August 30, 2022 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE AUGUST 30, 1938
‘I AM sorry,’ said Mrs S. Lenton, of Saville Road, Blackpool, to her husband today, ‘but a monkey has stolen the breakfast.’
A few houses away, 26-year- old Mrs Armitage ran wide- eyed downstairs, clutching her three-month-old baby. ‘Oh!’ she called to her husband. ‘A monkey has been trying to get in the bedroom.’
The culprit was Betty, a monkey which escaped from a travelling circus on Saturday and has so far defied her pursuers.
AUGUST 30, 2005
IN THE city of love, Kylie Minogue looked as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She strolled arm-in-arm with boyfriend Olivier Martinez, and only her headscarf gave a clue to her battle against breast cancer. The star is in Paris for chemotherapy at the Gustave Roussy Institute.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Sue MacGREGOR, 81. The BBC broadcaster, who said radio was her ‘ first love’, presented Radio 4’s Today, Woman’s Hour and The Reunion and was awarded a CBE for services to broadcasting (right). She revealed in her autobiography she had had an affair with Rising Damp actor Leonard Rossiter. JONATHAN AITKEN, 80. The ex-Tory Cabinet minister served seven months in prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice in 1999 after suing The Guardian for libel, declaring he would ‘cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism’. In 2018, he was ordained as a deacon in the Church of england.
BORN ON THIS DAY
SHIRLEY BOOTH ( 1898- 1992). The emmy-winning u.S. actress won an Oscar for her role in Come Back, Little Sheba, (having already scooped a Tony for the Broadway version). So acclaimed was she that one obituary said ‘reviews of Booth’s performances resembled love letters’. ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA (1958-2006). The Russian journalist was an outspoken critic of vladimir Putin and his government’s tactics in Chechnya. She was assassinated aged 48 in the lift of her apartment block, in what has been described as ‘the murder that killed free media in Russia’.
ON AUGUST 30 . . .
IN 1918, Socialist revolutionary Fanny Kaplan shot Bolshevik leader vladimir Lenin. He was badly injured but survived.
IN 2003, Hollywood star Charles Bronson (right) died, aged 81.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Inspissate (c 1620s)
A) To thicken, as by evaporation.
B) To speak bitterly and abusively.
C) To spit. Answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED
Have an eye for the main chance: Meaning to look for an opportunity to take advantage of a situation for personal gain. It comes from the gambling game of hazard in which ‘main chance’ refers to a number (5, 6, 7 or 8) called by a player before throwing the dice.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
to betray, you must first belong. I never belonged.
Kim Philby, British intelligence officer and Soviet double agent (1912-1988)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT does it mean if you find a horseshoe? Some poor horse is walking around in his socks.
Guess the definition answer: A.