ON THIS DAY
DECEMBER 17, 1966
THE Prince of Wales will become head boy of Gordonstoun when he returns to the Moray school for his final two terms on January 17. His father was also guardian — the name by which the head boy is known — in 1939. The Prince will be responsible for the efficiency, discipline and smooth running of the school. He will have few, if any, privileges. Mr Robert Chew, headmaster, said: ‘He will be more active than anyone else in the school. Like myself, he will have his finger in every pie and on every pulse.’ DECEMBER 17, 1969 THE House of Commons last night voted to end hanging for murder. At the end of an eight-hour debate, the 343 to 185 result, declared just before midnight, showed a 158 majority for the abolitionists.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DAME JACquELINE WILSON, 73. The Bath-born former Children’s Laureate, creator of Tracy Beaker (pictured), wrote her first novel aged nine and started her career at DC Thomson in Dundee, aged 17, the publisher of Jackie magazine. She nicknames herself ‘Granny Spice’, writes while reclining on a chaise longue and is known for marathon book signings — having once done one that lasted seven and a half hours. BERNARD HILL, 74. The actor from Manchester was the star of BBC drama Boys From The Blackstuff and appeared as the Duke of Norfolk in Wolf Hall. Although he’s one of our best-known character actors, he has said he relies on adverts to earn a crust, saying: ‘A year working seriously at the BBC in the early Eighties nearly sent me to the poor house.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
FORD MADOx FORD (1873-1939). The Surrey-born author wrote the four-book Parade’s End and The Good Soldier. The grandson of Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, his famous rule on literature was: ‘Open the book to page 99 and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.’ BOB GuCCIONE (19302010), right. The American publisher, who once considered becoming a priest, became one of his country’s wealthiest men by founding Penthouse magazine, launched in the uK in 1965 as a rival to Hugh Hefner’s Playboy. He said it earned £2.5billion while he was in charge, but poor business decisions saw him lose almost all his fortune.
ON DECEMBER 17…
IN 1986, Davina Thompson, of Rotherham, became the world’s first patient to receive a heart, lung and liver transplant, at Papworth in Cambridge. She died at the hospital in 1998, aged 47, from a lung infection.
IN 2011, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il died, aged 69.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Collop (c. 1350) A) A cauliflower b) An egg fried on bacon or fried ham and eggs c) utter nonsense. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED: Cucumber time
MEANING ‘the silly or flat season’, this 1853 phrase refers to the tailoring trade that could not expect profit ‘when cucumbers are in, the gentry are out of town’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
FoR what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn? Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHERE does Santa work out? Down the gymney. Guess The Definition answer: B.