ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 230 of 2015
HITLER’S personal yacht, the Aviso Grille, which he hoped to sail to London to take the surrender of Britain in 1940, was crewed by 230 men. STuNT driver Michele Pilia drove a BMW tilted on two wheels for 230 miles to win a Guinness World record. The feat took him almost 14 hours. A PIANo has 88 keys and 230 strings — the combined tension of which is equivalent to 16 tonnes. ACCoRDING to table tennis rules, the table should give a ‘bounce’ of 230mm to a ball when dropped from a height of 300mm. FoR every 10,000 people who live in India, 230 are Christians.
THERE ARE 135 DAYS LEFT
PIERCE BRoSNAN was the deadliest James Bond. In his four films, he killed 135 people — an average of 34 per movie. The least deadly 007 was George Lazenby, who killed six people in on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. WHISKy exports earn Britain £135 every second of the day and night, totalling more than £11½ million in 24 hours. THE Spanish Steps in Rome — which are featured in the new film The Man From u.N.C.L.E — consists of 135 steps. THE 135th Boat Race, in 1989, was the first where both coxes were female. oxford won. HoLLyWooD child star Shirley Temple received 135,000 presents from her fans for her eighth birthday.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ACToR Robert Redford, 79 (right). Aged 30, he was tipped for the part of Ben Braddock in the 1967 film The Graduate, but though the producers agreed he could pass for 21, they didn’t believe he looked like someone who would have problems finding women. GAME show winner Judith Keppel, 73. The first £1 million winner of TV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in the uK is the third cousin of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. They are both descended from Alice Keppel, Edward VII’s mistress. BBC NEWSREADER Huw Edwards, 54. Born in Bridgend, at 26 he became the BBC’s youngest ever political correspondent. He credits a job teaching in France as being the turning point in his life because he’d ‘never lived outside Wales before then’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ACToR Patrick Swayze (1952-2009). The Texas-born star was famous for catching Jennifer Grey mid-air in the film Dirty Dancing (right). He wrote the song She’s Like The Wind for the film in honour of his wife Lisa Niemi. RoNNIE CARRoLL (19342015). Irish singer, who represented the uK in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1962 and 1963. He stood as an Independent candidate for Hampstead & Kilburn in the General Election in May, but died before polling day. He still received 113 votes.
ON AUGUST 18th . . .
IN 1969, Mick Jagger was accidentally shot in the hand during the filming of Ned Kelly in Australia. IN 1946, Dublin passed a local by-law forbidding taxi drivers from sleeping on the roof of their cabs. IN 1227, Genghis Khan, the leader of the Mongol Empire and most feared man on the planet, died after falling off his horse.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
JOKE OF THE DAY
A MAN walks into a bar with a roll of Tarmac under his arm and says: ‘Pint, please, and one for the road.’