ON THIS DAY

FEBRUARY 27, 1939

PeOPLe in Islington, the first district in Britain to receive free air raid shelters from the Government, are grateful but puzzled as there is little room in the backyards of most houses for them. At 5 Tiber Street, the Colville family have solved the problem by pulling down their shed. Uses found for shelters by other residents include: a ‘place for husbands to shelter from angry wives’, a dog kennel and a place to make ice cream.

FEBRUARY 27, 1965

SCreAMING girls nearly got blood out of a Stone last night when they dragged singer Mick Jagger off a rostrum at rediffusion’s ready Steady Go! programme. He had a twisted ankle. Later he said: ‘I was stamped on by scores of stiletto heels. If I’d had my usual long hairstyle they’d have grabbed it and I would not have got back to the rostrum. But I’d had a cut.’

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

JOANNe WOODWArD, 89. The U. S. actress ( right), married to Paul Newman for 50 years until his death in 2008, co-starred with him in ten films, including The Long Hot Summer in 1958. Asked about the success of their marriage, Woodward said: ‘ He’s very good-looking and very sexy . . . but all that goes out the window finally, and what is left is if you can make somebody laugh. And he sure does keep me laughing.’ TIMOTHy SPALL, 62. The London-born actor was a prolific sleepwalker and ‘once woke up in the nude in a corridor of a hotel in Cornwall in the small hours’. He and wife Shane bought a barge after he was given the all-clear from leukaemia in the late Nineties. They made a TV documentary about sailing round the British Isles and Spall said he was ‘like a cabin boy who’s been told he’s the captain of the ship’.

BORN ON THIS DAY

PADDy ASHDOWN (19412018). The former Liberal Democrat leader (right) was born Jeremy Ashdown in India and given his nickname at school, because of his Irish accent. The exroyal Marine, though close to Tony Blair, once told him: ‘Some folk think you’re a smarmy git.’ In 2015, he said he’d eat his hat if a BBC exit poll predicting a Tory majority was correct. David Dimbleby later served him a hat-shaped cake on Question Time. JOHN STeINBeCK (1902-68). The Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning U.S. author tried to join a course on how to dissect corpses, age 17. He told Stanford University medical school: ‘I want to learn about human beings.’ Second wife Gwyn said the only time she saw him cry was when his pet rat Burgess died.

ON FEBRUARY 27…

In 2014, a Swedish employment office sparked chaos after accidentally inviting 61,000 jobseekers to an interview by email. In 2015, Leonard Nimoy — Star Trek’s Mr Spock — died, aged 83.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION: Ataraxia (1886) A) Tranquillity. B) Confusion; disarray. C) Unhappiness. Answer below

PHRASE EXPLAINED

Silver bullet: Seemingly magical solution to a problem; from 1700s european folklore when it was said the only way to kill a werewolf was with a silver bullet.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

FOOD is life, life is food. If you don’t like my approach you are welcome to go down to McDonald’s. Keith Floyd, chef and restaurateur (1943-2009)

JOKE OF THE DAY

WHere do astronauts leave their spaceships? At parking meteors. Guess The Definition answer: A.