ON THIS DAY
June 11, 2016
IT’S DAY 163 OF 2016
THE world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, has 163 floors. The weight of the building’s concrete (440,000 tons) is equivalent to about 100,000 elephants.
THE World War II Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet was the world’s first, and only, massproduced, rocket-powered aircraft fighter. After the war, its designer, Alexander Lippisch, helped take more than 1,500 Nazi scientists to work for the U.S. government.
IN 1968, during its 163 orbits of the planet, Apollo 7 gave people their first live view of space with telecasts to audiences on Earth.
THERE ARE 203 DAYS LEFT
Driving at 203 mph in 1927, Sir Henry Segrave became the first person to drive a car at over 200mph. In 1930, he died when his boat capsized on Lake Windermere — just after he became the first person to hold both the world speed record on land and water.
THE largest obelisk in Europe is 203ft tall, took 44 years to build, and was erected in memory of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, victor of the Battle of Waterloo and later Prime Minister. It is in Dublin, his place of birth.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
HUGH LAURIE, 57, right. The comedian and actor is best known as one half of Fry And Laurie as well as starring in Jeeves And Wooster, Blackadder, House (for which he was reportedly paid £250,000 an episode) and, most recently, spy thriller The Night Manager. Born in Oxford, he rowed for Cambridge in the 126th annual Boat Race (and lost). He was all set for the Olympics rowing team until a severe bout of glandular fever forced him to give up the sport.
Gene WILDER, 83. The Hollywood comic actor, born Jerome Silberman, famous for The Producers and Blazing Saddles. When he played Willy Wonka in 1971’s Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, he took the role on condition that his character be first seen limping and then bounce into a somersault — to make the children wary of him.
BORN ON THIS DAY
RICHARD TODD (1919-2009). The Dublinborn actor, best known for his role in The Dam Busters, was Ian Fleming’s personal choice to play 007 in the first James Bond film. As a wartime member of the Parachute Regiment, Todd was one of the first to be dropped into Normandy during D-Day. In The Longest Day, the 1962 film about the Allied invasion, he played Major John Howard, who led the D-Day assault of Pegasus Bridge.
JACQUES COUSTEAU (1910-97). The French oceanographer and conservationist (right) who developed the aqua-lung, the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. A year after his wife of 53 years died, he married his longtime mistress 30 years his junior, Francine, with whom he already had two children.
ON JUNE 11th . . .
IN 1872, punishment stocks were last used in Britain in Newbury, Berkshire. The victim was Mark Tuck, an intemperate rag-and-bone dealer.
IN 1939, george VI and his wife Elizabeth became the first British King and Queen to try hot dogs — at a picnic during a royal visit with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington DC.
IN 1987, Margaret Thatcher became the first Prime Minister to win a third successive term since Robert Jenkinson in 1820.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
MUSIC is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I ALWAYS take my wife morning tea in my pyjamas, but is she grateful? No, she says she’d rather have it in a cup.
COMPILED BY JAMES BLACK