ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
MARCH 2, 1973
THREE hundred weeny-boppers ran wild at London’s Heathrow Airport yesterday in a vain search for their American idol, pop singer Donny Osmond. But the fans were early. They refused to believe police who told them their information was wrong. ‘They’re just having us on,’ said a fan. ‘These coppers wouldn’t know Donny if he came up and sang in their ear.’
MARCH 2, 1990
MARGARET THATCHER stood defiant over the community charge last night as Tory doubts intensified. Despite senior MPs warning that the party is becoming ‘punch drunk’, she insisted the poll tax must replace the rates on April 1.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CHRIS MARTIN, 46. The Exeter- born singersongwriter is the frontman of the band coldplay. He has often been called dull, and Oasis’s Liam Gallagher once said: ‘chris Martin looks like a geography teacher.’ He was married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow for more than a decade before they famously ‘consciously uncoupled’ in 2014.
DAME NAOMI JAMES, 74. The New Zealand-born sailor, who only learned to swim aged 23, became the first woman to sail solo around the world via the ‘dangerous cape Horn route taken by the great clippers of yesteryear’. She completed her voyage aged 29, and obtained a PhD in philosophy nearly 30 years later, saying: ‘If you do something as extreme as I did, when you grow older you want to understand why.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV (1931-2022). The final leader of the USSr won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 ‘for the leading role he played in the radical changes in East-West relations’, after he helped to end the cold War. Gorbachev said he discussed even the most sensitive political issues with his wife raisa, whom he called ‘my general’.
KAREN CARPENTER ( 1950- 1983). Alongside brother richard, the American singer and drummer was one half of
The carpenters. They sold more than 100 million records and had hits with songs such as (They Long
To Be) close To You and Yesterday Once More. karen, ‘the first celebrity victim of an eating disorder’, died of heart failure related to anorexia.
ON MARCH 2 . . .
IN 1978, charlie chaplin’s coffin was stolen from his grave in Switzerland. It was found 11 weeks later and two men were convicted of stealing it to extort £400,000.
IN 1969, concorde’s maiden flight, from Toulouse, lasted just 27 minutes.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Carrel (1919)
A) A severe critic of playwrights.
B) A study cubicle in a library.
c) To gather together.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
God’s acre: Meaning a church graveyard; it comes from the German Gottesacker, which translates as ‘God’s field’ or ‘God’s seed field’, in which the bodies of the dead are sown.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a religion.
Nigel Lawson, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did Mars say to Saturn? Give me a ring some time.
Guess The Definition answer: B.