ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 223 OF 2015
THE UK’s first cordless phone cost £223 from Harrods in 1983. The Fidelity Wanderer could work up to 100m from its base. ALL Or Nothing by Small Faces, the song that sank The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine in the singles chart in 1966, became the 223rd UK No 1. A CAPTURED Focke-Achgelis Fa 223, which entered service with the German Luftwaffe in 1942, was the first helicopter to cross the Channel. At the controls, just days after World War II ended, was its German pilot, Helmut Gerstenhauer. THE world record for running one mile is 223 seconds, set by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco in July 1999. The record is three seconds faster than that set by Britain’s Steve Cram in 1985, and 16 seconds quicker than Roger Bannister in 1954.
THERE’S 142 DAYS LEFT
THE average Brit drinks an estimated 142 cups of coffee each year. The average American drinks 340 cups while people in the Netherlands consume the most: 881 cups. ACCORDING to the Harry Potter books, there are 142 moving staircases at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. THERE have been a total of 22,846 aircraft accidents/crashes in the history of modern flight with the loss of 142,000 people. That’s the equivalent of the world losing everyone who lives in Blackpool.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
THOR star Chris Hemsworth, 32. The Hollywood actor (right) started out in soaps Neighbours and Home And Away. Oddly, the last four letters of his surname are an anagram of the Norse god he plays on screen — and he was born on a Thursday, the day of the week named after Thor. ENGLISH Premier League boss Richard Scudamore, 56, recently helped to make the league the richest in the world after cementing a £5 billion TV deal. Last year he had to apologise for leaked emails in which he joked about ‘female irrationality’. APPLE Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, 65. The California-born inventor singlehandedly developed the 1976 Apple I, the computer that launched Apple. Despite cutting ties with the company in 1985, saying it was ‘the bane of his existence’, it’s helped earn him an estimated net worth of $100 m.
BORN ON THIS DAY
CHILDREN’S writer Enid Blyton (18971968). The London-born creator of The Famous Five, Faraway Tree and Malory Towers series has sold more than 200 million Noddy books alone in 40 languages, making her the sixth most translated author in the world, just behind William Shakespeare. PULITzER prize-winner Alex Haley (19211992). The author of Roots, an epic tale of slavery which became one of the biggest TV mini-series of all time, worked for the U.S. Coast Guard and was one of the main interviewers for Playboy magazine.
ON AUGUST 11TH...
IN 1968, the last mainline passenger steam train on British Railways was run between Liverpool, Manchester and Carlisle. It was called the Fifteen Guinea Special. IN 1985, Duran Duran singer Simon Le Bon’s yacht Drum capsized off Cornwall during the Fastnet Race. He was trapped in an air pocket for 40 minutes before being rescued. IN 1858, Charles Barrington, of Bray in Ireland, led the first team to successfully climb the Eiger in the Swiss Alps. He had little or no mountaineering experience prior to the climb and, after returning to Ireland, never visited the Alps again.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have: the older she gets the more interested he is in her.
Agatha Christie
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the girl take a bicycle to bed every night? She didn’t want to sleepwalk any more.