ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE AUGUST 21, 1942
FOR wasting light in Piccadilly Circus, the United Artists Corporation Ltd was yesterday fined £300 with £15 costs. There were 64 bulbs alight with a total wattage of 3,190. Mr McKenna, the magistrate, commented: ‘Negligence in the time of our country’s peril is bad enough but when you get a well-to-do corporation saying we are going to make this place popular by using a blaze of light it is very bad.’
AUGUST 21, 1969
DISC jockey John Peel was refused service at eight cafes in Torquay, Devon, after a one-night appearance at a discotheque, because of his shoulder-length hair. ‘Long hair is fashionable,’ said the star of Radio 1. ‘I shall never go there again.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
KIM CATTRALL, 62. The Liverpool- born actress (pictured) played Samantha Jones in Sex And The City. Cattrall appears to be the one blocking a third film, having said her relationship with her co-stars was ‘toxic’. She was booked on the Pan Am 103 flight that exploded over Lockerbie in 1988, but changed her ticket ‘when I remembered to stop at Harrods to buy my mum a Wedgwood teapot’. USAIN BOLT, 32. The 6ft 5in ex-sprinter has eight Olympic gold medals and holds the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay world records. Bolt ate chicken nuggets before racing and said he had ‘about 1,000’ during the Beijing Olympics. In 2009 he paid £10,000 to adopt an abandoned cheetah cub called Lightning Bolt in Nairobi and pays £2,300 a year for its upkeep.
BORN ON THIS DAY
PRINCESS MARGARET (1930-2002). The Queen’s younger sister was a big fan of U.S. musician Louis Armstrong, who called her ‘one hip chick’. John Lennon nicknamed her ‘Priceless Margarine’. Margaret insisted everyone call her ‘Ma’am’, apart from close friends, who called her ‘Ma’am darling’. BARRY NORMAN (1933-2017). The British Film Institute called the Daily Mail’s former showbusiness editor ‘British television’s ambassador to the movies’ as presenter of the BBC’s Film programme for a quarter of a century. He was not overawed by celebrity and recalled he ‘almost came to blows with Robert De Niro. He stormed out of the room and I chased after him. He was a lot younger than me and a lot fitter than me. I could have been in deep trouble’.
ON AUGUST 21...
IN 1929, Mexican artists Frida Kahlo (pictured) and Diego Rivera married (they would divorce in 1939 and wed again the next year).
IN 2015, a message-in-a-bottle was found in Germany. It had been thrown into the sea by the UK Marine Biological Association 108 years earlier.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: The devil’s bedstead (1887) A) A whisper. B) A bribe; an inducement. C) The 13th card of the suit led in whist. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth: Somebody who seems innocent while being the opposite. It relates to the sense of cool, suggesting being unaffected by emotion.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
BOXING’S just showbusiness with blood. Frank Bruno, former boxer
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT’S worse than raining cats and dogs? Hailing taxis.
Guess The Definition answer: C.