ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
MARCH 10, 1978
COLEEN NOLAN, aged just 12, is set to join family singing group the Nolan Sisters. She replaces her sister Denise, 25, who is going solo. ‘I am absolutely thrilled to bits — I can’t wait to make my first appearance,’ said Coleen, who turns 13 soon.
MARCH 10, 1984
ROCK star Sting and his wife Frances Tomelty were granted a ‘quickie’ divorce in London yesterday. The actress, 36, said: ‘It has all been amicably settled.
There is always sadness in these things but I have my work to help me get over it.’
The pair, who have two children, split when Sting fell for actress Trudie Styler.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
OLIVIA WILDE, 39. The American actress was in Tv drama House and directed, produced and starred in the film Don’t Worry Darling (dating co-star Harry Styles). Last year Wilde was promoting the film in front of 4,000 people when a representative of the father of her two children, actor Jason Sudeikis, served custody papers. She said it wasn’t ‘entirely surprising . . . I mean, there’s a reason I left that relationship’.
KATHARINE HOUGHTON, 78. The U.S. actress played Sidney Poitier’s fiancee and Katharine Hepburn’s daughter in 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. In real life, Hepburn was her aunt. The film portrayed a woman who brings her black husband-tobe home to meet her parents. Yet Houghton said: ‘I don’t think it did a thing for Civil Rights . . . It was a movie for white people.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
HILARY DEVEY (19572022). The Bolton-born entrepreneur founded freight distribution firm
Pall-ex. A haulier she had approached said: ‘If you’re a success, I’ll show my arse in Sainsbury’s.’ He died before he could do so. ‘They say revenge is sweet,’ Devey quipped. As an investor on BBC Dragons’ Den, she told candidates who riled her: ‘You make my foot itch, mate.’
BIX BEIDERBECKE (1903-1931). The U.S. cornet player was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s. The son of German immigrants, he taught himself to play by listening to 78 records. Melody Maker wrote in 1927: ‘Bix has a heart as big as your head, which shines through his playing with the warmth of the sun’s rays.’
ON MARCH 10 . . .
IN 1876, speech was sent over a telephone wire for the first time when inventor Alexander Graham Bell told his assistant: ‘Mr Watson, come here; I want you.’
IN 2020, as coronavirus spread in the UK, the Cheltenham Festival began, with 125,000 racegoers packing the stands.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Murcous (1684)
A) evil; wicked. B) Blind. C) One who cuts off his thumb to escape military service.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Hope springs eternal: Meaning it is human nature always to find cause for optimism. It is from Alexander Pope’s 1733 An essay On Man: ‘hope springs eternal in the human breast’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
What we call evil is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark.
Henry Ford, U.S. industrialist (1863-1947)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call it when one cat sues another? a claw-suit.
Guess The Definition answer: C