November 15, 2022 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
NOVEMBER 15, 1940
AN RAF pilot, wounded in the eye and foot, refused to jump from his blazing Hurricane until he had downed his enemy. Diving at 400 mph after a Messerschmitt, FlightLieutenant James Brindley Nicolson, 23, was in his first dog fight. His actions have won him a Victoria Cross, it was confirmed today.
NOVEMBER 15, 1999
HE IS the boxer Britain has waited all century to acclaim. By beating Evander Holyfield on points (adding the WBA to his IBF and WBC belts), 34-year-old Lennox Lewis yesterday became effectively the first British-born undisputed world heavyweight champion for exactly 100 years.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DERRICK EVANS, 70. The Jamaican- born fitness instructor found fame on
GMTV as ‘Mr Motivator’. He said the mulitcoloured unitard he wore was his idea:
‘I created an image that stayed in people’s brains — a white shirt wouldn’t have resonated. I added a co-ordinated bumbag, so I had somewhere to hide my mic.’ PETER PHILLIPS, 45. Princess Anne’s son was described as the late Queen’s ‘favourite grandson’. When he was born, fifth in line to the throne, a 41-gun salute was fired from the Tower of London. However, his mother rejected titles for Phillips and his sister Zara. In 2020, billed as a ‘British Royal Family member’, he appeared in a Chinese advert for Jersey milk.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JOANNA BARNES (1934-2022). The U.S. actress, who once dated Secretary of State Henry kissinger, played Hayley Mills’s would-be stepmother in 1961’s The Parent Trap. When she starred in Tarzan, The Ape Man, she was described as ‘the brainiest of the 20 girls who have played Jane’. After fame faded, she wrote novels and a book about interior design. RICHMAL CROMPTON (1890-1969). The Lancashire-born author made her name with the Just William books, which sold more than 12 million copies in the
Uk alone and, at one point, were outsold only by the
Bible. She was forced to give up teaching at 33 after contracting polio and losing the use of her right leg.
ON NOVEMBER 15…
IN 1969, BBC1 launched a full colour service
with An Evening With Petula — featuring the singer at the Royal Albert Hall.
IN 2012, Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Dissilient (coined late 17th-century)
A) Out-of-practice; rusty.
B) Opposing official policy.
C) Bursting open. answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Laissez-faire: an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism. First coined by Marquis d’Argenson (1652-1721).
QUOTE FOR TODAY
IF ANY question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied. RUDYARD Kipling, novelist (1865-1936), about the strings he pulled to get his son into the Army, who later died in action.
JOKE OF THE DAY
I CYCLED over a bottle of gin.
Now I’ve got a sloe puncture.
GUESS The Definition answer: C