ON THIS DAY

JANUARY 27, 1953

MISS Rita Hayworth received her divorce today in Reno, Nevada, from Aly Khan. It was an ordinary ‘working-girl’ divorce; no alimony and no provision for support of Yasmin, their three-year-old daughter — who climbed into the judge’s lap after the hearing.

JANUARY 27, 1998

BILL CLINTON emerged from four days of silence yesterday to take the biggest gamble of his political life. Despite his lawyers’ pleas not to say anything about an alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, the U.S. President decided to face the American people. ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman … ’ he insisted.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

ROSAMUND PIKE, 41. The actress daughter of two opera singers, and star of Gone Girl (right) became a Bond girl with her role in Die Another Day. She studied English Literature at Oxford, speaks French and German and plays the piano and cello. She says: ‘If you grew up without money, your attitude to it never changes. Even though I can afford it now, I still feel rising panic as I watch the taxi meter go up.’ ALAN CUMMING, 55. The Scottish actor starred on film in Emma, on TV in The Good Wife and on stage in Cabaret. He has his own bar in New York called Club Cumming, and frequently serves drinks to customers, though often messes up the orders, saying: ‘I have great licence to make a mistake and say, “Well, it’s not my main job”.’

BORN ON THIS DAY

WOLFGANG Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). By the time the Austrian composer (right) was four, he could learn a new song on the clavier (a keyboard instrument) in just half an hour, and by the age of eight he had published his first piece of music, a violin sonata in five parts. He had the best-selling CD of 2016, beating Rihanna and Beyonce. DONNA REED (1921-1986). The U.S. actress played the wife of James Stewart’s character in It’s A Wonderful Life and won an Oscar for her role in From Here To Eternity. She was as much a TV icon as a film star and had her own sitcom — The Donna Reed Show — of which she said: ‘We have proved the public really does want to see a healthy woman, not a girl, not a neurotic, not a sexpot.’

ON JANUARY 27…

IN 1945, Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in Poland where at least 1.1million people, mostly Jews, had been murdered.

IN 1948, the BBC started broadcasting its Television Dancing Club. Come Dancing would join the schedules two years later — a forerunner of Strictly Come Dancing, which launched in 2004.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION: Nacre (c 1590)

A) Pendulous skin under the throat of cattle. B) Wool taken from a dead sheep. C) Mother-of-pearl from any shelled mollusc.

Answer below

PHRASE EXPLAINED

Jack of all trades, master of none:

Someone who’s good at a variety of things but not great at any one; originated from the 1600s. Jack often meant ‘common man’.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles.

George Mikes, Hungarian-born writer (1912-1987)

JOKE OF THE DAY

WHAT do lonely fir trees do? Pine. Guess the definition answer: C.