ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
JUNE 20, 1944
GERMAN ‘flying bomb’ propaganda for home consumption is already running into serious trouble. Goebbels has overplayed his hand to such an extent that a wave of dangerously delirious optimism is sweeping the entire German people.
JUNE 20, 1952
MAJOR Lloyd-George, the Food Minister, said in a written reply yesterday that he and the Colonial Secretary are considering how and when the Food Ministry could most conveniently stop importing bananas. He considers it is ‘no longer expedient’ that the Government should be the only importers.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
NICOLE KIDMAN, 51 (right). The Moulin Rouge star was the first Australian to win a best actress Oscar, for her role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Although People magazine once dubbed her the most beautiful person on the planet, Forbes magazine was less in her thrall — in 2008, it named her as Hollywood’s most overpaid star and the least likely to give studios a return on their money.
FRANK LAMPARD, 40. The ex-England and Chelsea footballer is the new manager of Championship side Derby County. Married to TV presenter Christine Bleakley, Lampard is thought to have an IQ of above 150, higher than Carol Vorderman and putting him in the top 0.5 per cent of the population. He has said: ‘Nobody expects a footballer to have any kind of an IQ, which is a bit of an unfair stereotype.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
JOHNNY MORRIS (19161999). The Welsh TV zookeeper (right) hosted the BBC’s Animal Magic for 21 years, giving silly voices to creatures. He had many jobs before broadcasting, saying: ‘As a child i wanted to be an actor, but looking as i looked, with a big nose, it was quite out of the question and i resigned myself to a normal, ordinary life as a solicitor’s clerk.’
MARTIN LANDAU (1928-2017). The New york-born actor won an Oscar for his role as horror actor Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood in 1994. A friend of James Dean, he dated Marilyn Monroe when they were students, but became impatient with her countless changes of outfit before their dates. When he asked Alfred Hitchcock why he had cast him in his break-out role in North By Northwest, the director said: ‘Martin, you have a circus going on inside you.’
ON JUNE 20 ...
IN 1840, Samuel Morse received a patent for his telegraphy signals . . . Morse code.
IN 1984, Education Secretary Sir Keith Joseph announced that O-Level and CSE exams would be replaced with GCSEs.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Backfriend (coined in 1472) A) A sofa. B) A strap to bind a hawk’s wing. C) A false friend. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
A line in the sand: A boundary which one can’t go beyond without there being consequences; it refers to when a Roman senator drew a circle around an invading Macedonian king and demanded his retreat before he was allowed to step out of the circle.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
JUST trust yourself and you’ll learn the art of giving.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe German poet (1749-1832)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHERE are mediocre things manufactured? the satisfactory.
Guess the Definition answer: C.