ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 91 OF 2016
In 1909, the first hunger strike in a British prison was begun by Inverness-born suffragette Miss Marion Wallace Dunlop, who kept it up for 91 hours, until she was released from Holloway Prison on grounds of ill-health. ARTIST Pablo Picasso was 91 when he died in 1973 — one of his last works, completed less than a year before he died, was entitled Self Portrait Facing Death. THE highest wave ever recorded was 91ft (27m) — as tall as six double-decker buses — in the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricane Ivan in September, 2004. THE U.S. has been at war or in some form of armed conflict in 91 per cent of all the years it has existed as an independent country.
THERE ARE 275 DAYS LEFT
WHEn ‘Grumpy Gertie’, the local goose in the Hertfordshire village of Sandon was found dead, presumed shot, in February, a £275,000 reward was pledged to find the culprit. Tests later revealed Gertie was a gander that had died of natural causes. AT THE Haif a Beer Festival in Israel in 2013, Brit John Evans (right) managed to balance an incredible 275 glasses of beer on his head. DoMESTIC cats in the UK kill an estimated 275 million animals each year, such as mice, sparrows and frogs. A ToTAL of 275 Test and First Class cricketers died i n the trenches during World War I. one of them was Percy Jeeves, a Warwickshire fast bowler who was the inspiration for P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves in the Jeeves and Wooster series.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
EWAn McGREGoR, 45. The Perthshire-born actor known for Trainspotting, Moulin Rouge and Black Hawk Down. His biggest role is that of obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars films. McGregor was once advised by a tipsy woman journalist in a Soho pub to try for a career in television. Eventually asking why, he was told: ‘Because you have a Ewan McGregor kind of charisma.’ AL GoRE, 68. The U.S. Vice-President under Bill Clinton, whose bid for the top job in 2000 saw him win most votes across the U.S. but lose after the recount in Florida. RHEA PERLMAn, 68. The Em my-Award winning actress (right) best known as the acid-tongued waitress in TV comedy Cheers. In 1971, she moved in with her future husband, actor Danny DeVito, two weeks after seeing him once in a play called The Shrinking Bride. They are still together, with three children.
BORN ON THIS DAY
REnE DESCARTES (1596-1650). The French-born mathematician and scientist is regarded as the father of modern Western philosophy. He originated the saying ‘ Cogito, ergo sum’ — I think, therefore I am. JoHAnn SEBASTIAn BACH (1685-1750). The German-born Baroque-era composer, organist and violinist was married twice and had 20 children. The bones in his muchvisited grave at St Thomas’s church, Leipzig, may be the wrong ones, after remains were jumbled up by wartime bombing.
ON MARCH 31. . .
In 1889, the Eiffel Tower, which took two years to build and was derided by critics, was opened. It was meant to last 20 years. In 1967, rocker Jimi Hendrix famously burned his guitar — and his hand — on stage at the Finsbury Park Astoria in London.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I am an optimist. It does not seem much use being anything else.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do mathematician mermaids wear? AlgAe bras.