ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 5 OF 2016 AS Well as our five senses, the elizabethans believed we had 5 wits: common sense, i magination, estimation or j udgment, fantasy and memory. They were derived from Aristotle’s writings and Shakespeare featured them in plays including Romeo And Juliet and King lear. BEFORE he adopted the nom de plume George orwell and wrote Nineteen eightyfour on Jura, a young eric Blair spent 5 years in Burma as an officer in the Indian Imperial Police. He quit in 1927 to become a writer after suffering a bout of dengue fever.
THERE ARE 361 DAYS LEFT A STACK of one million U.S. one-dollar bills is 361 ft high — nearly as tall as St Paul’s Cathedral — and weighs exactly a ton. TWIN explosions at oaks Colliery, near Barnsley, killed 361 men and boys, some as young as ten, in 1866. The first explosion killed 334 miners; the second killed 27 rescuers. It remains england’s worst mining disaster. THE Timur ruby, a 361-carat gemstone presented to Queen Victoria in 1851 by the east India Company, has been part of the Crown Jewels since 1853, when it was used to make a necklace. FRANZ SCHMIDT, the executioner of Nuremberg, carried out 361 state - sanctioned killings during his time in office between 1573 and 1617, detailing each in a diary. His methods for putting prisoners to death included hanging, beheading, burning, drowning and the breaking wheel.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIANE KEATON, 70 (right). The oscar-winning star of Annie Hall has never married, but among her exes are Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen and Jack Nicholson — the last of whom she said in her autobiography was ‘born to seduce’. BRADLEY COOPER, 41. The Hollywood A-lister put on 40lb of muscle in ten weeks to play a U.S. Navy Seal in American Sniper. He began the first of two daily training sessions at 5am and ate 5,000 calories a day to bulk up.
BORN ON THIS DAY KING CAMP GILLETTE (1855-1932). The f ounder of the Gillette Safety Razor Company sold just 219 razors and blades in the first year of production in 1903, but nearly 215,000 just a year later. DOROTHY ELIZABETH LEVITT (18821922). As Britain’s first woman racing driver, in 1909 she advised female drivers to use a hand mirror to see the road behind them — thus inventing the rear-view mirror — and also carry a handgun if they were travelling alone.
ON JANUARY 5... IN 1956, Prince Rainier of Monaco announced his engagement to film star Grace Kelly (right) — the same day she topped the U.S. Best-Dressed list. IN 1987, genetic fingerprinting was first used to catch a murderer, Colin Pitchfork, when police asked all men in Narborough, leicestershire, to take DNA tests after the murders of two 15-year-old girls. IN 1993, the oil tanker MV Braer ran aground off Shetland and began leaking 85,000 tons of crude oil. IN 1994, a Premium Bond-holder from Surrey became the f i rst winner of a £1 million prize picked at random by ERNIE (electronic Random Number Indicator equipment). A civil servant trained in first aid was given the job of breaking the news.
QUOTE FOR TODAY A DIPLOMAT is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday, but never remembers her age.
American poet Robert Frost, 1874-1963
JOKE OF THE DAY WHY was the maths-loving farmer confused? He was told there were 493 cows in a field, but when he rounded them up, there were 500.