ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
AUGUST 26, 1967 A ROOFTOP sniper yesterday killed George Lincoln Rockwell, self-styled Führer of the American Nazi Party, as he sat at the wheel of his car in Arlington, Virginia. A few minutes later one of his former henchmen was arrested and charged with murder. Police named the man as John Patler, 29, a former captain in Rockwell’s Nazi Party. AUGUST 26, 1989 AuTHOR Salman Rushdie and his wife Marianne Wiggins have parted. In February, they were forced into hiding after Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death sentence, saying his novel The Satanic Verses was blasphemous to Muslims.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
STEVE WRIGHT, 65. The Greenwich-born DJ (right) earns up to £470,000 a year as a Radio 2 presenter, having previously worked for Radio 1 and Radio Luxembourg. He said that if he only had 24 hours left to live, he would spend it ‘drinking soup, of course — pea and ham’. PAuLA HAWKINS, 47. The Zimbabweanborn former journalist was in debt and about to give up writing when her novel The Girl On The Train was published. It sold 20 million copies and was turned into a 2016 film starring Emily Blunt. It was so successful that some publishers asked writers to put ‘girl’ in the titles of their books.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JOHN BuCHAN (1875-1940). The Scottish novelist, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, began writing his espionage thriller The ThirtyNine Steps the month Britain entered World War I. It has never been out of print in the century since it was published. The book was loved by soldiers at the front, and it is thought that copies still with their dust jackets are so rare because most were lost in the trenches. PEGGy GuGGENHEIM (1898-1979). The American art collector (right) was the niece of the founder of New york’s Guggenheim Museum, which she referred to as ‘my uncle’s garage’. After building up her own collection of modern art, she tried desperately to save it from the Nazis. The Louvre in Paris declined to help because they deemed it not worth saving, but her eponymous gallery in Venice is now one of the most visited in the world.
ON AUGUST 26 . . .
IN 1965, Sonny and Cher went to No 1 in the uK with I Got you Babe.
IN 1967, The Beatles held a press conference in Bangor, North Wales with Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh yogi, and said that they had renounced the use of drugs.
IN 1978, Albino Luciani was elected Pope, becoming John Paul I. But he died of a heart attack 33 days later, aged 65.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Gallimaufry (coined 16th century) A) A brief respite in the weather. B) A depression of the spirits. C) A hotchpotch. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED
Birds of a feather flock together: Meaning people will spend time with those similar to themselves. Coined in 1545, it comes from the fact that birds of the same species group together in flocks to fly or roost.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
When you make your peace with authority, you become an authority. Jim Morrison, American singer (1943-1971)
JOKE OF THE DAY
HOW does a vampire start a letter? Tomb it may concern . . . Guess The Definition answer: C.