ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JUNE 22, 1955
MRS Ruth Ellis turned to a nurse attendant in the dock at the Old Bailey yesterday and smiled as the jury announced their verdict: guilty of murder. That smile was the first sign of emotion the 28-year- old platinum blonde had given during her trial for shooting her lover, David Blakely, a 25-year-old racing motorist, in a Hampstead street on Easter Sunday. [Less than a month later, she became the last woman to be hanged in the UK.]
JUNE 22, 1978
THE broadcasting of Parliament has been a switch-off for listeners. Fewer than 0.5 per cent of the population have tuned in to the twice-weekly Prime Minister’s Question Time, and the broadcasts have not attracted a single new listener to radio.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DAME ESTHER RANTzEN, 80. The TV presenter, from Hertfordshire (pictured), presented That’s Life for 21 years and claimed in her autobiography ‘ to have interviewed more people than any other television reporter in the world’. Last year she said she wouldn’t have been able to make it in TV today: ‘I wasn’t nearly pretty enough.’ CyNDI LAUPER, 67. The U.S. singer-songwriter and actress has sold 50 million records with songs including True Colors and Time After Time. The Grammy, Emmy and Tony award winner says she is a big fan of Her Majesty and that she speaks ‘the Queens English. But of course, it’s a different Queens…’ [she is from the borough of Queens in New york]. Lauper says she will never tire of performing her biggest hit, Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
BORN ON THIS DAY
RALPH WAITE (1928-2014). The U.S. actor (pictured) made his name playing John Walton Sr in TV family drama The Waltons and also directed 16 episodes. In 2004, Waite’s character was voted third in a poll of the 50 ‘greatest TV dads of all time’. RICHARD GURLEy DREW (1899-1980). The American, who dropped out of his mechanical engineering degree, invented masking tape while working at a sandpaper manufacturer. It gained the name Scotch after a worker at a car body shop where it was being tested said it had too little adhesive on it and said: ‘Take this back to your Scotch (stingy) bosses, and tell them to put more adhesive on it.’
ON JUNE 22…
IN 1981, Mark Chapman pleaded guilty to killing John Lennon in New york, saying God instructed him to shoot him.
IN 1984, Princess Margaret became the first royal to take part in a BBC drama when she played herself in Radio 4’s The Archers.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Vavasour (early 14th century)
A) A vassal ranking just below a baron. B) To burn the down off seabirds after plucking. C) A greedy guest Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED: To go off at half-cock:
To fail due to inadequate preparation, or act in haste; one of many idioms derived from the use of firearms; to fire a flintlock gun, the cock or striker must be fully retracted.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
It usually takes 100 years to make a law; and then, after it has done its work, it usually takes 100 years to get rid of it.
Henry Ward Beecher, U.S. clergyman (1813-87)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT goes dot-dot-dot-croak?
A morse toad.
Guess The Definition answer: A.