ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE SEPTEMBER 26, 1963
PeoPle in a 1,000-strong queue fought in the Stationery office, Kingsway, early today as they rushed to buy copies of the Denning report, the official inquiry into the Profumo scandal. [British Secretary of State for War John Profumo’s fling with aspiring model Christine Keeler — which he denied — sparked accusations of a national security risk, as she was also involved with a russian spy].
SEPTEMBER 26, 1998
THe Satanic Verses author Salman rushdie celebrated his first day of ‘freedom’ for nine years. He and his supporters enjoyed a shopping trolley full of wine after the Iranian government distanced itself from the fatwa or death sentence issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BryAN Ferry, 77. The County Durham- born singer- songwriter found fame as frontman of roxy Music. The former ceramics teacher at a girls’ school said that sending his son to eton was seen as ‘committing the ultimate working-class sin’. In 2000, the plane he was in while flying to Zanzibar was hijacked and nearly crashed.
MINeTTe WAlTerS, 73. The crime writer from Hertfordshire has sold more than 25 million copies of novels including The Sculptress and The Ice House — both turned into BBC dramas. A prison visitor for many years, she was confronted by an inmate who ‘got one of my novels out of the prison library and brought it to me covered in handwritten notes to show me where I’d gone wrong’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
olIVIA NeWToN-JoHN
( 1948- 2022). The Cambridgeborn Australian actress was 29 when she was cast as schoolgirl
Sandy in 1978 film musical Grease. She had represented the UK in the 1974 eurovision Song Contest
( finishing fourth) and notched up three No 1s. She battled breast cancer three times.
GeorGe GerSHWIN (1898-1937). The U.S. composer and pianist wrote the music for of Thee I Sing, the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama, and songs such as I Got rhythm, as well as jazz/classical composition rhapsody In Blue and the opera Porgy And Bess. He composed his first big hit Swanee in ten minutes on a bus. He died of a brain tumour, aged 38.
ON SEPTEMBER 26…
IN 1969, The Beatles released the album Abbey road.
IN 2019, Jacques Chirac, the former French president, died aged 86.
WORD WIZARDY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Penumbral (circa 1660s)
A) Shadowy, indefinite. B) Shiveringly cold. C) Towards the end. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Dirty work at the crossroads: referring to illegal or underhand dealing. It refers to crossroads which, as the traditional burial place for those committing suicide, were once viewed as sinister places.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
Paul Ralph Ehrlich, U.S. biologist
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT is the sharpest part of the body? The shoulder blades.
Guess The Definition answer: A Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD