ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE FEBRUARY 28, 1967
SOUVENIR hunters have removed the four nameplates in Penny Lane, Liverpool, since The Beatles brought out their Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane record. Shopkeepers complained that the nameplates’ disappearance has led to confusion. The double A-side is number two in the charts.
FEBRUARY 28, 1972
RICHARd BURTON deftly produced the £380,000 jewelled pendant he has given Elizabeth Taylor for her 40th birthday and posed with it on his forehead, in the style of an Indian prince.
Burton said he and Elizabeth plan to donate the equivalent of the pendant’s cost to charity: ‘We do this sort of thing to square our conscience.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SIR BRIAN URqUHART, 100. The UN’s former under- secretary-general helped establish the organisation and was its second recruit. A World War II veteran, he helped liberate Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He survived a parachute drop where his chute failed to open, and narrowly escaped being killed when he was kidnapped by Congolese rebels during a UN peace mission in the Sixties. NATALIA VOdIANOVA, 37. The Russian model, who once sold fruit by the roadside to make a living, is one of the world’s highest-paid models, despite working only 20 days a year. The mother of five says she’s still asked for proof of her age if she orders wine at a meal in the U.S.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ROBIN COOK (1946-2005). The Scottish former foreign secretary was most famous for having resigned from Tony Blair’s government in 2003 over the imminent invasion of Iraq — and for his affair with his secretary, which he revealed to his wife as they were driving to Heathrow for a holiday, having been tipped off by downing Street that it would be in the next day’s papers. VINCENTE MINNELLI (1903-1986). The Oscar-winning director was the second of Judy Garland’s five husbands) and the father of actress Liza Minnelli. He said of Garland and Liza: ‘How many men can lay claim to being loved by the most extraordinary talents of not one, but two generations?’ His 1958 film Gigi set a record at the time for the most Oscars, winning nine, including best director for Minnelli.
ON FEBRUARY 28…
IN 1935, Wallace Carothers, a chemist at U.S. company duPont, invented nylon.
IN 1953, British scientist Francis Crick went into the Eagle pub in Cambridge with his American colleague James Watson and announced that they had ‘found the secret of life’, the double-helix structure of dNA. GUESS THE DEFINITION: Ataraxia A) Emotional tranquillity B) Confusion; disarray C) Unhappiness Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Silver bullet: Meaning a simple and seemingly magical solution to a complicated problem; it comes from European folklore, around 1700, when the only way to kill a werewolf was with a silver bullet.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
FASHION is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are. Quentin Crisp, English writer (1908-1999)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do butterflies sleep on? Caterpillows. Guess The Definition answer: A