June 17, 2022 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JUNE 17, 1992
SHOPS ran short of Andrew Morton’s book about Princess Diana soon after it went on sale yesterday. Others complained that they had received no supplies of Diana: Her True Story. As the biography hit the shops, Princess Diana herself sat miserably at Ascot, putting on a show of togetherness with Prince Charles. Both later left in the Prince’s Aston Martin. But four miles down the road, they went their separate ways.
JUNE 17, 2002
ELVIS PRESLEY was back at No 1 last night with a record 18th chart-topping single. The King returned to the hit parade 25 years after his death with A Little Less Conversation. The song has been reintroduced to the world via a television advert featuring footballing superstars.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BARRY MANILOW, 79.
The Grammy, Emmy and Tony- winning singersongwriter from New york has had hits with Mandy and Copacabana, selling more than 85 million albums. In 1984, he appeared on Michael Aspel’s chat show with Margaret Thatcher. Manilow had wanted to perform a duet with the PM, but her press secretary gave the idea ‘short shrift’. ARTHUR DARVILL, 40. The rada-trained actor from Birmingham played reverend Paul Coates in ITV’S Broadchurch and rory Williams, companion to Matt Smith’s Time Lord in Doctor Who — saying his favourite moment was getting ‘to shoot a Dalek in the face’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
FLORA FINCH (1867-1940). The actress, born into a music-hall family in London, starred in more than 300 silent films before making the switch to talkies. Finch, who starred opposite Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle, was one half of ‘the first popular comedy team in motion pictures’, alongside John Bunny.
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971). The russian composer and conductor made his name with the ballets The Firebird and The rite Of Spring, and the opera The rake’s Progress. He also wrote the music for George Balanchine’s Circus Polka — a 1942 ballet for 50 ballerinas and 50 elephants, all wearing pink tutus.
ON JUNE 17 . . .
IN 1973, Dolly Parton ( right) recorded I Will Always Love you — which became a global hit for Whitney Houston in 1992. IN 195O, Dr richard Lawler led a team that performed the first kidney transplant, on 44- year- old ruth Tucker in Chicago.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Chthonian (1840s) A) relating to the deities of the underworld. B) relating to the planets. C) Someone who studies death. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Carrot and stick: Meaning the promise of a reward combined with the threat of punishment; the phrase suggests offering a carrot to a donkey to get it to move and using a stick to beat it if it doesn’t.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The only people who remain misunderstood are those who either do not know what they want or are not worth understanding.
Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist (1818-1883)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did the flower say after it cracked a joke? I was just pollen your leg. Guess The Definition answer: A.