ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE MAY 7, 1945
THOUSANDS of people in South London ran into the streets last night and began singing and cheering, having seen flashes in the sky and mistakenly thinking VE day had been announced. tube station shelters were empty for the first time since September 1940. [VE day was celebrated on May 8.]
MAY 7, 1954
JOLLY Roger Bannister has done it. Last night, the 25year-old ran the world’s first sub four-minute mile, in three minutes, 59.4 seconds at Oxford’s Iffley Road track, and was swept up in a mass of cheering, shouting spectators. Bannister (right) said: ‘the fact that I have been able to do it first and bring it to Britain pleases me enormously.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BRIAN TURNER, 73. the celebrity chef from halifax has appeared on TV’s Ready Steady Cook and Saturday Kitchen, and has cooked for the royals. turner, who won a Michelin star, trained at the Savoy and Claridge’s and started work as a child in his father’s transport cafe. he has said: ‘I was basically injected with lard from the age of five.’ ANYA HINDMARCH, 51. the handbag designer from Essex shot to fame thanks to her ‘I’m not a plastic bag’ tote, which had 80,000 people queuing to buy one. In taiwan, 30 people were hospitalised in the frenzy to buy one. She says she has devoted her life to handbags ‘because you don’t have to try them on, you don’t have to be a certain size, they can completely alter your mood’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (18401893). the Russian romantic composer is best known for his three ballets, the nutcracker, Swan Lake and the Sleeping Beauty. he was frequently blunt with his views on rival composers, and wrote of ‘that scoundrel Brahms’ in his diary in 1886: ‘What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this selfinflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius.’ EVA PERON (1919-1952). the former actress (right), nicknamed Evita, became first lady of Argentina when her husband, Juan Peron, was elected president in 1946. She and her siblings were not allowed to attend their father’s funeral when she was just six because they were illegitimate. On the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Ciudad Evita (Evita City) is built in the profile of her face.
ON MAY 7…
IN 1915, a German u-boat torpedoed the British transatlantic liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 American citizens. the event was a key factor in the u.S. joining World War I.
IN 2011, Spanish golfer and former world number one Seve Ballesteros died, aged 54, two and a half years after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Gringe (2016) A) to show one’s embarrassment. B) to shy away from. C) A grown-out fringe of hair. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED Not to care two hoots —
meaning to not care remotely. It’s from American slang where a ‘hoot’ is a ‘jot’ or a minute speck.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call a pig that’s a karate expert? A pork chop. Guess The Definition answer: C.