JUNE 8, 2017 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JUNE 8, 1959
BrITAIN’S Flying Saucer — aka, the hoverplane — flew yesterday. Three times the Saucer, a flattened doughnut of aluminium, rose a foot above the ground and hovered for half an hour. The flight was a triumph for those who see the machine as the cross-Channel ferry of the future.
JUNE 8, 1965
HArry COOPEr was the L-driver involved in a crash with the Queen and Prince Philip on Saturday in Forest Green, Berkshire. He said: ‘The first thing I remembered when I woke up was what the sergeant said. “Well, Harry,” he says, “you’ve chosen a proper pair to go and clout, haven’t you?” ’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BONNIE TyLEr, 66 (pictured). The Welsh singer has had a string of hits, including It’s A Heartache, Lost In France and the epic Total Eclipse Of The Heart. Tyler has been called the ‘female rod Stewart because of her husky voice, the result of an operation on vocal cord nodules. She’s related through her husband of more than 40 years to Hollywood star Catherine Zeta-Jones, and sang at her wedding to Michael Douglas.
BArBArA BuSH, 92. The former u.S. first lady (as wife to George Bush Sr) and mother of another ex-president, George W. Bush, sums up her public profile as ‘everybody’s grandmother’. But her outspoken nature has sometimes got her into trouble. In 1984, she described Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro as something that ‘rhymes with rich’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
SIr John Everett Millais (1829-1896). The Pre-raphaelite painter from Southampton is most famous for his painting of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (pictured), which was the Tate’s best-selling postcard for a decade. In 2012, a curator at Tate Britain uncovered sexually suggestive references in Millais’s painting Isabella, including a phallic shadow cast by a nutcracker.
ON JUNE 8 . . .
IN 1929, Labour MP Margaret Bondfield was made Minister of Labour — becoming Britain’s first female Cabinet member.
IN 1968, James Earl ray was arrested in London for murdering Martin Luther King Jr. He was later jailed for 99 years.
WORD WIZARDRY
NEW WORD OF THE DAY
Subway salmon: One who insists on going up or down steps when all those leaving a train are going in the opposite direction.
GUESS THE DEFINITION
Onomatomania (coined 1895) A) The delusion that one is famous. B) An obsession with accuracy. C) Vexation at having difficulty finding the right word. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Drunk as a Lord: Before the Victorian temperance movement, the aristocracy would habitually drink several bottles of port for dinner, ending in thorough intoxication.