ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE SEPTEMBER 5, 1957
THE proposal to legalise homosexuality by adults, made yesterday by the Wolfenden Committee, is unlikely to be carried out in the lifetime of the present Parliament. Opposition among Conservative backbench MPs would be too fierce. [It became legal in 1967]. SEPTEMBER 5, 2006 STEVE IRWIN, the flamboyant crocodile hunter who became an international celebrity, was killed yesterday when a stingray pierced his heart. The 44year-old father of two dived too close to the creature on the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland. The huge ray sent a barbed spike into his chest, unleashing a deadly poison.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
TRACY EDWARDS, 60. The British sailor skippered the first all-female crew in the 1989 Whitbread Round The World Yacht Race. She was spurred on by negative comments — including one journalist’s description of their yacht Maiden as ‘a tin full of tarts’ — saying: ‘I often wondered if we would’ve carried on if everyone had said what I was doing was a good idea.’ DICK CLEMENT, 85. The Essex-born co-writer of Porridge, The Likely Lads and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet has been referred to — alongside his writing partner Ian La Frenais — as ‘the best comedy writers the UK has ever produced’. He wants to work until he dies, saying: ‘Even when I was 17, I thought “retire” was a miserable word.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
KRISTINA SODERBAUM (1912-2001). The Swedish actress became ‘the pin-up of the Wehrmacht’ after appearing in 10 hit films in Nazi Germany. Among these was 1938’s Die Reise Nach Tilsit. At its premiere, Magda Goebbels, wife of propaganda chief Joseph, stormed out because of what she saw as references to her husband’s affair with a Czech actress.
JASPER NEWTON DANIEL (circa 18501911). The American whiskey maker, better known as Jack Daniel, established the first U.S. registered distillery. An expert in marketing, he set up the Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band to promote his whiskey. Unable to open his office safe (after forgetting the combination), he kicked it, broke his toe, developed gangrene and died.
ON SEPTEMBER 5 . . .
IN 1960, the 18- year- old Cassius Clay ( later Muhammad Ali) won gold in the light heavyweight boxing competition at the Olympics in Rome.
IN 1972, Palestinian Black September terrorists killed two Israeli athletes and took another nine hostage at the Munich Olympics. By the next day, all had been murdered.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Hiemal (c. 1550s) A) Reclusive, solitary. B) Of, or relating to, winter. C) Of a pale green passing into greyish blue. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED False dawn:
meaning a misleadingly hopeful sign; it refers to the transient light in the sky, typical in Eastern countries, which precedes the rising of the sun by about an hour.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
When it’s three o’clock in New York, it’s still 1938 in London.
Bette Midler, American actress
JOKE OF THE DAY
A THIEF crashed a cement truck into a tree. Police are looking for a hardened criminal. Guess The Definition answer: B