ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 230 OF 2016
In THE past 3,500 years, there have been only 230 years of peace throughout the civilised world. WOLFGANG Amadeus Mozart’s comic opera The Marriage of Figaro was first performed in Vienna 230 years ago. It was based on a book considered so rude that it was banned — but Mozart toned it down enough to get it past the city’s censors. THE fastest-eating mammal in the world is the star-nosed mole of eastern Canada and north-eastern U.S., with an average ‘handling time’ of 230 milliseconds — that’s identifying food and eating it. It lives in marshy areas and likes aquatic insects, worms and small fish.
THERE ARE 136 DAYS LEFT
TWO Leicester University students calculated in April 2015 that it would take 136 billion sheets of A4 paper to print out the entire internet. Evangeline Walker and George Harwood also worked out it would take 16 million trees to make that amount of paper. THE fastest time to solve a Rubik’s Cube is 1.36 seconds — set by Oscar Roth Andersen from Denmark. Ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband is said to be able to complete the cube in a still-impressive 90 seconds, but Justin Bieber tops that at 83 seconds. MORE than 136,000 miles of foil are used to wrap Quality Street chocolates ever year — an amount that would go around the Equator nearly five and a half times.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
LORD (JULIAN) FELLOWES, 67. The Downton Abbey creator, who has been described as ‘Britain’s favourite snob’, keeps his screenwriting Oscar for Gosford Park in his billiard room. TV’s Coronation Street is his ‘guilty pleasure’: he watches every episode and gets his wife to record the show if he’s away. HELEN McCRORY, 48. The Peaky Blinders star said earlier this year that she is bored of being asked about her age: ‘To me, “Helen McCrory, 47” means nothing. “Helen McCrory, bad housewife and argumentative after a bottle of gin” would be more relevant.’ She played Cherie Blair in The Queen and is married to one of the men tipped to become the next 007 — Homeland star Damian Lewis.
BORN ON THIS DAY
MAUREEN O’HARA (19202015). The Dublin-born actress was one of the last surviving stars from Hollywood’s ‘golden age’, appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn and The Hunchback Of notre Dame, both with Charles Laughton. She appeared in five films with John Wayne, who said: ‘I prefer the company of men, except for Maureen O’Hara. She’s the greatest guy I ever met.’ GEORGE MELLY (1926-2007). The Liverpool-born jazz and blues singer and author sang numbers from the Twenties, along with ‘camp asides and bawdy anecdotes’. He also wrote the words for the Flook cartoon strips in the Daily Mail, which were drawn by his friend Wally Fawkes.
ON AUGUST 17...
IN 1978, three Americans made the first crossing of the Atlantic by hot-air balloon. Eighteen previous attempts had cost seven lives. IN 1992, director Woody Allen confessed to a relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his partner, actress Mia Farrow. IN 2000, Prince William secured a place at St Andrews to study history of art. He later changed to geography and got a 2:1.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
LIFE is pure adventure, and the sooner we realise that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art Maya Angelou, U.S. author, poet and activist (1928-2014)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do sad fir trees do? Pine.