ON THIS DAY
IT’S DAY 319 . . .
THE last person in Britain to be executed for blasphemy was hanged near Edinburgh 319 years ago. Student Thomas Aikenhead had mocked the Bible as ‘a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense’. A CORNISH postmaster travelled 319 miles overnight via London to rye, East Sussex, earlier this year to hand-deliver a letter after he forgot to put it in the guaranteed nextday delivery post. David Shepherd took three trains to ensure his customer had his passport in time to make a trip to Holland. THE Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic World grossed a world record £319 million during its first weekend when it was released last June — more than four times the amount taken by the first film in the series, Jurassic Park, on its opening weekend in 1993.
THERE ARE 47 DAYS LEFT
IN 1969, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hung Henri Matisse’s Le Bateau upside down for 47 days before anybody noticed. BRITAIN saw the birth of the space hopper, the Ford Capri, the B&Q DIY chain and Concorde — all 47 years ago. AMERICAN Cindy Jackson holds the world record for undergoing the most cosmetic surgery procedures — 47 — including three facelifts, two nose operations, two eyelifts, liposuction, lip and cheek implants, knee, waist, abdomen and thigh liposuction, and chin bone reduction.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CHARLES, Prince of Wales, 68. Even the Prince’s friends are supposed to call him ‘Sir’, but several admitted to his biographer that they simply avoid calling him anything, out of embarrassment. He is patron of more than 400 charities and set up The Prince’s Trust with the £7,400 severance pay he received when he left the Navy. MICHAEL DOBBS, 68. Lord Dobbs was an adviser to Margaret Thatcher before writing the best-selling House Of Cards book trilogy, which was turned into a Bafta-winning BBC series and a U.S. version on Netflix. John Major said the novels had done for his job ‘what Dracula has done for babysitting’. Dobbs shared a girlfriend with Bill Clinton when they were students at Oxford, though the men never met. He says: ‘For some reason, she never introduced us.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
JOSEPH MCCARTHY (19081957). The U.S. senator launched a witchhunt against what he saw as communist infiltration of government and Hollywood. Those he accused included Charlie Chaplin (right), Leonard Bernstein and Albert Einstein. He was censured by the government in 1954 for some of his wild claims, and died three years later after a long fight with alcohol. CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926). The French painter inspired the name of the artistic movement, Impressionism — from his picture, Impression: Sunrise. He’s believed to have destroyed at least 500 of his own paintings out of frustration.
ON NOVEMBER 14 . . .
IN 1940, Coventry Cathedral — along with large parts of the city — was almost totally destroyed by German bombing. IN 1969, Nasa launched Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the Moon. It took a colour TV camera to the surface, but one of the astronauts broke it by pointing it at the sun. IN 1973, a 23-year-old Princess Anne wed Captain Mark Phillips in Westminster Abbey. It was only the second time in more than 200 years that a British royal had married a commoner. In 1992, they became the second royal couple to divorce in the 20th century.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
All I ask is for the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.
Spike Milligan, comedian (1918-2002)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you get if you cross a centipede with a parrot? A walkie-talkie.