ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE May 1, 1980
GuNMeN holding 21 people hostage in Iran’s London embassy threatened last night to kill them all at noon today and blow up the embassy unless their demands are met.
May 1, 1999
THRee members of the 1980s pop group Spandau Ballet were facing financial ruin last night after their songwriter won a legal battle against them. Lead singer Tony Hadley, drummer John Keeble and saxophone player Steve Norman were left with a bill of around £1 million after losing their case at the High Court.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JAMIe DORNAN, 42. The Northern Irish model turned actor starred in BBC’s The Tourist and the films Belfast and Fifty Shades Of Grey. He said he started to become aware of the ‘ridicule’ of the first Fifty Shades film but was already ‘contracted to do two more, knowing that there will be much more damnation to come’. RITA COOLIDGe, 79.
The u.S. singer and exwife of actor Kris Kristofferson was described in one review as ‘the sultry spirit of Peggy
Lee, with a slight southern accent’. She toured with Jimi Hendrix and George Harrison, and claims she’s owed a writing credit for eric Clapton’s Layla, for its famous coda.
BORN ON THIS DAY
MARTHA JANe CANARY (18521903). The u.S. frontierswoman, better known as Calamity Jane, was played by Doris Day in the 1953 film musical of the same name. According to one historian, by the age of 20 she was already known for ‘dressing in men’s clothes, a taste for liquor and wanderlust, and a tendency to shoot off her mouth and her guns’. GLeNN FORD (1916
2006). The Canadian starred in more than
100 films. Born Gwyllyn, he took his stage name from Glenford, site of his family’s paper mill. He said he loved doing so many Westerns because ‘you don’t have to speak english to understand what’s going on’.
ON MAY 1…
IN 1851, the Great exhibition opened in Hyde Park, London.
IN 2011, Pope John Paul II was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Acersecomic (coined 1612)
A) One whose hair has never been cut. B) Lacking stamina (said of horses). C) Open-mouthed. answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED To hit a snag:
Meaning to run into an unexpected difficulty or obstruction; from an old Scandinavian word for a spike or any jagged projecting point.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I’d rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.
Woodrow Wilson, 28th U.S. President (1856-1924)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I JuST tried calling the local scissor factory . . . I got cut off.
Guess the Definition answer: a