ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
SEPTEMBER 21, 1978 Z CARS came to the end of the road last night, after 16 years and 571 episodes. When the show began in 1962, the reaction to seeing policemen gambling and fighting with their wives was one of pure horror. But as the years went by the shock effect was weakened by even more rugged police series like The Sweeney, tackling drugs, terrorists and even hijackings.
SEPTEMBER 21, 2001
U.S. PRESIDENT George W. Bush last night dramatically raised the stakes in the stand-off with the Taliban, as he demanded the Afghan rulers hand over Osama bin Laden and close his terror training camps. ‘The Taliban must act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share their fate.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MICkEY kUHN, 90. The former child star is the last surviving credited actor who appeared in 1939’s Gone With The Wind, following the death in 2020 of Olivia de Havilland (he played her character’s son, Beau Wilkes). He still remembers repeatedly messing up his big scene with Clark Gable, when he kept saying ‘Hello, Uncle Clark’ instead of ‘Hello, Uncle Rhett’. SHIRLEY CONRAN, 90. The bestselling author of Lace and Superwoman was the first editor of our very own Femail, opening the edition writing:
‘The things that women are supposed to want to read are generally decided by a man . . . we are writing for a real woman.’ She also gave the world the aphorism: ‘Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
HERBERT GEORGE WELLS (1866-1946). The author from kent, better known by his initials H.G., wrote The Time Machine and The War Of The Worlds. Originally a science teacher, in his novel The World Set Free, he also coined the term ‘atomic bomb’. SHINZO ABE (1954-2022). Japan’s longestserving prime minister was twice forced to resign due to his ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease. He appeared at the closing ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics dressed as the video game character Super Mario, wearing a red cap bearing the name of the next host city: Tokyo. He was assassinated in July while giving a speech.
ON SEPTEMBER 21…
IN 1962, ITV broadcast the first episode of University Challenge. In its 60 years, it has had only two hosts, Bamber Gascoigne and Jeremy Paxman (who will be replaced by Amol Rajan next year).
IN 1964, Malta gained its political independence from Britain.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Algocracy (coined 2018)
A) Judgment by a random selection.
B) The governing by elder statesmen.
C) A social system governed by
computer algorithms. answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED:
Law of diminishing returns: Referring to the point at which the level of profits or benefits to be gained is reduced to less than the amount of money or energy invested. It derives from the profits gained in early 19th century agriculture.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Growing old is a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form. Andre Maurois, French writer (1885-1967)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY do Canadian cowboys have sticky feet? Maple stirrups.
Guess The Definition answer: C.