January 3, 2023 ON THIS DAY

JANUARY 3, 1969

AUSTRALIAN ‘Press baron’ Mr Rupert Murdoch, 37, won control of the 6.2 million circulation news of the World yesterday. He celebrated his win over Labour MP Mr Robert Maxwell, head of Pergamon Press, with a party for the paper’s directors, his own London staff and friends in his borrowed Chelsea flat. It is Mr Murdoch’s first venture into the uK print market.

JANUARY 3, 1990

BRITAIN’S most notorious export, the lager lout, is becoming an endangered species, it was claimed yesterday. The young Briton on holiday abroad is now more likely to enjoy a quiet restaurant meal with his girlfriend than go on an all-male drinking spree, according to a survey.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

JUSTIN WEBB, 62. The Radio 4 Today programme presenter earns up to £260,000 a year. When his daughter discovered he takes home more than the Prime Minister, she told him: ‘But you don’t do anything.’ Webb says his fantasy is ‘living on the west coast of America and driving around in an open-top car, my hair in a ponytail’. VICTORIA PRINCIPAL,

73. The Japanese-born u.S. actress made her name playing Pam Ewing in soap opera Dallas. Patrick Duffy, who played her husband

Bobby, said one of their love scenes reduced his real-life wife to tears. ‘She said: “I just saw a look on your face I thought you only had with me.” ’

BORN ON THIS DAY

VESNA VULOVIC (1950-2016). The Yugoslav air stewardess set the Guinness World Record for highest fall survived without a parachute in 1972 after she plummeted 33,333ft over Czechoslovakia when a bomb ripped her aircraft apart. Vulovic was pinned to a piece of the fuselage and her fall was cushioned by pine trees and snow. MICHAEL BARRATT (1928-2022). The broadcaster hosted nationwide on the BBC, though he is perhaps best remembered for an item about a skateboarding duck. According to the Yorkshire Post, it was ‘ his avuncular yet blunt Yorkshire presence that held together the daily technical shambles of trying to talk to a dozen regional presenters at the same time’.

ON JANUARY 3…

IN 1963, Cliff Richard was at UK no 1 with The next Time/Bachelor Boy. IN 1967, the BBC broadcast the first episode of Trumpton, introducing viewers to Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb.

WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Capoeira (late 1920s)

A) A song sung in turn by the guests at a banquet.

B) A gondolier’s song.

C) A dance form incorporating martial arts elements. answer below.

PHRASE EXPLAINED

Golden mean: Which refers to the avoidance of extremes. From the Latin phrase aurea medio critas from Horace’s Odes.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

INJUSTICE anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

Martin Luther King Jr, U.S. civil rights leader (1929-1968)

JOKE OF THE DAY

MY POLAROID addiction started after just one photo… It developed quickly.

Guess the Definition answer: c. Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN

and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD