ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE AUGUST 11, 1988
THE Duchess of York’s baby daughter is likely to set a royal record on Monday — by flying when barely a week old. Her proud parents plan to take her by jet from London to Scotland to show her to the Queen at Balmoral. Andrew and his wife are anxious to show their first child to the rest of the Royal Family before he rejoins his ship in the Far East at the end of next week.
AUGUST 11, 2003
BRITAIN sizzled on its hottest day ever yesterday as temperatures passed the magical 100f barrier. After days of searing sunshine, 100.2f (37.9c) was recorded at Heathrow and 100.6f (38.1c) in Gravesend, Kent. The previous record had been 98.8f (37.1c) at Cheltenham in August 1990.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ASHLEY JENSEN, 53. The actress from Dumfriesshire has starred in the comedies Extras, After Life and Ugly Betty. After making it to Hollywood, she said she ‘felt like the slightly dirty second cousin. It took me a couple of years to get used to . . . having a man come round to the house with half a million dollars worth of diamonds for me to wear on a red carpet’. JOE JACKSON, 68. The Grammy-winning Staffordshire-born singer-songwriter, best known for his 1978 hit Is She Really Going Out With Him?, has been described as ‘an awkward fit for a pop star: tall, ungainly, dressed like a used-car salesman’. He is an ardent smoker, who calls restrictions on the habit ‘a new Prohibition’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ANNA MASSEY (1937-2011). The actress from Sussex starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy and the TV adaptation of Hotel du Lac, for which she won a Bafta. Massey — who claimed her first husband, Sherlock Holmes star Jeremy Brett, left her for a man — said ‘Hollywood never beckoned’ because ‘I don’t have the face for it’. ARLENE DAHL (1925-2021). The U.S. model-turned-actress starred in Slightly Scarlet and Journey To The Center Of The Earth before founding a cosmetics and lingerie business. Her second husband, Argentinian actor Fernando Lamas, said: ‘In the six years I was married to Arlene, I never saw her without make-up. It was like being married to Elizabeth Arden.’
ON AUGUST 11. . .
IN 1919, Germany became a democratic parliamentary republic with the signing into law of the Weimar Constitution.
IN 1994, English horror legend Peter Cushing, who starred in Dracula, The
Curse Of Frankenstein and played Grand Moff Tarkin (pictured) in Star Wars, died aged 81.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION:
Esky (coined in 1987)
A) Untrustworthy, dodgy.
B) A portable container for food or drink. C) Careless, reckless, happy-go-lucky.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Leave to their own device — to allow someone to do as they wish. Now, ‘device’ has the sense of inclination only in the plural. It comes from the Book of Common Prayer.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
Fran Lebowitz, U.S. author
JOKE OF THE DAY
MY FRIEND didn’t pay his exorcist.
He was repossessed.
Guess The Definition answer: B