ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 147 OF 2016
WHEN Leicester City won the Premier League this season, they had been in the top spot for 147 days. A WIRE-HAIRED dachshund from New York called Chanel reached 147 in dog years — the longest living dachshund ever recorded — when it died at 21 in 2009. The oldest ever dog was a kelpie called Maggie, who died last month in Australia on her 30th birthday: more than 200 in dog years.
THERE ARE 219 DAYS LEFT
IT’S 219 years since Horatio Nelson lost his right arm when hit by a musket ball while attempting to seize control of Tenerife. He was said to have been issuing orders to his men within 30 minutes of the amputation. THE world’s heaviest avocado, grown by a Venezuelan farmer in 2009, weighed 2.19 kg — about 12 times the normal size — and contained around 3,000 calories. IN 219 BC, the Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, sent an expedition to Japan seeking the elixir of immortality. None of the expedition returned and when scholars criticised the Emperor’s belief in magic, he had 460 of them buried alive.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ZOLA BUDD, 50. At 17, the barefoot runner broke the 5,000m world record in her native South Africa, but this was not recognised because apartheid excluded the country from international athletics competition. A campaign led by the Daily Mail helped her win British citizenship so she could compete in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, pitting her against arch rival, America’s Mary Decker, in the 3,000m (pictured). When an accidental collision between them put Decker out of the race, Budd finished seventh, to boos from the home crowd. A speedy taxi in a South African township is nicknamed Zola Budd. HELENA BONHAM CARTER, 50 — the London-born actress known for many movies including The King’s Speech and Suffragette. While playing Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films, she accidentally ruptured the eardrum of Matthew Lewis, who played Neville Longbottom, after jamming her wand in his ear. MICHAEL PORTILLO, 63. The former Tory Cabinet minister, now TV presenter and political commentator, starred in a TV advert for Ribena as a child.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JOHN WAYNE (1907-1979, pictured). The Academy Award-winning actor — real name Marion Morrison — was best known for roles in Westerns. At school, he was studious and was president of the Latin society. GEORGE FORMBY (19041961), the Wigan-born entertainer and film star earned more than £100,000 a year in the Thirties — almost £6 million today.
ON MAY 26 . . .
IN 1927, the 15 millionth, and final, Model T Ford car, the first mass-produced car, came off the assembly line in Dearborn, Michigan. IN 1973, in the Cod Wars, Icelandic gunboat Aegir fired on a British trawler, Everton, in disputed fishing waters, holing her below the waterline. IN 1994, Michael Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in a secret ceremony in the Dominican Republic. The marriage lasted two years.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it Ralph Waldo Emerson U.S. essayist and poet (1803-82)
JOKE OF THE DAY
HOW do you know when a gambler has done the washing?
Because everything is on the line.