July 26, 2022 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JULY 26, 1984
SOVIET cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, 35, became the first woman to walk in space yesterday. She left the Salyut-7 space station to carry out a welding job on the outside of the complex. Her spacewalk lasted 3 hr 35 min.
JULY 26, 1992
WAR reporter Martin Bell vowed to return to the front line last night after a brush with death in Sarajevo. Millions of TV viewers saw the award-winning BBC newsman writhing in pain after being hit by shrapnel. As he recovered from surgery in a British field hospital in Zagreb, he said: ‘I will be coming right back here. It’s just a slight wound.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JASON STATHAM, 55. The action star (pictured), from Derbyshire, was a diver for England in the 1990 Commonwealth Games and modelled for French Connection — who described him as ‘ not too malemodelly’ — before finding fame in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels in 1998. He also appeared in the 2003 remake of The Italian Job. LIZ TRUSS, 47. The Foreign Secretary is the longest-serving minister in the Cabinet, having worked under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. She was dubbed ‘Britain’s new Iron Lady’ by U.S. website Politico, but grew up going on marches shouting ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out!’ with her Left-wing mother.
BORN ON THIS DAY
BARBARA JEFFORD ( 1930- 2020). The Radatrained actress from Plymouth (pictured) was Bafta-nominated for playing Molly Bloom in 1967 film Ulysses and starred in 2013’s Philomena. But she was best known for her stage work, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Old Vic, playing ‘every Shakespearean female role going’. DOBIE GRAY (1940-2011). The U.S. singer, who wrote songs covered by Ray Charles and Etta James, had hits with The ‘In’ Crowd and Drift Away (which sold more than a million copies). Gray, who recorded jingles for Coca-Cola and McDonald’s and acted in the musical Hair, was born Lawrence Darrow Brown, but took his stage name from a sitcom starring Warren Beatty, The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis.
ON JULY 26 . . .
IN 1948, American President Harry Truman signed an executive order to desegregate the U.S. military.
IN 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for U.S. president by a major political party.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Abient (coined in the 1930s)
A) Of a horse: apt to shy
B) The second swarm of bees in the same season
C) Tending to move away from a situation. ( Answer below)
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Fall off the back of a lorry — referring to goods obtained in illegal or unspecified circumstances; it was the traditional bogus excuse given to the police by those caught in possession of stolen goods.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
FINALITY is death. Perfection is finality. nothing is perfect. there are lumps in it.
James Stephens, Irish poet (1880-1950)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the grape go out with a prune? Because it couldn’t find a date. GUESS the Definition answer: C