ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE OCTOBER 2, 1940
POLICE and London Transport officials began a campaign last night to dissuade able-bodied young men from using Tube stations in Central London as night shelters. At several stations they were stopped and had their attention drawn to a prominently displayed notice urging that women, children and the infirm need the shelter most.
OCTOBER 2, 1975
A THOUSAND writers searching for the words to do justice to what they had seen [during the ‘Thrilla in Manila’], squirmed with envy when Muhammad Ali himself provided them. ‘What you saw was next to death. A fight like that is one step away from dying,’ said the world heavyweight champion after defeating arch-rival Joe Frazier.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DONNA KARAN, 71. The U.S. designer, founder of the DKNY label, has been hailed as one of the ‘undisputed holy trinity’ of American fashion, alongside Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. One of her most famous adverts was a 1992 billboard showing a woman wearing a Donna Karan double-breasted blazer being sworn in as U.S. president. STING, 68. Before finding fame as the frontman of The Police, the singer from Northumberland was once a teacher at a convent school, where he said he was the only member of staff ‘not in a habit’. His real name is Gordon Sumner, but was dubbed Sting after he performed in a black and yellow striped jumper.
BORN ON THIS DAY
MAHATMA GANDHI (1869-1948). The Indian lawyer and leader of the non-violent campaign for his country’s independence from British rule was assassinated, aged 78. In 1947, Gandhi gave Princess elizabeth and Philip Mountbattten a cotton shawl he had woven as a wedding gift — which Queen Mary reportedly ‘ prodded with great suspicion’, mistaking it for a loin-cloth. RICHARD III (1452-1485). The last Plantagenet king was also the last english king to die in battle. He had one of the shortest reigns in english history — just 26 months. In 2012, his remains were found in a Leicester car park. Historians have said it is only after his death that he became known as ‘Crookback Richard’ and that he may have hid his scoliosis from all but those closest to him.
ON OCTOBER 2…
IN 1977, the bodies of elvis Presley and his mother Gladys were moved from a Memphis cemetery and reinterred in the grounds of his former home, Graceland, after a failed attempt to snatch his coffin.
IN 1985, 59- year- old actor Rock Hudson ( pictured) became the first major Hollywood star to die of Aids.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: elapid (c. 1880) A) relating to an oyster B) relating to a cobra C) relating to a mole Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Carbon copy: meaning a duplicate of something written; it originated around the late 1800s when carbon copies were made by placing carbon paper between two sheets of ordinary paper.