ON THIS DAY
November 26, 2020
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE NOVEMBER 26, 1947
WAR Office restrictions on German PoWs are to be relaxed at Christmas so that they can spend two days and nights away from camps or hostels with anyone who invites them. Their hosts will be responsible for the prisoners’ behaviour and return to camp.
NOVEMBER 26, 1984
ACROSS the world, voices have been raised in horror about the starving millions of Ethiopia. And yesterday, a cast of more than 20 pop superstars raised their voices to make a special charity record, Do They Know It’s Christmas? — written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure — to help alleviate the effects of the famine.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
RITA ORA, 30. The British pop star arrived in London from Kosovo as a refugee aged one. Ora, who is said to be worth £20 million, has been a judge on The X Factor, The Voice and The Masked Singer and notched up four UK No 1s. Ora praised her ‘superhero’ mum Vera after she returned from retirement to the NHS frontline to help out during the pandemic. JOHN AMAECHI, 50. Once the highestpaid British basketball star in America, the sportsman became the first openly gay player in NBA history in 2007. He was 6ft 9in as a teenager and said that when he started playing basketball, in a gym in Stockport, it was the ‘first time I wasn’t a freak’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
WILLIS CARRIER (1876-1950). The American engineer invented the first electric air conditioner. He designed it for a printing company to stop its paper changing shape in the humidity, but was soon selling his machines to the White House and earned the title ‘The Man Who Cooled America’. Carrier came up with the idea while watching fog roll across a station platform. CYRIL CUSACK ( 19101993). The South-African born actor was widely described as Ireland’s finest theatre and film star. He appeared in The Day Of The Jackal and My Left Foot and was the patriarch of a thespian dynasty with four actress daughters, Sinead, Sorcha, Niamh and Catherine. Cusack, who made his stage debut at seven, devoted his life to acting after completing a law degree, and joined the royal Shakespeare Company and the Old Vic.
ON NOVEMBER 26…
IN 1865, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, was published. IN 2000, George W. Bush was named the winner of Florida’s 25 electoral-college votes — 19 days after the presidential election.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: hermeneutical (coined c1805) A) Interpretative, explanatory B) Gaudily dressed C) Solitary, reclusive
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Ahoy! — a signal word used to call to a ship or boat. It stems from the Middle English cry, ‘Hoy!’ a greeting derived from the Dutch ‘hoi’ and popularised by sailors docking in English-speaking ports. It was first used in 1751 in The Adventures Of Peregrine Pickle, by Tobias Smollett.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I was not a particularly small child. I was the one who always got picked to play Bethlehem in the school nativity
Jo Brand, English comedian
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY isn’t sun-tanning an Olympic sport? Because the best you can ever get is bronze. GUESS The Definition answer: a.