundEd officer of a Home Counties regiment ate his notebook page by page and chewed up maps to stop them falling into enemy hands if captured, after his Bren Carrier was hit near Scordia, Italy. Eventually, he was brought in by our troops. JULY 19, 1961 LOndOn Transport has declared war on the use of portable radios. Staff on its 8,000 buses and coaches were told to ask passengers not to play radios and to order anyone off if they refused under Public Service Vehicle Regulations 1936.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BEnEdICT Cumberbatch, 42. The Harroweducated actor — who has two sons, Christopher and Hal, with wife Sophie Hunter (right) — complains he is a victim of ‘posh-bashing’, saying he’s ‘castigated as a moaning, rich, public-school b******’. Last year, the Sherlock star rescued a deliveroo cyclist from a gang of four muggers in London after leaping out of a taxi and dragging off the attackers before they fled. ILIE nASTASE, 72. The Romanian former world no 1 tennis star continues to live up to his nickname ‘nasty’. Last year, while captaining his country’s Fed Cup team against Great Britain in Bucharest, he was banned for swearing at an umpire, insulting British no 1 Johanna Konta and asking her captain Anne Keothavong for her room number. He also made derogatory remarks about Serena Williams’ as then unborn child, which she branded racist.
BORN ON THIS DAY
FLOREnCE Foster Jenkins ( 1868- 1944). The u. S. socialite and amateur soprano, right, played by Meryl Streep in a 2016 film, became a sensation due to her out-of-tune singing. Her public debut came in 1944, age 76, at Carnegie Hall — described by a critic as ‘one of the weirdest mass jokes new York has ever seen’. She died days later. EdGAR dEGAS (1834-1917). The French painter and sculptor is famous for his ballerinas and the law school dropout was one of the first artists to use photography as an aid to composition. A £700,000 degas picture stolen nine years ago from a Marseille museum was found on a Paris bus this year.
ON JULY 19…
IN 1843, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s SS Great Britain, then the world’s largest ship, was launched in Bristol.
IN 1877, Wimbledon-born Spencer Gore — the inventor of the volley — won the first-ever Wimbledon tennis final.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Moirologist (1886) A) Collector of birds’ eggs. B) Professional mourner. C) doll expert. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Every nook and cranny: Meaning to search everywhere; it comes from medieval ‘nook’, which refers to an out of the way corner and ‘cranny’ — a crack in the wall.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most. John Ruskin, English art critic (1819-1900) I uSEd to work in a shoe recycling shop. It was sole destroying. Guess The Definition answer: B.