ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
DECEMBER 31, 1940 THE roar of gun barrage mingled with the roar and crackle of flames; raiders droned overhead. Daily Mail cameraman H. A. Mason stood on a City roof to get this awe-inspiring picture of St Paul’s Cathedral ringed with flame. ‘I focused at intervals as the great dome loomed up through the smoke,’ he said. ‘Then a wind sprang up. Suddenly the shining cross, dome and towers stood out like a symbol in the inferno. The scene was unbelievable. In that moment I released my shutter.’
DECEMBER 31, 1974 ACTRESS Marianne Faithfull is quoted as saying in an interview in the New Musical Express yesterday: ‘My first move was to get a Rolling Stone as a boyfriend. I slept with three of them and then decided the lead singer [Mick Jagger] was the best bet.’ Miss Faithfull, 28, refused to name the other Stones involved.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
VAL KILMER, 60. The American actor and star of Batman Forever was married to English actress Joanne Whalley for seven years and learned that she was divorcing him while watching CNN in a hotel room. He turned down the lead role in Dirty Dancing, which went to Patrick Swayze, because ‘I didn’t want to be perceived as a hunk’.
SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS, 82. The Oscarwinning actor (right) from Port Talbot, Wales, is best known for playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Lambs. He said he knew ‘intuitively’ how the character sounded — ‘a combination of Katharine Hepburn, Truman Capote and HAL [the sentient computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey]’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
ELIZABETH ARDEN (1878-1966). The Canadian-born cosmetics pioneer (real name Florence Nightingale Graham) was the first person to introduce eye make-up to American women and helped create the concept of the ‘makeover’. She was the first to use travelling saleswomen. HENRI MATISSE (1869-1954). The French painter and sculptor was a law clerk but fell in love with art after his mother bought him some paints while he was recovering from appendicitis. Matisse once said of his playful use of colour: ‘When I put down a green, it doesn’t mean grass; and when I put down a blue, it doesn’t mean the sky.’
ON DECEMBER 31…
IN 1970, Paul McCartney filed a High Court lawsuit to dissolve The Beatles’ partnership.
IN 1999, Boris Yeltsin made the surprise announcement on live television that he was resigning as Russian president.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Meritorious (15th century)
A) Deserving praise. B) Deceitful. C) Being fond of one’s husband. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Comes with the territory: Refers to being an integral part of something. Coined in the 1900s and popularised by Arthur Miller’s play Death Of A Salesman, it applied to the negative parts of a salesman’s territory which couldn’t be removed from the overall area.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
MATRIMONY is not a word, it’s a sentence.
Eddie Cantor, U.S. entertainer (1892-1964)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT is cardboard’s favourite sport?
Boxing.
Guess The Definition answer: A.