ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JANUARY 17, 1947 Mr ATTLEE has been asked by the executive of the Association of Education Committees to treat the raising of the school leaving age from 14 to 15 ‘as a matter of urgency’. The age is to be raised on April 1, but it is known not all Ministers are in agreement with the plan.
JANUARY 17, 1967 AN ENGLISHMAN’S castle is also his home, and that is the Marquis of Hertford’s problem when 3s. 6d. day trippers meet the family at his Warwickshire mansion, ragley Hall. The 36-year-old marquis and his wife are advertising for a nanny for their four children. He says: ‘The main difficulty about the job is one any shopkeeper would understand. It’s the absolute impossibility of preventing well-meaning members of the public buying [our children] too many ice-creams.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SUSANNA HOFFS, 59. The pint-sized guitarist of iconic Eighties group, The Bangles blazed onto the scene with songs such as Manic Monday and Walk Like An Egyptian. In 1989, she sang lead vocals on Eternal flame, recording it while naked. Someone tricked her by saying that Olivia Newton John also sang naked in the studio, but later confessed they were lying.
BETTY WHITE, 96. The u.S. actress won a guinness world record for the longest TV career of any female entertainer in 2013, for 74 years on the screen. Best known as rose Nylund in The golden girls from 1985 to 1992, she is the sitcom’s last surviving star. She says: ‘I have no regrets. None. I consider myself the luckiest old broad on two feet.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
AL CAPONE (1899-1947). The Italian-American mobster, described in his New York Times obituary as ‘the fat boy from Brooklyn’ was said to be responsible for 300 gang-war deaths in Chicago. As a teenager, he honed his shooting skills by firing at beer bottles in the cellar of a New York club.
KEITH CHEGWIN (1957-2017). The chirpy Liverpool-born child actor found fame hosting Swap Shop and Cheggers Plays Pop. On Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast in the Nineties, he ambushed viewers on their doorstep with the catchphrase: ‘Wake up you beggars — it’s Cheggers!’ He was also fleance in roman Polanski’s 1971 movie Macbeth.
ON JANUARY 17…
IN 1945, diplomat raoul Wallenberg, known as the ‘Swedish Schindler’ because he saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, was detained by Soviet troops in Budapest and never seen again.
IN 1998, Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was exposed by the Drudge report website.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Caoutchouc (1775) A) raw rubber B) In opposite direction, the wrong way C) Impulsively; without deliberation
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Writing on the wall: A warning of impending disaster. from the Bible (Daniel 5:5) where a mysterious hand is seen writing on the wall during a feast given by King Belshazzar. Daniel said it foretold the downfall of his kingdom and the king’s death; that night Belshazzar was slain.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
WHEN a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife. Prince Philip
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did I say when a man threw a milk bottle at me? how dairy! Guess The Definition answer: A